Honestly due to the amount of time it took for this update (a little more then an hour), I among a large group of others over at Smash Boards were expecting another character reveal. Personally, I was not let down with this though like a few were. I remember a few months back, with that Kirby image, knowing it had to be a Galaxy stage due to the background's art style and from that knew this would eventually pop up. It seems that from the Kirby image til this one that the rim lighting effect was toned down which I'm ok with. I thought the rim effect was too "over-taking" anyways before with how it seemed to engulfed more of the character then it needed to but we'll see more of what I'm talking about with the second screenshot that Sakurai took on Friday and the Kirby screenshot.
Overall visually, I am very satisfied with how this stage looks. The lush greens and dirt browns along with the blue outer space background gives this stage a really good appearance and easy on the eyes. I was already a big fan of Smash 4's color decision for more primary colors but this in my opinion takes it to the next level and it comes out gorgeous.

I'm hoping that this stage will have no hazards (unless you call the gravity gimmick a hazard, ha). One of the things I feel Smash Brothers has too much of is hazards in it's stages, mostly damaging hazards and not camera rotation though that can be very annoying too. Sakurai seems dead set ever since the very first game in the Smash Brothers series on incorporating hazards into stages when some don't really need them and in my honest opinion this stage already has enough going on to where it doesn't need any. Talking for the competitive scene, I'm already 99% sure this stage will not be tourney legal due to the walk off ledges and the gravity gimmick.

One thing that, I'm sure I am not alone on, is being very curious on how exactly the stages gravity gimmick will work. Yeah, it's pretty obvious that you will be bound to the large planet's center of gravity we see the characters standing on and being effected by but what about small planets that drift close by? See that 2nd larger gray planet on the far right edge of the image? Perhaps you will snap to a smaller planet's gravity if you jump close enough. This could, for this stage, change the KO "game" in terms of not getting the KO due to gravity on not only the largest planet but smaller planets helping your opponents DI out of their certain death way more then usual. Until then, I'm half for the gravity idea and the other half of me is worried about if it will be implemented precisely.
In the second screenshot that Sakurai took, we not only get to see that the rim lighting effect may have been altered since the last time we saw it but the stage's backdrop props are always changing with the airship, planets and other objects not being stationary. One theory for this stage that has become quite popular is that the large grassy planet the stage takes most of it's time on will turn either clockwise or counter-clockwise and may contain holes you can meteor your opponents into.

From this image, it may very well be just a different time of the cycle from rotating, but this seems to for the moment disprove that theory. The trees are seen in roughly the same general area that you can see them in the first image while props in the background are either not where they were seen in the first image or there's something new floating in the background. This leads me to believe for the moment that, actually, the main stage will be completely stationary and there will be planets and other obstacles slowly floating overhead to cause ruckus, especially if they some or most of them have their own center of gravity.

Onto the rim lighting again, take a look at this screenshot from a couple of months back for a comparison:
Here we can see that the rim lighting seems to be taking up more of a character compared to what's seen in the two screenshots on Friday. There are several things this could mean though (or a mixture of both). One, this is only due to Kirby because he's so spherical and so is his hammer to an extent (oval but you get what I mean, I hope) and this seems to be holding some truth if you look at Pikachu's round behind and the lighting going on there. Two, the closer the camera is to a character, or the stage since it also has rim lighting, the more intense the effect will be. Either it was toned down or one of these two things (or both) are going on.


That's all I have to say for Friday's update. Tune in over the course of next week, long as there is something worthy of commenting about, for more of my input on various things shown in Sakurai's "Pic of the Day" screenshots.


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    I am a big fan of the Smash Brothers series and thought I'd start sharing my input in one collective way. To learn more about me and the site, visit the "About Me" page.

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