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Nintendo uploads ARMS stream (Japanese, nearly an hour)... Game looks fantastic!

Doorman

Member
The more impressions I pick up and the more I watch, both about the game itself and people's reactions to its reveal, the more convinced I become that Nintendo did a poor job of initially communicating ARMS and its potential. At the very least they did a bit of a disservice in trying to pick up the Western audience. I've written in here before that I thought the trailer and Yabuki's demonstration felt a little redundant, but its placement within the conference didn't do it any favors in that manner either. I get why they did it, but I think for ARMS's sake having it immediately follow up 1 2 Switch was not a good idea. The fact that its trailer even starts up in largely the same way as 1 2's with the fake serious "showdown" and the big focus on people doing motion controls instead of what the game itself has to offer, I think, colored a lot of people's early opinions into dismissing ARMS out-of-hand (heh) as a slightly more stylish attempt at waggle-boxing rather than a more "legitimate" fighting game. The novelty of slowly explaining "when you punch, your character punches," wore out a long time ago and the game's real strategy and depth were barely touched on. I liked that they showed a demo match to give people an idea of the actual game screen, but if that's the idea they really shouldn't have completely glossed over the fact that the characters maneuver differently, and definitely shouldn't have blown right by the switchable fists aspect. The result is that aside from some extremely brief and uninformative clips at the very end of the trailer, all most viewers saw of ARMS without looking at more in-depth coverage later would have been two people flailing springy-arms at each other and that's it. No wonder there's so much concern about content!

I definitely don't think it's some huge irreversible problem, as it apparently changed a lot of minds already on the show floors, but Nintendo needs to do a better job in the future with messaging this. It's probably still a good 5 months away from launching anyway, plenty of time to drop more information about characters and modes and such, but they could have started this off from a more advantageous position, for the game's sake.

Also, having seen footage of the Japanese version of the game and realizing that the character names are all literally translated from how they're written in katakana, the names being so generic-sounding suddenly made a lot more sense to me. They're essentially using English names for the Japanese release but in that sense they come off sounding more like superhero or pro wrestler names that you'd normally expect to see in an anime or such. English names in Japanese makes that point a lot better than English names in English, where it just sounds kind of meh.

Then again people in America love Batman and that's no less direct, so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

Coda

Member
The more impressions I pick up and the more I watch, both about the game itself and people's reactions to its reveal, the more convinced I become that Nintendo did a poor job of initially communicating ARMS and its potential. At the very least they did a bit of a disservice in trying to pick up the Western audience. I've written in here before that I thought the trailer and Yabuki's demonstration felt a little redundant, but its placement within the conference didn't do it any favors in that manner either. I get why they did it, but I think for ARMS's sake having it immediately follow up 1 2 Switch was not a good idea. The fact that its trailer even starts up in largely the same way as 1 2's with the fake serious "showdown" and the big focus on people doing motion controls instead of what the game itself has to offer, I think, colored a lot of people's early opinions into dismissing ARMS out-of-hand (heh) as a slightly more stylish attempt at waggle-boxing rather than a more "legitimate" fighting game. The novelty of slowly explaining "when you punch, your character punches," wore out a long time ago and the game's real strategy and depth were barely touched on. I liked that they showed a demo match to give people an idea of the actual game screen, but if that's the idea they really shouldn't have completely glossed over the fact that the characters maneuver differently, and definitely shouldn't have blown right by the switchable fists aspect. The result is that aside from some extremely brief and uninformative clips at the very end of the trailer, all most viewers saw of ARMS without looking at more in-depth coverage later would have been two people flailing springy-arms at each other and that's it. No wonder there's so much concern about content!

I agree, I went from thinking the game was basically casual trash to being pretty jazzed about the promise of the gameplay. All I hope is that it has a solid single player experience or something just beyond the matches themselves because regardless of how deep the gameplay is, we need more than just what we've been shown already.
 

Totakeke

Member
There's also the training montage in between the two parts with mini instruction videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVbYrmcnuio

The third one talks about the charge attack. I think it says your gloves get charged when you jump, block or dodge cancel(?). It gains special properties depending like spring boy gloves burns the enemy while ribbon girl stuns the enemy. A charged punch also travels faster than a normal punch.

Also it looks like blocking damages your arms and maybe you can aim your punches at their arms even when they're idle to damage their arms. Also I think Nairo's video mentioned that some gloves are better at damaging arms than others.
 
The more impressions I pick up and the more I watch, both about the game itself and people's reactions to its reveal, the more convinced I become that Nintendo did a poor job of initially communicating ARMS and its potential.

