In last month’s Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Direct, Masahiro Sakurai introduced the new Squad Strike mode as “a 5-on-5 or 3-on-3 elimination-style battle to decide the winner.”
For whatever reason, it left everyone confused as to how the matches would exactly work, but, thanks to the new Nintendo Power Podcast episode, the mode has been discussed in far more detail.
“Squad Strike has a lot of viability to me in the competitive scene, and, even if you’re not competitive, it’s a completely different way to think about the game,” Nintendo of America’s JC Rodrigo explains.
“Similar to other traditional fighting games that have multi-characters forming a team and stuff like that, you have to think about what your abilities are for each of those characters when you go in and when you pick those characters, you have to know that you’re at least competent in one of them.
“So you have maybe two of them that are kinda of your subs, that are not really your main characters, and you come out with your main character as your anchor. And, if you’re really good with that character, do you lead off with that? You can choose your order.
“There’s a lot of strategy and kind of a metagame that goes along with it, that I think it’s going to be really surprising. I would definitely recommend that people take a hard look into doing three-vs-three matches, and for it to become a legitimate tournament mode in the competitive scene.
“It’s one continuous battle. It moves very quickly. Each of the characters can have a certain amount of stocks. You just go in and it’s one full battle, and you can do first to three [wins] or, whatever, first to two.”
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will release exclusively for Nintendo Switch worldwide on December 7th.
