Super Smash Bros. January 5, 2012

Overview

The Smash Bros. series is a toss-up between a 2D Fighter and a Party game which is seems to fit both priorities well.  Introduced on the N64, the original Smash Bros. was kind of a first in its kind taking the best faces in the Nintendo world at the time and pitting them together in an all-out punch-out! 

Story

Wait, SSB has a story?!?  Not really actually I mean if anything the intro to the game is the closest to anything story-wise.  Which is a magical hand (Master Hand) awakens these toy figurines and makes a makeshift stage out of it.  Of course that’s really not that exciting right? 

Characters

The primary cast in SSB is actually 8 well-known characters actually!  Of course seeing it’s Nintendo and HAL working together, both Mario and Kirby would be found here.  There’s also Fox, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Samus Aran, Pikachu, and Link as well which is a pretty good cast at first.  As you go through the game you gain 4 more in Jigglypuff, Ness, Captain Falcon, and Luigi.  I will say that I must give the directors and workers kudos on making original movesets for Fox and C. Falcon since they’re froms games where you only really see their faces most of the time.  12 characters is alright for the first game but it is rather tiny.

Stages

The original Smash is the only one in the series where there’s more characters than stages which isn’t surprising to be honest when there’s only 9 stages to choose from 8 of them are available right from the start and correlates to each character’s series.  Example Sector Z = Fox’s stage.  The secret characters don’t get their stage unfortunately and have to share with others.  The 9th stage (which is unlockable) is a take on the original Super Mario Bros. with pipes and POW blocks.  Wish there was a little more variety here as well but it’s alright for the most part.

Gameplay

The gameplay is actually quite unusual for a fighter that most people know about.  Smash Bros. is unique because you have to rack up damage instead of wittle down a health bar like most fighters do which is a new take.  So then how do you defeat your opponent?  The higher the damage, the farther they fly and the point is to knock them off the stage (mostly all four sides of the screen counts as wats to knock them off).  All characters are different from one another (minus Mario and Luigi) and they have the advantages and disadvantages.  The point is to use them to beat your opponent.  It’s an interesting idea and it worked since it’s one of Nintendo’s biggest tourney-based series.

Graphics/Sound

• Graphics: For an N64 game, the graphics for SSB aren’t all that bad but at the same time as a gamer of today it really does look rather blocky on some aspects.  I mean Mario’s hands look like Cloud’s in FFVII which is a little bit of a bummer.  The stages are probably the best thing graphically about the game since they all have the spark and aspects of the games they come from quite nicely.  The worst IMO is how the Pokemon from the Pokeballs work…they look ridiculously terrible in the game, not gonna lie. 
• Sound: The sound is alright as well.  Most of the music is pretty much new versions of classic tunes from each of the series.  There’s some original tunes as well but hearing Mario’s theme or Yoshi’s Athletic from Yoshi’s Story is more interesting.  Sound effects do their job as well and they sound like the punches and kicks hurt.

Other Things To Do

There’s not a whole lot of things to do in the game otherwise which is alright since the main reason the game is so popular is the multiplayer aspect which means you can have up to 4 players going at each other.  There are a couple things though worth noting

• Single Player: Kind of like a normal arcade mode to a fighter, you fight different characters and the final fight is with a big boss or in this case against Master Hand.
• Break the Targets / Board the Platforms: These are kind of like the minigames for the characters and each one has a different setup which is great and provides a bit of a challenge to beat the stage at a fast time.
• The Vs: Like I said, this is where most people will love the game because of the fact there’s so many possibilities with part from teams, to choosing which items are allowed in the game…it’s pretty sweet and even though Melee and Brawl built upon this the root of it was a nice start!

The rest of the things that might be of interest is some of the options like reading the various stats on your gaming experience from how many KOs you had or who’s your most used character down to reading a little history about your character.  Of course there’s always the option to erase EVERYTHING in the game but unlike most games doing this can be fun since you can unlock everything once again lol.

 

 

OVERALL: 6/10

This is probably my least favorite of the three Smash games out there but it is the oldest and the first of the series so it had to start from someplace.  I mean the small amount of things to do is quite surprising for a “party game” and some fighting game afficionados will also say the same, it’s still quite a fun party game.  Plus it brought a powerful series that rivals many of Nintendo’s current series which is a little tough to do these days and back then it was either SM64, Ocarina of Time, MK64, or this.  Not bad but compared to the later games…there’s a CLEAR gap between this and Melee for sure.

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