Super Smash Brothers Melee Online Play Receives Monumental Rollback Netcode and Integrated Matchmaking
Yesterday was a day that is monumental in the Super Smash Brothers Melee community. A lot of players play on Netplay, which is the act of playing Super Smash Brothers Melee on the “Dolphin” emulator. When combined with Slippi, it allows for online play across the world for Super Smash Brothers Melee.
The most recent update that came out yesterday completely changed the landscape of Melee casually and competitively.
Super Smash Brothers Melee came out for the Nintendo Gamecube, and has no online functionality through the Gamecube itself. However, over the years, with the evolution of emulators, experiences like playing games that were strictly offline in an online setting has made playing your favorite old school offline games with friends much easier.
In the scope of competitive play, it’s much harder (especially with COVID-19) to get together with people and LAN play games. As competitive players have grown older, they also have more responsibilities and less time to drive to other competitive players homes to practice. This was a mainstay of competitive Melee early on in it’s lifetime, but with the evolution of esports, streaming and online play through emulation, this is far less common now.
With the rollback technology that is featured in Slippi’s most recent update, it feels like you’re playing offline. Or at the least, with minimal lag. This has never been the case with Super Smash Brothers Melee. Or any Super Smash Brothers game, even the ones designed with online play in mind. Competitive players have been speaking out about how it feels like a revival for Super Smash Brothers Melee, as well as just how crisp it feels, even if you’re playing people across the world.
The near flawless online play for Super Smash Brothers Melee has raised questions among the Super Smash Brothers communities as a whole. If someone who has no affiliation with Nintendo can do this on their own, why can’t Nintendo provide this service for their own games? One of the biggest critiques of Nintendo’s online play has been, well, that it’s not very good. That makes it much harder for a casual player to enjoy the online play, as well as harder for competitive players to get legitimate practice when it’s like playing two different games when you compare offline and online play.
Slippi’s rollback feature combined with it’s integrated matchmaking has entirely changed the landscape of Super Smash Brothers Melee. No longer do you have to settle for lag. It’s also worthy to note that the creator of Slippi quit their job to be able to do this. I’d say it would be a smart decision for some major AAA company to hire this man, because what he’s done is spectacular and something all companies with online games should be taking note of. Fighting games are the most delicate online too, and he’s provided a service with one of the most technical fighting games of all time that is worthy of all the attention and praise the community is giving it.
