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Hello, and welcome to New Frame Plus,

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a series about video game animation.

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By overwhelming demand, you folks have voted

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for the next Smash Bros character we talk about to be...

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Mr Game & Watch.

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And I can see why!

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He’s weird.

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Look at him.[br]He's flat.

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He’s basically just a silhouette.

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His moves all have like three frames of animation...

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No one else is like this.

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How does this even WORK in a game like Smash,[br]where pretty much every other character is

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fully 3D and operating at a[br]silky smooth 60 frames per second?

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Let’s get into it, shall we?

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Mr Game & Watch isn’t so much a[br]character as an amalgamation.

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A stand-in representing a whole series[br]of games from the 80s.

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Yes, before there was GameBoy,[br]even before there was NES…

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there was Game & Watch.

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Game & Watch was this whole line of of handheld[br]games that Nintendo produced

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between 1980 and 1991.

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Each one of these devices[br]usually contained a single, very simple game

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played on a liquid crystal display,

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similar to that old CASIO watch[br]you used to wear in middle school

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(you... Cool Person).

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But here’s the thing about LCDs:

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you can’t really move the crystals[br]in those displays around.

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They can only be turned ON or OFF.

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And that makes it pretty hard to animate…

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...uh, anything.

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But! Say you were to place those crystals[br]in several different locations on the screen,

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and then had them switch ON or OFF[br]in response to the player’s button presses…

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if you did that, it would almost[br]SORT OF create the impression

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of a character or object moving across the screen!

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THIS is the origin for Mr Game & Watch’s[br]weird movement style.

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And they way it’s been implemented in Smash[br]is actually pretty clever!

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So in animation, we have this thing called[br]“Key Poses”

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(also sometimes referred to as “Extremes”,[br]that's the more traditional animation term,

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but in many cases they’re kind of interchangeable).

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Anyway, Key Poses are the[br]critical poses in an animation

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which most clearly communicate[br]the “story” of the action.

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They’re the extreme points[br]which define the path of motion.

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Remember in that previous episode about Link’s attacks

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where I highlighted these Windup,[br]Attack and Follow-Through poses?

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I would call all of these Key Poses (or Extremes)[br]for Link’s basic attack.

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Even without all the frames in between,[br]these frames tell the story of what’s happening.

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If you look at old school 8- or 16-bit sprite animation,

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those game characters operated[br]almost exclusively through key poses.

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From Mario’s jump...

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...to Simon’s whip...

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...to Mega Man’s run,

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all of these animations are built using[br]just a handful of key poses,

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the fewest poses possible to[br]adequately portray the action.

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If you look at Mr. Game & Watch in Smash,[br]you’ll see that he also operates on Key Poses...

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...kind of.

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All his moves and attacks are, of course,[br]derived from his whole library of handheld games,

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but when you look at the character[br]movement in those old games,

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because of that old display technology,

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there’s something... disjointed about it.

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There are so few poses available and the characters[br]cover so much distance at a time...

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there's very little connective tissue between[br]each new pose and position on screen,

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so those characters tend to feel a little[br]erratic in their movement as a result,

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and none of their actions feel[br]like they have any force behind them.

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This presents an interesting problem for Smash:

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how do you replicate that weird, choppy,[br]slightly-disorienting quality of movement?

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The first thing the animators have done here[br]is use as few frames of animation as possible.

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Mr. Game & Watch’s attacks are all constructed[br]using maybe three poses, sometimes just two!

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All his moves are built on key poses, just like[br]those 8- and 16-bit characters I described before,

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but it doesn’t feel like there are quite[br]ENOUGH key poses in there to completely

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sell the physicality of the actions he’s performing.

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Old Game & Watch titles just could not[br]take advantage of most of the animation principles

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that we'd use to convey force or impact,

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and Smash’s animators have actually[br]preserved some of that effect

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in not only the posing of Mr. Game & Watch’s moves,

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but also the very even, flat timing of them!

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You won’t see him actually SWING a chair.

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He just holds the chair this way...