This seems like another case of gamers completely ignoring what's said and instead believing what they want to. Nintendo LITERALLY said to the effect "Here's a game for casuals (1 2 Switch), here's a game for the core (ARMS)" and people somehow chose not to believe it and start calling this Wii Boxing 2 and stuff like that

Also it looks like blocking damages your arms and maybe you can aim your punches at their arms even when they're idle to damage their arms. Also I think Nairo's video mentioned that some gloves are better at damaging arms than others.

Yup. Apparently your ARMS can become deactivated for a period of time if they sustain too much damage. You might have noticed it with the caution symbols that fill up/decrease at times.
32243188671_40a508c178_o.gif

Some moves can even completely incapacitate both of an opponents arms leaving them only able to dodge. This game's subsystems are fascinating, and I'm sure there will be a whole element to the gear we don't know about yet
 

psyfi

Banned
I wrote off Arms for the first few moments they were showing it, but then the potential became clear to me. I honestly just think a lot of people are so wary of waggle that they immediately wrote this off. I can't say I blame them, but I think it's narrow minded to not look a little deeper.
 

Coda

Member
The fact of the matter is that a lot of gamers don't research the finer details about games sometimes, either because they don't have the free time to do so or ignore to do so. They needed to explain the depth further in the conference so the semi-hardcore gamer can see it's promise. Not every gamer is like GAF and looks at all these impressions videos on YouTube about the game, but right now that's the only way to see that the game has more to offer than what was initially shown.
 

Doorman

Member
This seems like another case of gamers completely ignoring what's said and instead believing what they want to. Nintendo LITERALLY said to the effect "Here's a game for casuals (1 2 Switch), here's a game for the core (ARMS)" and people somehow chose not to believe it and start calling this Wii Boxing 2 and stuff like that

It's a combination of assumptions on the part of viewers/gamers and lackluster messaging by Nintendo. ARMS was introduced as "a game with depth, challenge, and replayability," but the first view of it was a demonstration of motion controls that a lot of the "core" gamers this title would appeal to have already long dismissed, and very little shown and even less directly said about what exactly is supposed to provide the promised depth, challenge, and replayability. No mention of knocking each others' punches out of the air, or the ability to disable arms, or the differences between fighters (of which there will be more!), or the differences between gloves, or the major changes between stages (of which there will be more!), or directly referencing the typical fighting game move triangle of attack/block/grab...and on and on and on.

I'm not expecting them to get up on stage and start talking about frame data, but the focus of both the trailer and Yabuki's discussion afterward centered firmly on "motion controls!" and not "this is a legitimate new fighting game and a true new IP that we're investing a lot in." They didn't exactly make it difficult for people to jump to their own conclusions.
 

Totakeke

Member
Yup. Apparently your ARMS can become deactivated for a period of time if they sustain too much damage. You might have noticed it with the caution symbols that fill up/decrease at times.
Some moves can even completely incapacitate both of an opponents arms leaving them only able to dodge. This game's subsystems are fascinating, and I'm sure there will be a whole element to the gear we don't know about yet

Yeah that is quite obvious, but the mechanics of how to trigger arm damage is not clear yet. A punch from spring boy and a punch from ribbon girl cancelling each other at the same time did no damage to either.
 
Following the 1, 2, Switch reveal with ARMS was a mistake. 1, 2, Switch completely set the tone, and the ARMS trailer began in a similar way. Rather than providing a contrast, it connected with the same fears that 1, 2, Switch created, making the direction of the Switch, and ARMS itself, seem to be driven by motion gimmicks. It was easy to get the wrong impression about it.

The Treehouse showing, however, was knocked outta the park, mostly thanks to JC. I saw some potential in the initial reveal, but it felt very much like a "wait for the sale" kind of game. By about halfway through the Treehouse demo, it became the Switch game I was the most hyped for. That hype has only been growing, since. Now, it may very well be the game I'm the most hyped for, period.

Hopefully it develops a solid competitive scene and the FGC embraces it. We need more wildly experimental and creative fighting games.
 

Peléo

Member
The fact of the matter is that a lot of gamers don't research the finer details about games sometimes, either because they don't have the free time to do so or ignore to do so. They needed to explain the depth further in the conference so the semi-hardcore gamer can see it's promise. Not every gamer is like GAF and looks at all these impressions videos on YouTube about the game, but right now that's the only way to see that the game has more to offer than what was initially shown.

I demo would do wonders for this game, specially due to the positive reactions from people who played it in the events. Seems to be the type of game most people will only understand its potential with the controller in hand. Nintendo had success with the Splatoon demo, hopefully they will follow suit.
 

