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| Super Smash Bros. (1999) |
Talking about the story of this game is a little unnecessary. There really is no story. The 'lore', if you could call it that, is that a little boy is playing with his Nintendo toys and imagining fights between them, which is honestly a genius way to get around the crossover paradox. Any attempt to justify how all of these different universes co-exist would be incredibly rushed, so keeping it simple was the right call. In this game, you can play as 12 different characters from 10 different Nintendo franchises in a fighter that feels very simple compared to other fighters. There are 2 attack buttons, one for regular attacks and one for special attacks which are more varied between fighters when compared to the regular attacks. Pressing each attack button in conjunction with the direction you push the control stick results in a different attack, and the control method is streamlined across all 12 characters. As opposed to traditional fighting games which require you to deplete your opponent's health bar, Super Smash Bros. requires you to rack up the damage on your opponent(s) enough that a strong enough attack will send them flying off the screen, resulting in a KO. If you are launched off the stage, but not far enough to KO you, you can attempt to recover with at least 2 jumps and an additional attack (the up-special attack) that usually assists in recovery.
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| The original 8 fighters |
Simplifying the control scheme and fighting style was a great fit for this kind of game. Masahiro Sakurai always wanted to make a more accessible fighting game where you don't need to memorise a million different combos for 20 different characters. In fact, this was always Mr. Sakurai's intention even before the concept of a Nintendo crossover fighter existed. Adding classic Nintendo characters to the game was conceived midway through development to make the game more marketable, and it definitely worked. This game was a success even before it was put on sale. Nintendo fans had for years wondered who would win in a fight between Mario and Link, and this game answered those questions. On its own right, the gameplay is accessible, easy to learn and just plain fun. Compared to other instalments however, and I know it's unfair to do this but here we are, this is by far the slowest game in the series. Not necessarily that the characters move slow, but the gameplay is slow. I feel like it takes the longest to actually KO someone in this game, and matches tend to drag on a bit. For 1999, the game still looks fine, I guess, though I don't have much frame of reference for how Nintendo 64 games looked back then, and the music is great, with remixes from past Nintendo games serving as the soundtrack for individual stages.
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| Saffron City |
Speaking of which, there are 9 different stages you can play on, each taking on a location from a different franchise. Peach's Castle, Yoshi's Island, Saffron City, each one looks incredibly distinct, and feels as though it was taken directly from the world of the games. The general gameplay in each stage feels very similar, and there are no real core differences, except for Mushroom Kingdom with the walk-off blast lines. You also have the option of adding in items that players can use during a match. These range from series-specific items like Super Mushrooms and Poke Balls to original items like Baseball Bats and Beam Swords. These items help add a lot of variety to a match, especially since the matches tend to drag on a bit in this game, as I said. Yeah, I'm repeating myself, but that's kind of where I'm at with this game. There's not a lot of game to talk about here beyond the core gameplay, and once you've gotten through that, you've basically played the game. There are 4 unlockable characters and 1 unlockable stage, and it's a nice challenge to figure out how to unlock them all, but once you've done so, that's really it. A good game for parties, but not a lot of longevity.
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| Mushroom Kingdom |
Even the single-player content is somewhat lacking. There's a 1P mode which would later become known as Classic Mode in which you fight through multiple different fights with preset combinations on characters to battle, leading to a final boss fight against Master Hand, the long-running antagonist of the Super Smash Bros. series. While you can play this with all 12 characters, the path is the exact same with all of them, so once you've beaten it once, you have no real incentive to play it with everyone. It is short enough that it doesn't feel too repetitive if you do decide to play it with all the fighters, but the game doesn't really give you a reason to do so. You unlock the only unlockable stage by playing 1P mode with all 8 starter characters, but the game gives you no information to lead you down that path, so if you're not a fan of 1P mode, you could conceivably never unlock that stage. The truly great part of 1P mode is the two bonus levels that actually do vary the gameplay: Break the Targets and Board the Platforms. Each level type presents a unique layout depending on the character, and they do help you learn how to play each specific character. However, since you can access these bonus levels outside of the 1P Game, this further devalues the experience of replaying the 1P Game over and over. It's certainly not the weakest single-player content in Super Smash Bros. history, we'll get there, and I did play 1P Game with everyone, but someone who's not inclined to fully complete a game would likely play it once and not touch it again. That's not to say it's not fun. It's very fun, and that inherent enjoyability of the core gameplay is in part what saves it.
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| Mario vs. Master Hand |
I'd probably say that Super Smash Bros. (1999) is a good, but dated game. It holds up the least by today's standards, however it's still a great game on its own and for its time. At the very least, it was a solid starting point for what was soon to be one of Nintendo's most popular franchises. 7.5/10
Next... oh, boy, I'm ready for the internet to hate me with this one. Super Smash Bros. Melee.
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