Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Official Site
The official website for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate launched on March 8th, 2018, shortly after the game's reveal trailer. It was later updated on June 12th, 2018, to accommodate for all the information about the game that was revealed.
Overview[edit]
The language selection offered by the site (not counting regional variants) includes English, Japanese, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Russian, like its predecessor, but also includes Chinese and Korean translations, the former in both Traditional and Simplified. The language hub page also includes a link to the official Facebook page in European Portuguese, as Nintendo never opted for a dedicated Portuguese website since the game itself is not available in this language.
The Home page has the looping panoramic artwork of all revealed playable characters (including DLC), scrolling horizontally; below are the recent videos and the recent Smash Blog posts. The About page gives a brief overview of the game's content, with links to the subpages within the site regarding characters, stages, items, and music. There is also a How to Smash page, detailing how to play the game in a similar manner to the in-game How to Play videos in past installments, the advanced techniques such as Perfect Shield, and other elements such as spirits and modes.
The Fighters page has a list of playable characters confirmed for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which can be sorted in ascending or descending order. This page can also be displayed by universe (in the order of each universe's first fighter). Each character has their own character page. These pages can be accessed by clicking on the picture displaying the fighter on the website's Fighter page. Each character page contains the characters' official render in front of a background with a number, being larger depending on how late into the series they were introduced, and a stage in the game. After the game's launch, an option was added to change the character's palette by clicking on the characters on desktop versions and shaking the user's device on mobile. Lower on the page, a small 20-second video can be seen showing off the character's appearance in-game, with six additional screenshots, and links to other characters from the same universe (if the universe has multiple characters). The background color of the page changes according to character. However, the character showcase lack voice clips, presumably to make them easier to translate.
The Stages page has new stages highlighted in the header; below is a grid of confirmed stages which can be selected to display in the middle of the grid. The Items page has the list of confirmed items, Poké Ball Pokémon, and Assist Trophies, accompanied with screenshots.
The Music page updated every week until the game's launch with a new theme for viewers to listen to; a list can be found here. There is also a Videos page, which can be viewed uploaded videos, such as character reveal trailers and commercials.
Finally, there is a Super Smash Blog page, similar to the daily updates on the DOJO!! and the Pics of the Day section on the Smash 4 site, where series director Masahiro Sakurai posts about information regarding the game, discussing playable characters, stages, Assist Trophies, music, and items. The Japanese, Korean and Chinese (Traditional and Simplified) sites receive an additional post for some playable characters, labelled as "memories", where Sakurai discusses the origins of the character in question; however, on October 3, 2018, the American site received one as well. As of November 14, 2018, the site received four posts labeled "gameplay", where it talks about spirits and various subjects about it. These posts are posted five days a week, Sunday through Thursday (in North American timezones; in Japan, they are weekday updates); the first week these updates went live is an exception, as the updates started on a Tuesday and ended on Friday.
Similar to the previous website, certain characters would receive links to the games that they appeared in. Unlike the previous website, they only appear for downloadable characters whose home games were available on Nintendo Switch when their webpages were added (for example, Joker has no link to Persona 5 Royal or Strikers due to not being given websites).
Additionally, every character's page has a stage in the background, with the exception of R.O.B., whose series has no stages.
Trivia[edit]
- None of the stages used in the background of character pages come from the original Super Smash Bros.
- The British English version of the site uses Commonwealth English where appropriate; however, the Australian English version does not.
- For unknown reasons, the "Today's Flashback" for the original Star Fox is the only "Memory" to be translated on the American website.
- Copyright information related to Final Fantasy VII, its logo, and Cloud's design appear at the bottom of Cloud's page. He is the only one with this distinction, with not even other third party characters, including Sephiroth, having this oddity.
- Before the site was updated on August 8, 2018, the How to Smash page was originally titled as How to Play. The URLs for pages related to this still refer to the old name.
- The picture for "Challenges" under How to Smash's "Game Modes" section has seven pages and says "45/111" when referring to the number of challenges in the game, showing that it was taken on version 1.0.0, before the Online page of challenges was added.
- As almost all characters' debut games were never released in Chinese, the Chinese language versions of this site mark the very first time several older games have ever received official titles in Chinese (such as 精灵宝可梦 钻石/珍珠, the Simplified Chinese names for Pokémon Diamond and Pearl).
- Upon the respective confirmations of Banjo & Kazooie and Terry, although they each were listed on the Fighter page, their dedicated Fighter pages were grayed out and inaccessible prior to their respective releases.
- Byleth and Steve are the only characters whose alternate costumes are displayed alongside their default costumes on the official Ultimate site, with female Byleth and Alex also appearing separately on the slideshow at the top of the page.
- Additionally, because male and female Byleth have different names in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, the lists of fighters on the website names both of them in those languages.
- Joker, Banjo & Kazooie, Kazuya, and Sora are the only downloadable characters who do not have a link to their home game. This is due to not having their games of origin on the Nintendo Switch at least at the time of their release.
- Sephiroth, Pyra, Mythra, and Kazuya are the only characters with an ESRB reminder on their Fighter page. This oddly does not apply to other Teen or even Mature rated series. This same warning can be found on Pyra and Mythra's trailer.
- For the versions in European languages, after information on Kazuya and Tekken were added to the site, every series logo is no longer present. Instead, they were replaced with the name of the first fighter for each series. Tekken's is only present on each language's respective reveal trailer for Kazuya. This is similar to the replacements of the names of M-rated series that lack fighters in American Mii Costume trailers. The reason for this is unknown.
- Both Tekken and Kingdom Hearts were mentioned on the website as series various arrangers for Ultimate worked on in the past as part of the music webpage prior to being introduced as universes in-game in Fighters Pass Vol. 2.