Speely

Banned
Gothcha. Just tyring to make sure I understand. Not sold on the game yet and trying to learn more. I don't see the arm damage reset after the throw in the other gif either..

I was a bit confused on both points as well. It will be interesting to explore the RPS dynamic and the ways in which to subvert it in person. :)

GODDAMNIT I NEED THIS GAME.
 

Shahadan

Member
The fact of the matter is that a lot of gamers don't research the finer details about games sometimes, either because they don't have the free time to do so or ignore to do so. They needed to explain the depth further in the conference so the semi-hardcore gamer can see it's promise. Not every gamer is like GAF and looks at all these impressions videos on YouTube about the game, but right now that's the only way to see that the game has more to offer than what was initially shown.

I've watched a lot of reaction videos on youtube about this game and more than half were like "Oh? there are more than two characters?" and "Oh ok, there are other arenas".
I mean we've all played fighting games.

I know the game was showcased about 1 2 Switch but at some point I find it rather alarming that people expect to see everything right away and can't imagine much.
Same for Mario "so only 4 environments in the game??".
 

III-V

Member
I've watched a lot of reaction videos on youtube about this game and more than half were like "Oh? there are more than two characters?" and "Oh ok, there are other arenas".
I mean we've all played fighting games.

I know the game was showcased about 1 2 Switch but at some point I find it rather alarming that people expect to see everything right away and can't imagine much.
Same for Mario "so only 4 environments in the game??".

can't judge a game by idiot reaction.

this looks quite fun and clearly has a bit of depth to it.
 

Bog

Junior Ace
I've watched a lot of reaction videos on youtube about this game and more than half were like "Oh? there are more than two characters?" and "Oh ok, there are other arenas".
I mean we've all played fighting games.

I know the game was showcased about 1 2 Switch but at some point I find it rather alarming that people expect to see everything right away and can't imagine much.
Same for Mario "so only 4 environments in the game??".

Please unsubscribe from anyone who was surprised there are more than 2 characters.
 

ryechu

Member
The fact of the matter is that a lot of gamers don't research the finer details about games sometimes, either because they don't have the free time to do so or ignore to do so. They needed to explain the depth further in the conference so the semi-hardcore gamer can see it's promise. Not every gamer is like GAF and looks at all these impressions videos on YouTube about the game, but right now that's the only way to see that the game has more to offer than what was initially shown.

It seems that most of GAF,also, fails to realize that there will be content beyond what is shown by announcement trailers, based on what people have been saying about ARMS and Splatoon.
 

Davey Cakes

Member
This game looked so goofy when they showed it in the conference, but it's clearly the kind of game that's truly Nintendo. As with many of their titles, experimental or otherwise, playing is believing.

I've already mentioned that I enjoyed Wii Boxing, as flawed as it was. ARMS is the natural progression, not just from Wii Boxing but from Wii Sports Resort's "Swordplay" mini game. I'm not excited for ARMS in the sense that it makes me want to purchase Switch from day 1 (I'm taking a "wait and see" approach on Switch) but since my brother is going all-in on Switch I guess I'll admit I'm excited to at least try the game.

Impressions and previews only reinforce that. Could be a hit for Nintendo if Splatoon is anything to go by. But, it'll follow the same "playing is believing" philosophy adopted by the best and most casual-friendly Nintendo titles.
 

Neiteio

Member
I know it seems early to say "put 'em in Smash," but seriously, put 'em in Smash.

A move-set made around stretchy arm attacks would be fun.
 

Doorman

Member
Seriously if they made a sequel what could that call it to be funnny?

-LEGS
-2 ARMS!
-ARMS & LEGS
I know it's not your fault, but I swear I'm already at the point where if I hear the damn "the sequel, LEGS!" joke one more time...

Actually heck, I'm already a little worried about this IP's sequel potential, because I have such a hard time imagining how to properly work the curved-punch mechanics without motion controls, and there's no guarantees about whether that'll stay on future Nintendo systems.

Brilliant.

It seems Nintendo's Arms is developing quite the fan art following already....

[pictures]

Yes it begins! I feel like as characters, the inklings have more immediate appeal (and might be a bit easier to draw), but I hope that some fun stuff gets made featuring these characters. The Spring Man/Ninjara and the fake box art I particularly enjoyed.

...Gosh I still wish they'd changed the character names up, at least somewhat. I can't get over how cliche "Ninjara" is.
 
What the heck this game looks fun. They should have had a better showing on stage because I wasn't feeling this at all back then. I'm still not sure if I'd spend $60 on it though cus I need to know more about the single-player content. It definitely makes me want a Switch more as this makes 4 games now I am interested in (this, Zelda, Mario, & Splatoon 2).
 