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...and then he holds it THAT way.

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And, for Mr. Game & Watch, that constitutes an attack.

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This is a character that REALLY relies on[br]Smash’s dust clouds and hit pauses and

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effects explosions to get[br]any sense of impact to his moves.

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For any other character,[br]that would be an animation problem.

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But for Mr. Game & Watch, it is exactly that problem

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that makes his moveset feel faithful[br]to the source material.

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But one of my favorite things about Mr. Game & Watch’s[br]animation - and it’s the thing that I think

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really makes this whole animation aesthetic work -[br]is the way the animators have managed to

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recreate the erratic, disorienting[br]quality of his movement.

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You can REALLY see this in his run.

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Just for comparison, let’s look at[br]Mega Man’s old run again...

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It’s built from just three poses, but you[br]can see how each one of those Key Poses

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leads from one to the next.

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Step-and-step-and-step-and-step...

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You can see him putting one foot in front[br]of the other,

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you can see the nice up-and-down bob[br]on his body with each stride...

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Just three poses, but still enough[br]to clearly communicate a run.

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But with Mr. Game & Watch, and I LOVE this,

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these poses barely communicate[br]the action of running AT ALL.

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NONE of these poses connect to each other[br]in a logical way.

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It’s like they took a bunch of individual[br]run cycle poses,

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and then they completely randomized[br]what order they play in

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so you’re left with an erratic jumble of poses[br]that make no sense together.

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That is really clever!

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It’s not exactly how characters moved[br]in the old Game & Watch days,

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but it does sell the FEELING[br]of how they moved in those games.

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This brings us to the next question: how has[br]Mr. Game & Watch’s animation

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been adapted to work in Smash?

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Well, there is one VERY BIG change,[br]and you’ve probably already picked up on it.

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In those old Game & Watch titles,[br]like I mentioned before,

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the crystals in those old LCD displays couldn't move.

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So the characters couldn’t really “move” either.

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They could only disappear and reappear[br]in a new position simultaneously.

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But that is not how Mr. Game & Watch[br]moves in Smash. At all.

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Sure, there might be a nice, stuttery pop to[br]the way he switches between poses,

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but his movement around the battlefield?

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The tracking of his POSITION... is silky smooth.

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See, limiting the visual information that[br]Mr. Game & Watch’s posing conveys is one thing,

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you can get away with that.

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But his position on screen at any given moment?

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No no.

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Positional data is CRUCIAL to Smash Bros gameplay.

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If Mr. Game & Watch popped around the screen in[br]Smash the same way he did in his handheld games,

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effectively teleporting around the stage nonstop,

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he would be a nightmare to fight.

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And to CONTROL, for that matter.

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So, even though it defies[br]the character’s source material,

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for the sake of gameplay,[br]Smash’s animators made the concession

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of having Mr. Game & Watch’s position on screen[br]update at a smooth 60 frames per second,

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just like any other character on the roster.

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And thank goodness for that.

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This gets back to that same thing I was saying[br]in the Mario episode:

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animating a Smash character is all about[br]finding the balance between

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representing that character’s origins AND[br]making them functionally work as a Smash fighter.

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At the end of the day, that’s the big[br]animation challenge for ALL of these characters.

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And that had to be HARD with this guy, right?

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Like, so much of what makes those old games[br]distinct is their extremely limited animation.

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You really CAN’T have Mr. Game & Watch[br]move around like any other character[br]and still FEEL like himself.

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And I love that they found an elegant solution to that:

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preserving the stiff, stuttery posing style[br]of the source material,

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while also being willing to make[br]big concessions for sake of visual clarity.

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His movement is still erratic and weird and[br]it FEELS like it shouldn’t work,

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but it totally does, because all the[br]visual information you really NEED is in there.

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Cool as heck, right?

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Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this!

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And let me know down in the comments if there[br]are other characters you’d like me to dig into.

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If you want to hear more about Smash animation,

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here’s a playlist of all the characters I’ve covered so far.

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Have a good one, and I’ll see you next time!