:~INTRO~: Back in the days of the Nintendo 64 there weren’t all that many great titles to grace the console. Most of the better titles had to do with one of Nintendo’s characters Super Smash Brothers was know exception have a battle among all your favorite Nintendo characters what a great idea. Smash Bros. was able to obtain the status of a must own game for all Nintendo 64 owners. I remember seeing the advertisements for this game and while the commercial was a little dumb the concept was a brilliant idea, fights between all your favorite Nintendo characters. And pikachu being a playable character now who hasn’t wanted to slam that cute yellow pokemon with the red cheeks? The game was a huge success selling millions of copies and being popular enough to make a new game for the cube, Super Smash Brothers: Melee. Melee has fortunately not changed all that much from its very great predecessor.
Now to you can control even more characters the number has been increased from 12 to now 25 playable characters, 11 of those being hidden. You will be able to choose from:
Mario, Bowser, Peach, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Fox, Ness, Ice Climbers, Kirby, Samus, Princess Zelda, Link, Pikachu, Dr. Mario, Luigi, Captain Falcon ,Ganondorf, Falco, Young Link, Pichu, Jigglypuff, Mewtwo, Mr. Game and Watch, Marth, and Roy. A downside to that is that a few of the characters are almost carbon copies of each other in terms of the moves they do. Ganondorf and Captain Falcon are very similar as well as well of course Link and young link. A small downside to being able to choose from 25 characters but I wish Nintendo would have just made each different. Also a few too many pokemon for me I would have rather seen some of the major characters from Nintendo’s past then a Mewtwo but oh well.
Not only that but more levels have been added featuring somewhere around 30 different stages to choose from. The original was a hit and this game is that with more moves, character, souped up graphics, and more. So this should be a great game too right? Well read on and find out.
Gameplay: 9.2/10 The original game was a great game and this time around improvements have been made. Rather than a health bar which you see in most fighters you will have a percentage the higher the percentage the easier it will be to knock you of the stage. You wont be doing this with just brute force though there are items to help you out. There are 31 that I am aware of ranging from baseball bats to pokeballs. Many of the items were seen in the first game and there have been some that were added. Don’t worry though not all the items are items used to attack with some are used to recover your health, make you invisible, jump higher, or even make you invincible for a short amount of time. The relatively weak single player has been strengthened and the bread and butter multiplayer is better then ever.
Single Player Classic mode- taken from the original Smash Bros. makes a return but thankfully the order of the fights have now been randomized. Too bad they kept the
Giant hand as the boss I would have rather seen something else the Giant white glove or whatever you want to call it is a weak boss.
Adventure- I was really excited when I heard about this mode you must go through a level good old side scrolling style. Fun mode that where I find myself playing most of my single player action levels include Mushroom Kingdom and yes you will encounter goomba’s and koopas and an F-Zero racetrack. Thankfully there is a different boss rather then the Giant Glove you will get to fight Bowser!
Event Match- You have a certain thing you must do in order to beat this level. It’s not just knocking people of the stage anymore. Whether it is your Mario and you must protect Princess Peach for 2 min or something along those lines. There are a lot of interesting events to choose from.
VS. mode Special Melee- this is a really fun mode with some crazy options. One where everyone starts out at 300% who will survive? Watch out because one hit will likely mean game over for you. Others are all the characters are invisible and giant and tiny modes.
Melee- your basic multiplayer mode choose a character and you can add 3 more human or computer players. If you are playing with computer players you can raise or lower there difficulty from 1-10 unfortunatly the default is 1 so make sure you raise it or it will be extremely easy. Next pick a stage and battle it out via time or stock. Stock is the amount of lives you get the last player alive wins. In time you get a point each time you knock someone off and lose one each time you fall. Whoever has the most points at the end wins.
Tournament Melee- hold a tournament with up to 64 characters with varying difficulty levels. I found it interesting when the level 9 cpu lost to the level 3. It’s an ok mode but it’s really not all that great.
