[BurritoBeans]

Have I ever played Smash competitively? Nope, I suck too much, level 8 or 9 AI is the best I can do and then real people whoop me every game (Just like Quake 3, UT, Counter Strike, etc. lol). I do know there's a pretty large Smash following around here, we had eight people who would play it on their 3DS to/from school, and every gaming convention that isn't tabletop related will have a tournament for either the latest one, Brawl w/Project M loaded in, or Melee, and you see lots of people with it on their 3DS.

<start of useless crap>
With the whole "Fighting game or no" debate, do I think it's a fighting game in the style of traditional fighting games? Nope. But do I classify it as one? Yeah, I kinda do. When I think Fighting Game, I think Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Soul Calibur, Samurai Showdown, etc. where it's a 1 on 1 with a 2D or 3D arena/ring/whatever and your whole goal is to take the opponent down. When I think Smash, I think myself and four friends sitting around the N64 or Gamecube or Wii or Wii U with controllers all having fun trying to knock each-other off the ring. I figure it's similar because you have two or more opponents fighting each-other in an arena, trying to get rid of the other and win the round. That's where it stops for me though, as you do it in a whole different way than traditionally, by trying to launch them off the arena, and stuff like weapons and all that are introduced in the middle of a round instead of something like The Last Blade or Samurai Showdown where weapons are a character feature. In the end, I don't think the game was intended to be played as a tournament fighter at first, but it still has the core mechanics of a fighter and is played pretty seriously, I mean it has a spot at Evo, right? It's just generally played as a party game for me so that's what I'm used to calling it.
<end of useless crap>