Jigorath

Banned
Charging your gloves' special ability (i.e. electric) then stunning.
32213019182_6c31f2e4e2_o.gif


Nullifying a block by punching it (68 sec mark on the counter).
31551855223_a74af624ec_o.gif


Ninjara dashing out of blocking a super but gets caught at the stage borders.
32213306642_4668c2c0fe_o.gif


Getting thrown out of a super. Interestingly, Ninjara's arm health indicator resets after the first hit of the throw.
32243188671_40a508c178_o.gif

This all looks really fun.
 
The more impressions I pick up and the more I watch, both about the game itself and people's reactions to its reveal, the more convinced I become that Nintendo did a poor job of initially communicating ARMS and its potential. At the very least they did a bit of a disservice in trying to pick up the Western audience. I've written in here before that I thought the trailer and Yabuki's demonstration felt a little redundant, but its placement within the conference didn't do it any favors in that manner either. I get why they did it, but I think for ARMS's sake having it immediately follow up 1 2 Switch was not a good idea. The fact that its trailer even starts up in largely the same way as 1 2's with the fake serious "showdown" and the big focus on people doing motion controls instead of what the game itself has to offer, I think, colored a lot of people's early opinions into dismissing ARMS out-of-hand (heh) as a slightly more stylish attempt at waggle-boxing rather than a more "legitimate" fighting game. The novelty of slowly explaining "when you punch, your character punches," wore out a long time ago and the game's real strategy and depth were barely touched on. I liked that they showed a demo match to give people an idea of the actual game screen, but if that's the idea they really shouldn't have completely glossed over the fact that the characters maneuver differently, and definitely shouldn't have blown right by the switchable fists aspect. The result is that aside from some extremely brief and uninformative clips at the very end of the trailer, all most viewers saw of ARMS without looking at more in-depth coverage later would have been two people flailing springy-arms at each other and that's it. No wonder there's so much concern about content!

I definitely don't think it's some huge irreversible problem, as it apparently changed a lot of minds already on the show floors, but Nintendo needs to do a better job in the future with messaging this. It's probably still a good 5 months away from launching anyway, plenty of time to drop more information about characters and modes and such, but they could have started this off from a more advantageous position, for the game's sake.

Also, having seen footage of the Japanese version of the game and realizing that the character names are all literally translated from how they're written in katakana, the names being so generic-sounding suddenly made a lot more sense to me. They're essentially using English names for the Japanese release but in that sense they come off sounding more like superhero or pro wrestler names that you'd normally expect to see in an anime or such. English names in Japanese makes that point a lot better than English names in English, where it just sounds kind of meh.

Then again people in America love Batman and that's no less direct, so. ¯_(ツ)_/¯


Exactly. I was facepalming so hard the moment i saw that the first 2 games they announced were motionn controlled games. And it looked just like Wii sports boxing to me. I'm still not completely sold in the game but it certainly is very interesting so far and it looks like it's fun pick up and play with this sort of "one more match and I stop" kind of thing going on.

Also, in terms of artstyle, graphic design and character design this seems one of the best things. Doesn't reach to overwatch levels but quite close.

There will be the inevitable "ARMS has developed quite a fan art following..." thread very very soon for sure!


EDIT: aaaaand I'm late!
 

Calm Mind

Member
Here's our matches with pretty much everything put into play. We played it so much that by the end of the event, we played for 30 minutes nonstop as there weren't many people there or looking to play ARMs in the end.

Here's everything we picked up on(I've put timestamps in here for the video to refer back to).

Characters
Ninjara (my friends main) is top bloody tier -
Bloody hell this character has the best mobility within the game (see 1:48 and 4:04 for amazing speed and dodges). He is nimble, quick and his air dash is a mini teleport which results him him being invincible AND you can control which way you air dash.
****Prepare to get sick of seeing this character because he is exceptionally good.

The Mummy/Fat Kan-ra (my main) -
He has the worst mobility but has a nice double jump. If you block you also gain health back. It's this characters special block property. (See 5:50)

Mechanicca or which we called her, Tronne Bonne -
She basically is Tronne from Marvel. She has an air dash you can hold.

Ribbon girl -
Has a decedent throw which leaves the opponent still flying in the air. If you play on a stage with a bounce pad. She can get some nice combos from enemies that land on it from he grab. He grab is also nice in that it's a great keep away game. Her grab throws enemies nearly back to the full arena.