Trophies- A cool addition you get these throughout the game whether you find them in a level, complete adventure or classic mode with a character or through the lottery. You get coins to use and you have a certain percentile chance of getting a new trophy. As you win more trophies this way the percent of you getting a new one goes down but can be increased by using more coins for the chance of earning a trophy. You can view trophies individually and read a little on that trophy or you can see all that you have collected so far in the gallery mode. Trophies are a nice little incentive to play the single player game.
Overall the gameplay has plenty of different options to keep you coming back for more. There are some cool new moves you can do including the use of the c-stick for some very easy executed power moves. There also is some area to fool around in called stadium where you can see how far you can hit a sandbag with a baseball bat, break targets, or have a multiman melee. Item options have returned allowing you to be able to edit how much items appear, if they appear at all, or what ones will appear. It’s a nice touch to be able to fool around with the items because some our not all that great and you may not want them to be in the battle or maybe you just don’t want any items and want to see who is best based on skills alone.
Graphics: 9/10 Wow, what an improvement over the original. As of right now this is one of the better games to show off the cubes graphical capabilities. Lots of small details have gone into the backgrounds and all the characters look great. All the levels are nicely designed and it’s especially nice when playing in the adventure mode because you get the environment of classic games but with the new age graphics. You get to pull off some cool animated taunts.
The best thing about the game is that it runs smoothly. At times you will have a lot of characters on the screen I think at most it is 5 although in adventure mode there may be times when there are more. But the game has always run smoothly at 60 frames per second or fps for me. Running smoothly is an important thing for a fighter and I am proud to say I have not encountered a single slow down since I have gotten this game several months ago.
Sounds: 10/10 Ahhh the nostalgia yes that’s right many of the levels from the game tote the classic theme songs from your favorite Nintendo games. I don’t know what young link’s is called but I can’t get that song out of my head. And for a change it’s not one that I want to get out of my head. Also the actual fighting sounds are not as “kiddy” anymore pikachu will scream out in pain! Muhahahaha man do I love pounding that pikachu into the ground. Although the characters sounds can get repetitive and yes even annoying the music is just so good sounds gets a perfect from me.
Replay Value: 9.5/10 Single players is even better than ever before giving you a lot more things to do in the game if you don’t have anyone to play with. Collecting trophies and unlocking all the characters will keep you even busier. But the fact that most of it does come from the multiplayer takes it down just a little I still play this game today, being able to play against friends adds so much more to this game sure you can have a melee with yourself against all computer players but its just not the same as going against 3 friends. This is a great party game and I would play it a lot more if it weren’t for a certain PC game.
Overall: 9.25/10 This game is a must own for any owners of the Gamecube, no need to rent first. I will tell you I am not normally a fighter fan but this game is the exception. While it does have a few problems like the camera zooming in and out making the action extremely difficult to follow at some times and when your invisible it has actually been a disadvantage to be rather then my opponents. Still the multiplayer is spectacular and the weak single player that the first installment had has been improved on.
Looks like Nintendo has found another game to bring to each new console it makes in Smash Bros. One of the few better titles out on the Gamecube right now but not for long this game was what kept the cube in the console race for the first few months though. If for some odd reason you own a Cube but not this game I strongly recommend you pick this one up.
Other Gamecube Reviews: Nintendo Gamecube Console Nintendo Gamecube Controller 1019 Block Memory Card Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance Lost Kingdoms This review was part of my very own
Next Generation W/O where all the participants wrote about the newest games, accessories, and consoles for all you gamers out there. Make sure you check out their contributions to this W/O.
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yarrick- yes me the host of this great idea, took me awhile to set the date but it has finally happened. Thanks to those that participated and those who read/rate my review.
Apparently my original title was too long I didnt know your title could be too long. So if my title is kind of weak im sorry but I had to think of a new one pretty fast.
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