Frankly, I agree with this a lot. There's a ton of stages that seem kinda half-assedly made to me.
Brawl brought some of the worst stages generally, as well; we got stupid stuff like 75m which after playing on it once lost its novelty VERY quickly.
BTW, love your new avatar, Onishiba is one of my favorite characters from that series (which is also why I used that as a nick on Smashboards for a while
).
Yeah, it's not like Melee didn't have its share of gimmick stages, but Brawl's were just less fun to fight on. 75m and Mario Bros. were annoying to play compared to Poke Floats or Big Blue (although I do love the look of the former two). Then there were a few levels that had cool ideas, but they were executed in really annoying ways (like how winning microgames in the WarioWare stage could straight-up give you a starman, that was too much)
But the levels that annoy me the most are ones like New Pork City, Halberd, and Smashville, where the levels just feel like "platforms in front of a themed background". I think I would rather have those stages be annoying gimmick stages than what they are now. To be honest, I feel like this is sort of symptomatic of Brawl's biggest issue, which is that it seems like the developers focused more on putting in tons of fanservice and content than they did on the combat system and level design. I'm glad they went as far as they did with the fanservice stuff because I seriously eat that up, but I think Melee has more longevity as a multiplayer game as a result.
Thanks for the avatar compliment. It was actually Neoriceisgood who made this and he did a pretty sweet job. I'm actually not really into the series at all, but I think Onishiba has a really cool design.
You know, for as much as I love Smash Bros. -- it's my favorite game series -- I couldn't possibly care less about the stages. The roster is all that truly excites me.
I get what you're saying but I don't know if I totally agree. I also mainly just go to Smash Bros. forums to discuss what characters will get in - I don't have much to say when it comes to stage wishlists or mechanics discussions - but when you actually have the game in your system, the roster is just one part of the total package. I don't think this topic would exist if Smash Bros. wasn't fun to play on top of having great fanservice, and stage design is a part of gameplay too.