Continuing from earlier this week, we’re now doing the WORST
stages of the Smash Bros series (to
date). Please sit back and enjoy! Again, modded stages are not included and may
be a topic we touch on another time.
#12 – Pictochat (Brawl) – First, yes, I like the concept
behind the stage. There’s something genuinely clever about a stage that
basically writes itself. But some of the constructs made in the stage are
difficult to get around unless you’re a small character, making this one harder
for bigger, heavier fighters. On top of that, the music for this stage is
probably my least favorite of any in the game (barring New Pork City). It’s not
a stage I wanted to put on here, but when I ran out of “Bad” stages, I had to
throw this on the list as a “lesser” stage.
#10 – Green Greens (Melee/Brawl) – This is another stage I
don’t genuinely hate, but one that I feel to be unnecessary. It took the Whispy
Woods stage from N64 and added layers of falling blocks that have random bombs
hidden in them. And while I’m not opposed to randomness, I just don’t see how
this is a worthwhile addition to a stage that was already fairly solid. Not to
mention fighting CPUs on this stage leads to getting blown up by them (they
blow up too) than you do accidentally to yourself. Not a stage I particularly
enjoy playing on.
#09 – New Pork City (Brawl) – Yes, it is odd I would put a
large stage (good for 4-Players) on this list when there are so few tailor made
for that kind of play. But let me ask you something. Do you find character
designs appealing when they have a character and then dress him like they’re
armored with dozens of saucepans duct-taped together like they often end up in
WoW? New Pork City is basically the stage equivalent of that. Someone started
drawing the idea for the stage and just never stopped. There’s a lot of background
fluff happening that it becomes easy to lose your character. Add the fact the
stage is large, characters get even smaller when the camera needs to zoom out
for all of them and you have a match where getting lost is fairly easy. Also
this stage contains my least favorite music in the game. The only other
contenders are Hanenbow and 75m (neither of which really have music).
#08 – Rainbow Cruise (Melee/Brawl) – I’ll always be kind of
surprised how this stage managed to return for Brawl when it wasn’t even that great or liked by fans. I have
nothing against moving stages (hell, Icicle Mountain didn’t even make this
list). But this one always felt needlessly long full of randomly placed shit
that didn’t really make sense for me. Personally, if Rainbow Cruise had done a
Pirate Ship approach, I would probably have kept it off the list. But since it
doesn’t and you have to jump around a bunch of platforms, carpets, pendulums,
and falling blocks, I’m going to say that there’s just too much going on for me
to really enjoy this stage as much as I want to. 
#07 – Mario Bros. (Brawl) – From this point on, almost every
stage is in Brawl and there’s a
reason for that. It has the most stages, which also allows it to easily have
the most crap stages as well. Mario Bros. easily makes this list. Mobility is
tough on this stage as there are plenty of low-hanging ceilings you CAN’T pass
through. In these tight quarters, there are also LOTS of stage hazards that
make navigating this stage a pain. While not the worst attempt at a retro-stage
in the game, it’s still not great
#05 – Hanenbow (Brawl) – What game is this even from? Does
anyone really know? Is that game any good? How did it get a stage in brawl? While,
in some ways, the artistic styling of making this a stage that’s very colorful
and has the music based on the platforms getting hit is interesting. But the
lack of having any actual background music leaves much to be desired. The
stage’s overall layout isn’t really fun and there aren’t a lot of characters
who can fight on it well aside from those that fly. Frankly, it’s just a really
boring stage.
#04 – Spear Pillar (Brawl) – I was hoping to get this in the
top 3 (sadly, no) to reflect the Saffron City stage’s #3 placement on the “Best
of” list. That being said, Spear Pillar takes the same awesome concept of
Saffron City and just fails to make it great. Saffron City brings in several
different Pokemon to be hazards on the stage and they rotate through those
several during the match. Conversely, Spear Pillar only has one at a time
(Dialga, Palkia, or Cresselia [why?]). But what puts it this high on the list
is one of the abilities they have (actually two) where they flip-flop your
controls. Left is right and right is left. If you’re trying to recover during
this, it’ll likely send you back off the side of the map. If you’re running in
pursuit of someone, you’ll suddenly be running away from them. It takes a
second for the average brain to click and realize that things now require a
different input. I wouldn’t be oppose to the idea of reversed controls if you
could practice using them consistently. But this particular occurrence is
random chance and doesn’t happen every time, thus no way to practice. I like
the idea of bringing Pokemon hazards back to stages. But this was just a
miserable attempt to make it work. 
#03 – Flatzone (Melee/Brawl) – Neither version of this stage
are any fun to play on. The second version has more dangerous hazards, but
Melee’s version still introduced this stage and it wasn’t any fun then either.
It’s also one that doesn’t have a lot of mods for it, making your options for
overwriting it and having an alternate stage in its place limited. It’s boring
and colorless (I get why, but that doesn’t change the fact). It could be a much
better stage than what it is but it’s just one that’s never been fun to play
on. Plus its size really limits the number of players that can comfortably play
on it to probably two at best.
#02 – 75M (Brawl) – This stage… I was so excited by the
prospect of a stage that recreated the original Donkey Kong arcade classic and expected to be playing on it a lot.
The idea sounded fun and preview images looked promising. In theory,
retro-stages are an interesting idea I’d like to see played around with… but
please, Sakurai… don’t repeat 75M’s mistake again. The stage was a remake of
the arcade game with a special twist specifically for Brawl. A lot of the platforms are small, moving, and I can’t
remember if you can even grab on to all of them. The old-Donkey Kong and
various other stage hazards will also wreck you if you aren’t careful. Mods
have done a great job simplifying this stage into something more playable and
fun while retaining the same retro-feel they were originally going for. But on
its own, 75M is just a terrible stage. But only one other stage can possibly be
worse. 
#01 – Rumble Falls (Brawl) – Donkey Kong managed to have two
horrible stages in the same game. Thankfully, one of the Melee-Throwback stages
was the always fun Jungle Japes or there would have been no good DK stages on
Brawl. Rumble Falls takes a lot of the worst trains of most stages and
compounds them into one. You have the same Icicle Mountain gimmick of constant
movement (which I’m find with in certain instances). You have traps throughout
the stage, which, on their own, would not be an issue. The stage has many areas
that feel cramped and tiny, making it hard for most characters (especially
large ones) to maneuver anywhere. This also makes keeping up on avoiding traps
more difficult unless you memorize all their locations. The stage feels like an
absolute clusterfuck, similar to New Pork City, where there’s just a lot going
on and it’s incredibly easy to lose your character in the mess. This was one of
the first stages I modded over and I haven’t gone back to the original stage
since. Rest in hell, Rumble Falls. You will never be missed.
That’s all for my top 12 WORST stages of the Smash Bros games (to date). Tune in next
week when we discuss more Smash Bros. nonsense in preparation for the new game
coming out on 3DS October 3rd.
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