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| Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001) |
Right off the bat, I don't want it to sound like I have some kind of blinding hatred for this game. In fact, in more than one way, I'm in awe of it. I'm impressed by what this production crew did in such a short time, taking all of what made the first game good, losing what didn't and just making everything bigger. There's more characters, more stages, more items, more game modes, more everything. The game also looks really impressive, especially for what it is and when it came out. It was the early days of the Gamecube, and this is certainly a nice showcase for what it can do. The game loads nice and quick, even with the more technical fighters and stages. Whereas in the first game each stage felt very similar in terms of gameplay, here no stage feels exactly alike, and when they do there's enough of an aesthetic difference that it doesn't matter. There are stages that move around you, stages that take you different places, stages that introduce hazards that are specifically trying to kill you. They don't always necessarily make for the fairest fight on paper, but from this point onwards a key part of Smash Bros. would be adapting to the stage as well as to the player you're fighting. It also helps each stage feel a little more faithful to the world they came from, except for Poke Floats which is just a mess.
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| Poke Floats |
Moving on to what may be this game's strongest feature: the single player content. Talk about a dramatic rise in quality. There is so much to do in this game, and Melee introduces features that would become staples of the Smash Bros. franchise moving forward. 1P Game returns in the form of Classic Mode, which has received a massive overhaul. Rather than the path being exactly the same every time you play, this time while the types of battles remain the same in each round, the fighters you battle are randomised, meaning that every time you play Classic Mode, it will be a different configuration, which is a nice incentive to keep people playing it. The other two main single-player modes are All-Star Mode, in which you fight a series of battles against every character in the roster without losing a life, and Adventure Mode, which sees you traversing a set path of side-scrolling levels and Smash battles from various franchises, and both a fairly fleshed out and well-executed. There are also a wide variety of smaller minigames, including Target Smash from the previous game, Event Battles which see you taking on a series of battles with certain conditions to either make it more difficult or emulate certain scenarios, Home-Run Contest, which sees you wailing on a Sandbag before whamming it with a Baseball Bat and seeing how far it'll fly, Multi-Man Melee where you fight wireframe opponents under certain conditions... there's just so much single-player content here, and the best part is how they incentivise you to keep playing it. Pretty much all of the single player modes let you unlock collectible trophies, which are like figurines of various characters from Nintendo history. Not only are these very well-made, so to speak, but each offers information about the character in question with a short paragraph of information, so the trophies also serve as an encyclopaedia of Nintendo knowledge. In a world before the internet became such a massive thing, this was a brilliant idea to get people in the know about some great games people might never have heard of before, including for the playable characters themselves.
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| The Captain Olimar trophy |
The character roster itself... I have some issues with. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of really great characters here, with not only the entire roster from the previous game returning, but a lot of new inclusions. Some of these are obvious choices, like Peach and Bowser, but the really great ones are the ones that shake-up the gameplay in really inventive ways that fit the theme of the characters themselves. Zelda, for example, can transform into Sheik mid-match, mirroring the character in Ocarina of Time, but also offering a completely different playstyle. There are also some really off-the-wall picks here, which I don't mind. Characters like Ice Climbers and Marth and Mr. Game & Watch are just so inventive and crazy and they just work. The problem I have with a lot of fanmade rosters is that they never include the out-there characters that the franchise has had since Melee, and they all work here. What doesn't work, in my opinion, are the characters that are specifically there to pad out the roster. This is from the man himself, Mr. Sakurai. Due to the rushed development cycle of the game, they added in a bunch of characters that made use of assets already in the game, like Luigi and Jigglypuff from the previous. They're essentially clones of other characters in the roster, and I don't have an inherent problem with clone characters, they represent their own games and it's cool for fans to have them in. The problem here is the number of them. Young Link, Roy, Falco, Pichu, Dr. Mario... seriously? Dr. Mario? I'm fairly confident that 0% of people who played the original Smash Bros. were begging for Dr. Mario to be included. The main issue, however, is Ganondorf. They made him a clone of Captain Falcon because their models are slightly similar, I guess. The problem this presents is that Ganondorf now no longer feels like an accurate representation of the almighty holder of the Triforce of Power; he feels like Captain Falcon's slower, heavier fan. And they don't give him enough personality in his render or animations to counteract this. Essentially, due to all these filler characters, this game feels like it has the weakest roster of the series, even though it's objectively better than Smash Bros. 64's roster. For the size of the roster that it is, it's just the weakest roster, and it does dampen my enjoyment of the game just that little bit.
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| Pichu |
But, let me just get to my biggest problem with this game, which happens to be the core gameplay itself. Let me clarify that the game is still fun and better than the original, but only by a little bit. The game is much, much... MUCH faster now, which speeds up the pace of the matches, but the problem is that for a newcomer to the series, or someone who's not as good at the game, it can be very hard to keep up with. It's just the least accessible of all the games for new players, which for a party game, isn't great. For a competitive game, it's great, but this is my other main issue with the game. Or, rather, the series. The competitive Smash community. I hate it. Oh, God, do I hate the competitive Smash Bros. scene. If it's officially organised by Nintendo, like at E3, fine. No worries with that. Anywhere else? No. They hold Melee in such a high regard because it's the most technical, but only because the rushed development cycle left in all the glitches that result in wavedashing and all the techniques the competitive community can't shut the f*** up about and keep screaming to the heavens for them to return. It's not technically Melee's fault that the community is like this, but a glitched game is an unfinished game, which means it's objectively worse than a polished game. I also just have less fun playing this one due to have fast it is. It's just too quick for its own good. It's one of my least favourite Smash games to play multiplayer, but one of my favourite to play alone.
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| Pikachu vs. Master Hand & Crazy Hand |
Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001) is an overrated game saved by its incredibly in-depth single player content. It certainly doesn't deserve to be held aloft on a golden shrine as the pinnacle of gaming content like a disturbing amount of people do, but I can see why they do so. I don't like why they do, but I get it. As for me, it's a good game. Nothing much else. 8/10.
Next, it's the dark horse of the franchise: Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
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