Why Didn't The Nintendo DS Receive A Smash Bros. Game?

[LuigiFan24]

The N64 had a Smash title, the GCN had a Smash title, the Wii had a Smash title, The 3DS had a Smash Title, the Wii U had a Smash Title, and the Switch has a Smash title. Why didn't the DS ever get that treatment? This is just obviously a thread for speculation.

 

[Sparks]

The Wii had Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and that was released during the Nintendo DS's lifespan. I know SSB4 was on both the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, but I imagine it would've been impossible to faithfully recreate Brawl on the DS due to the technical limits of it.

Even a Smash Bros. game exclusively for the Nintendo DS would've been hard to make, I think. Maybe it could've been done, but it just wouldn't be as fun an experience as one on a home console.

 

[Salmancer]

Smash Bros. was built around the idea of using the Nintendo 64's control stick's ability to have gradients of directional input in a way that isn't "move in a 3D space", which created the Smash Attack and its flick based input method. The Nintendo DS doesn't have a control stick, so there's a problem. We also can't use Shake Smash from Brawl, both because the DS also doesn't have a gyroscope and because shaking the device with the screen on it would be very very awkward. Brawl did have "press two buttons at once to do a Smash Attack" for the Wii Remote but the timing needed for that input to register is annoyingly tight. Having that be the only available option for performing a Smash Attack on a hypothetical Nintendo DS Smash would be incredibly awkward. Oh, and all of these things also apply to dashing, with the Wii Remote having to use an entirely unique double tap input unused in any other way by the entire game just to get dashing to fit on something that only has a D-pad. The hypothetical Nintendo DS Smash would also have that double tap as the only available dash option. This is very unideal.

(Technically there's the Super Mario 64 DS work around of using the touch screen as a control stick. While I have no personal experience with it, I hear that this option was not well liked, and even if it was liked it would probably be worse for the frentic fighting game of Super Smash Bros. than it is for the untimed platformer Super Mario 64 DS.)

Control woes aside, remember that Smash 3DS is so taxing to run that the base 3DS model isn't able to suspend it, whereas almost every other piece of Nintendo 3DS software can be suspended without issue. Given this, I think to get Smash Bros to play on a Nintendo DS would require some serious sacrifice somewhere.

 

[Princess Viola]

cuz the DS was weak as shit and any hypothetical smash bros game would be severely held back by the hardware lol

 

[Fawfulthegreat64]

i feel like the reason is mostly the available controls, not the power of the system. if controls weren't an issue, i could easily see a smash game with low poly models, i think it could look really neat tbh.

 

[LuigiFan24]

I honestly feel they could have pulled off a D-pad only Smash game for the DS, and the lowly poly graphics, at least for the Mario characters, could have pulled from games like Super Mario 64 DS and Mario Party DS.

 

[Xiahou Ba]

They can do a Smash game with sprite-based graphics if Super Smash Bros. Crusade, Super Smash Flash, and Rivals of Aether are anything to go by.

Hell, the DS itself already kinda has a Smash clone in Jump Ultimate Stars.