Nintendo Pays Tribute to… Nintendo (Super Smash Brothers Melee (GC))

Name: Zooropa_Boy

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Product:	Super Smash Brothers Melee (GC)
Date:	02/08/02 (286 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast, Furious, unpredictable Fun!, Looks great, Nintendo Magic

Disadvantages: None I can elaborate on in such a small box!

“The beat-em -up genre just a hefty kick up the butt” –NGC I really couldn’t have put it better myself. Having debuted on the N64 I feel that it is important to establish that this isn’t just a repeat with better graphics nor is it one of these so called kiddie games I’ve been hearing so much about and if you still think so, it really is your loss.



The Hype
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From what I can remember of the E3 expo in 2001, which is practically nothing this was a very highly anticipated game, also considering that I read somewhere that when it was released in Japan 200,000 CUBES were sold in one weekend, this game was hyped.

Hype Factor 9/10

The Game
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SSBM is not a conventional fighting game; there are no complex combos or special moves and there is no health metre that goes down until your player is KO ed.

Instead the objective is to knock your opponents out of the arena. To do this you must first inflict as much damage as possible, this is represented on the damage metre that RISES from 0% all the way to 300%. Then ideally, once you’ve got them over 100% send them into space with a devastating smash attack. But things don’t always go to plan; for SSBM is a VERY unpredictable game, and if you are unlucky enough to walk into something like a proximity mine with 0% damage you could loose.

This highly volatile nature of the game makes great fun but also very difficult to overwhelm any opponent as my sisters frequently prove.

The simplicity of the fighting system is the games key; It requires as much skill in its own way as any of the serious ‘Tekkens’ in this genre. There are plenty of specialist attacks if you know how to execute them but you can very easily get away with just pressing A and B and using the control stick.

There are an assortment of weapons in SSBM that fa
ll from the sky or are hidden in boxes ranging from laser pistols and proximity mines to vegetables and pokeballs that unleash various deadly pokemon. There are also items like the metal cap boxes from Mario 64 that turn you into a T-1000 version of yourself as well as invisibility devices and Mushrooms that temporarily turn you into a giant.

Now, this game is massive. There are tons of things to do, 5 types of 1 player mode alone! Including a target-breaking test where each character has to break 10 targets in a specially designed course as fast as possible and a strangely addictive home run contest, where you have to hit a sandbag as far as possible in 10 seconds with a baseball bat.

There are also 50 event matches where you have complete various tasks that get extremely difficult at times, such as protect Peach from Bowser, defeat pikachu using only poke balls and running a marathon on an F-Zero race track.

However this game is at its best in multiplayer mode, 4 man melees with friends are hilarious, you can change the rules anyway you want; characters can all be tiny, giants, can all move in slow motion, there is a ‘super sudden death’ mode where all players start with 300% damage and a single button melee where the only button you use is A, suitable for very young players (and its still pretty good)

There are 25 players in total, all famous Nintendo characters, each has their own unique moves, some are heavy weights, some are really fast but not so strong etc. You being with only 11 and unlock the rest as you go along by either completing adventure or classic modes on certain difficulties or by completing certain event matches. Although there are 25 characters unfortunately a lot of the ones you unlock are clones, i.e. they have exactly the same moves but they just look different. For example there is ‘Link’ and ‘Young Link’ who is just a shorter version of the original with identical move
s. And there is captain Falcon (from F-Zero) and Ganondorf who look different but fundamentally their moves are the same.

There are also at least 23 arenas, I say at least because I doubt I have unlocked them all yet. All of which are completely different and interactive. Many of them are taken straight from the old NES and SNES platformers... oh the memories

So we established the game is huge but I’ve neglected to tell you about trophies; there are 290 beautiful fully 3D trophies that you can collect in the game, you will get most of them by spending your coins in the lottery mode but they can also be found in adventure mode or can be awarded for reaching a particular stage in the game. The trophies are all pieces of Nintendo’s past, characters from the 8 bit NES to the N64.

In sum this game is enormous.

Graphics
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SSBM looks great, Mario’s overalls really look like the denim on my jeans, Samus’s body armour looks real and if you zoom in close enough you will notice that Yoshi’s skin really is scaly! But, you can’t fully appreciate the level of detail in the normal view mode; you have to zoom in, and as you do that you can’t see your opponents, which really is a pity. Other than that, and some great animation the graphics are excellent

Graphics: 9/10



Gameplay
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Once again the cubes controller is used very well as you would expect from the people who designed it. The attack system is beautifully simple and the gameplay is furious, addictive and most importantly great fun! The only thing I can find wrong with it is that at times the control stick can be over responsive and it can be difficult to make subtle movements as everything seems to be geared more towards running rather than tip-toeing.

Gameplay: 10/10



Conclusion
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Nintendo, unlike their
giant faceless competitors are very nostalgic people (in general, I mean if they really cared they wouldn’t have released some of the god awful drivel that came out on the N64); they recall and relish their glory days as the Kings of console gaming. Since the humble 8 bit NES days to the awesome power GameCube Nintendo have never really gotten the recognition they deserved for some of the most important developments in gaming history. Nintendo have been responsible for gaming revolution after revolution and it is hard to believe just how influential they have been in console development. Both the PS2 and the Xbox owe a lot to Nintendo. This game is a celebration of this history, reflected in the additions of the trophies, if you will, Nintendo’s tribute to themselves.

Graphics: 9/10 -Absolutely brilliant, but scores a 9 because you can’t appreciate them fully from range.
Sound: 9/10 - I really need surround sound, but from the opening sequence alone SSBM deserves a 9
Gameplay: 10/10 – Fast, furious, funny, totally unpredictable and GREAT fun for everyone.

Overall 9.0/10

Defiantly the best game out for the cube at the moment, a must own title, suitable for everyone. Nintendo fanatics or very nostalgic people would probably score it higher. But as I said before, I am a hard marker, and I think it was just the addition of 3 pokemon and the somewhat average 1 player adventure and classic modes that prevented this for me. None the less, a superb game that will take forever to fully complete. The only thing that could possibly be less serious is super monkey ball!

Notes: Comes on 1 disk and takes up 11 blocks on the memory card. (Ouch!)


That wasn’t brilliantly written soz.

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