You misremembered the Great Maze. You don’t collect the fighters in the maze you collect them in the 2 Subspace levels with Dedede gang and Kirby. The Great Maze you collect no powerups or characters, you just fight every character and bosses using the characters you obtained from the Subspace levels.

And also even if you did collect the characters in the Maze, The Great Maze wouldn’t be considered a Metroidvannia because that genre is focused on allowing upgrades to access new areas while the Great Maze any character can access the whole map.

Great video though. It really goes into detail why Subspace isn’t as good of a crossover as many people view it as due to having bad Kirby level syndrome for the whole game.

Aiden when he has to go driving on a freeway (it’s an auto scroller)

Subspace was pretty fun for it's time but I think the bigger reason people have nostalgia for it is because, like mentioned in the video, the cutscenes are still really cool for their age with the little story it tells with (almost) all the characters, and there is hardly any actual dialogue, it's just "show don't tell"

Great Maze couldn't have autoscroll sections because you need to be able to go both ways through every room.
The 4 teleports aren't random; they're arranged to align with their map positions.

9:04 "What do you do if your opponent just gets a lead and sits behind these walls?"

boy do I have the smash ultimate character for you

Tbh I think so much of the levels are made the cutscenes. For example, The reason the hoard battle in the final research facility level works is because the entire game has been building to ROB’s reveal. Talking about levels without mentioning their cutscenes takes away a lot of the appeal of subspace

I love the subspace emmisary. By simply existing, it makes Brawl the best smash game imo

Honestly I loved Subspace as a kid and a several years ago, right before Ultimate's release I got to play it again, and I gotta say, I genuinely don't mind the stuff like auto-scrolling sections and horde battles. I kinda feel that unless someone is trying to speedrun the game, autoscrolling parts are more a race against time to keep up with the camera while still avoiding obstacles and I like that. Like you said, it is kind of a beat-em-up mode, not just a platformer, which given the fact Smash is a fighting game it kinda makes sense. The only parts I find boring are the ones where you stand on one moving platform for a bit too long. I still wish World of Light would've been something like it. I ain't even looking at Subspace with nostalgia glasses, I just genuinely think for what it tried to do, it did its job pretty well.

The Great Maze feels like a reenactment of sorts for the Great Cave Offensive from Kirby Super Star, it's even split up into 4 sort of sections

0:29 I don't think that counts as an argument because Subspace Emissary was not originally intended to be played via emulation.

Great Maze in S tier, that's what I like to hear

you sound like if you have fun they don't let you eat that night

The Subspace Emissary would have been way better if Wario-Man was selectable.

S tier: Any level with Stickerbush Symphony

For the samll amount of time I played Subspace on (some version of) Project M, the pacing was noticeably more bearable with the non auto scrollers. So, I feel like Vanilla Subspace suffers from Brawl's overall game speed and is definitely part of why some people were hoping for its return in Ultimate.

Never knew everyone’s speed and physics were normalized, good catch and nice vid idea even if I didn’t agree all the way. Subbed!

I haven't really given Subspace a whole lot of thought to be honest. As you mentioned it's a monumental achievement that this story mode in a crossover game even exists, and think I've always kinda viewed it though that lens.

I did not grow up with Brawl and I started my Smash Journey with Smash 4. So Subspace to me has always been that cool mode my friends always talked about, and how it should've been in Smash 4 also.

So after finally getting Brawl and playing Subspace I kinda just looked past all of the auto-scrollers, played it with set friends who loved it so much and was just in awe that these characters were interacting with each other.

But I think even if something an achievement like this should be held to higher scrutiny so the the team who made it can strive for something similar again, and be rid of flaws that Subspace had while emphasizing the strengths too. And I think this video illustrates that pretty well.

Well done Aiden, I'll drop a sub for you 😎

It took me about 10 fricking years to complete The Great Maze. There we're long periods of time where I didn't play Subspace at all but still lol. I was so happy when I finally figured out what the hell I was doing.

This is one of the best videos I have ever seen about one of my favorite games

What I am going to say is fairly long, but still, I have to say it

I grew up with that game and loved it, but it definitely had major issues, namely the level design, the pacing, and the arbitrary movement changes. But it also had a lot of amazing things that made it beloved, such as the cutscenes, the story, the boss fights, the music, the general idea of the final act with the characters to save, the Great Maze, and some of the better levels too. Best of all is how it managed to put so many playable characters in one campaign and made it work. Had those issues not been present, it would've likely been one of the best games ever made!

The level design issues might've been why World of Light removed the levels entirely, but while it had some good ideas, like the multiple Worlds and the emphasis on freeing fighters, it removed a lot of what made Subspace Emissary memorable, such as tying almost all of the fighters together with a story and the original elements. It was like cutting off a broken leg instead of fixing it.

I hope the next Smash game has an Adventure mode much like TSE, but with more polished level design, Characters that actually play like in the main game, and the best elements from Smash Run and World of Light. Or even a completely original video game that builds upon that concept! I would play the heck out of it!

The subspace enemy designs are not anywhere near generic, generic would be standard zombies or monsters, a lot of the designs are really unique and or weird, considering they’re enemies that helm from another dimension, like aliens of some sort