[ryanpardieck]

I think maybe the takeaway here is that you can't always tell the difference between a slightly unbalanced and a perfectly balanced game right away. You can probably spot extreme imbalances immediately, I'd guess.

But if this game had been patched monthly, Jigglypuff or Ice Climbers might have been buffed drastically or had their mechanics changed early on, which would have been a shame.

A proposal: when a game has been thoroughly played, tested, and thought through, and the designers are nearly certain that a desirable state of balance has been reached, then restrain yourself to no more than one (maybe two) balance tune-ups in a year. Only patch imbalances so glaring that they are on the scale of bugs or exploits. Let things play out a bit.