Stages:
-You can break the test tubes on the chemical plant stage can be broken (see second match)
-There is a grave yard stage to which the middle of the arena can be broken. This reveals a bounce pad for an dynamic stage change.
-The main stage (see Match One) that my friend and I referred to as "Final Destination of Arms" is an amazing stage. Mainly because of how absurd it can be for any rocking the Massive Purple ARMs I was using.


Now the good stuff (The tech we found):
There is a mechanic in the game where your Arms will power up with an attack with an elemental ability whereby you will gain, fire, electric and some other properties. In the case of fire, you take burn damage, but with electric powered up Arms, you gain stun. Stun is important because it means the opponent loses all control of their character AND their Arms.

The stun+grab combo:
*** The name of the ARM is called Sparky (see 0:07 for Ninjaras loadout. ARM slot 2 (the gloves) are called Sparky)).
(See 2:55)
At this point I get hit with an elemental Stun Punch which leaves me open. The stun time is around 1.5 seconds but you can easily follow up for a combo which means you can grab or even go into your Super Barrage. It really is the best and easiest combo set up we found.
In the video you can see I get hit by this twice in a row from that time stamp into the same stun grab combo (see again at 6:10). It's a nice bread and butter.

Why Sparky is a good ARM and how it works:
If you charge up your left and right ARMs (providing you have Sparky on both hands) you stun that side of the opponent. So if you get hit with a Right Sparky punch, you can move but lose the right side vice versa. However, if you get with BOTH Sparky Punches, you lose access to your whole body leaving you open for even more punishment.

So why Sparky?
With Sparky you only need to hit your opponent once which will stun that side/body them. However, any followup attacks which knock them out of stun.
Trident is the name of another Arm which has electrical properties. At 5:50 I hit my friend with a charged Trident. Since it's a triple hit unlike Sparky which is a single, the first hit of Trident causes the stun (what you want) but then the second and third hit cause a heavy knockdown which means you can't really get a follow up combo. Maybe some Oki but I prefer the grab.


The instant charge:
There is a mechanic in this game where you can gain elemental properties to your punches by holding in Dash or Jump or just not attacking for about 2 seconds. Doing this gives you the advantage of elemental damage if you the land a hit. However, we found that by jumping, air dashing and then holding air dash, upon landing you gain the elemental property immediately upon landing. Once we found this, we implemented this into our games on grab knock down.
Perfect examples here:
Mummy - 1:40 and 4:39
Ninjara - 4:03 and 5:17
You'll see that as soon as we land, we instantly have our elemental attacks again upon landing within the first few frames.

Stage combos
If you knock the opponent into a bounce pad, you can keep punch them for insane combo damage. I mean I almost managed to do do a 75% combo by activating Super then doing one punch into another punch while my friend was flailing on the bounce pads being knocked back into them. I think for characters like Tronne and Ribbon Girl, this can be pretty good due to their throws. It also give characters like the Mummy a bit more mobility. It's a good stage but can be stupid with Supers activated and when you chain your punches. (see first 40 seconds of the first match. My friend and I utilising the stage pads around us)


Super Cancels:
You can cancel into Super at any point from your punch arm. This means from startup, active, and recovery frame. You can cancel into Super on hit. You can also cancel into Super from Grab on hit and from when the animation shows you throwing the opponent.


Cancelling your opponents Super (MASSIVE SALT)!

We also found that by grabbing your opponent who is in Super mode will INSTANTLY lose their Super Mode. There were some matches were we would activate Super, nearly the next few frames get grabbed and then lose our powered up state. If you see your opponent go into Super Mode, GRAB THEM! This mechanic is a huge point to learn.
Oh and yes, you take chip damage from blocking.

There is still so much more and I'm sure I'm wrong on some stuff but you get the idea. Great game. If you're excited about ARMs, you should be. It's a game to look out

Edit: it's 3am so I might clean this post up of errors later on

I didn't think my hype levels could exceed the initial reveal but you have done the impossible.
 
Edit: don't have faith in it based on what I've seen. Looks like something you play for an hour or two and move on. Maybe I'm wrong though.
 
Edit: don't have faith in it based on what I've seen. Looks like something you play for an hour or two and move on. Maybe I'm wrong though.
I agree. After seeing the full game and there only being 5 characters doing this one on one thing only mode- I don't see it being fun. Maybe a $20 game or so? What do you think?
 
I agree. After seeing the full game and there only being 5 characters doing this one on one thing only mode- I don't see it being fun. Maybe a $20 game or so? What do you think?
Do we know this is actually the full game and that there won't be any other characters?
 

_Clash_

Member
Just grooving out and really enjoying the clips of this game. Spring arms are hypnotic. Effects with the supers and cancels etc, all just so incredible.

If single player is a best em up scroller it will all just be amazing
 
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