Starting with Super Smash Brothers: Brawl, if characters fell into bodies of water on certain stages, they had a few seconds to swim out before drowning. Being in the water doesnât hurt, although if characters complete their drowning animation, they plummet to the bottom and die. In Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, thatâs all still the case, except now, there are four characters who accrue damage just from being in the water, even if they get out before drowning: Charizard, Incineroar, Inkling, and Sonic.
The amount of time that every Smash character can spend in water before they start to drown is dependent upon how much damage theyâve accrued before falling in. If you have over 96% accrued damage, youâll start drowning as soon as you hit the waves. If you hop in the water with no damage, youâve got four seconds before the drowning animation begins, after which point you have roughly two seconds to make it back to shore. Thatâs all also the case in Brawl and Smash Wii U. However, in Ultimate, four fighters are weak to water and will accrue about 1% of damage per second as long as they are swimming. Itâs not much, but itâs not nothing, either.
Charizard and Incineroarâs weakness to water makes sense, given that both characters are fire-type PokĂ©mon against whom water is âsuper effective.â Similarly, the Inklings canât swim in water in Splatoon, although that is a bit odd given that squids are their evolutionary ancestor. Sonic also canât swim in his own games, although that came about because of a misconception: Yuji Naka, one of Sonicâs creators, told VideoGamer that he had mistakenly thought that hedgehogs couldnât swim. Turns out they can, but Sonic still canât.
Although Sonic and the Inklings do accrue damage in water, which makes a certain kind of sense, it doesnât make sense that they know how to swim in the first place. It also doesnât make sense that Squirtle can drown. Iâm starting to think that Super Smash Brothers might not be a very realistic game.
