Super Smash Bros.: A Retrospective

I said to myself back in 2015 that I wasn't going to touch on this game or this series anymore and I kept to it up until this summer. But at some point, you reflect on your past and you see things taht may have not happened at the time come to pass. so never mind that statement I made, I'm going to go back around 1999 to 2005 or so and give you some history behind my experiences with Smash. Buckle up, it's gonna be a good one, composed of many parts.

The title that started it all.

I saw the teaser during WWF one night with Mario and Fox fighting on Princess Peach's castle and wondered what the hell was that? Months later, this commercial played.

Now in Japan, Super Smash Bros., released as Nintendo All Star! Dairantō Smash Brothers was already on the shelves and received to good acclaim. Only in America and Europe was the series still unknown. My cousin got the game and brought it over one weekend.

...and it really didn't wow me much. Not to say it wasn't fun, but it didn't really make me say WHOA. For what it's worth, I knew about Captain Falcon from F-Zero also owned by my cousin in the form of F-Zero X and also Fox McCloud from Star Fox 64 and of course the usual fare from Super Mario, Donkey Kong, Pokemon, and Yoshi (What a joke, but one thing at a time). Samus Aran from Metroid  was unknown to me as well.

But Mother gets a special mention as I did play it before I got invested in Smash but I knew nothing of Ness. I only got to play Smash 64 for a week before my cousin went back home and I more or less forgot it.

Fast forward to 2005, and I discovered Earthbound, also known as Mother 2. Short version, one of my favorite games of all time. Move onward to two months later and I got a certain game...

The best-selling Gamecube game of all time.

If you owned a Gamecube, you owned Super Smash Bros. Melee. If you didn't, well hey more power to you. You avoided the Smash Curse. Me, I was curious to see who was what in this game and why everyone made a funk about it. Needless to say, I saw the appeal and I heard of a few characters that were in, characters I knew from my past (Ice Climbers) and as of recent at the time (Ness). Smash being a blur in my mind until I fired up Melee rekindled my brief encounter with the first title. Plus, I heard both Princess Peach and Zelda were playable, and my brain couldn't process that, so I had a lot to look forward to.

First, the presentation. Man. For 2001 that opening cinematic looked amazing and the game looked just as good. How the hell did we go from

 To

Is that not an improvement? Smash 64 was a low-budget title and it shows with Captain Falcon being a composite character with moves from Samus Aran and Fox and possibly a few others. It's also worth noting that Kirby and Jigglypuff share a model/moves/etc. Jigglypuff gets a note in that it was very popular due to the anime, alongside Clefairy who was also intended to be the series mascot before Pikachu. What could have been. But back to Melee, the graphical overhaul from the last game was amazing. How HAL Laboratories did it is anyone's guess. To make things better, you had all the original twelve with more characters to boot:

• Bowser, Mario's archenemy. his design here was different from every other Smash title he appeared in. My problem then and now was his hunch. really bad. And he was really really slow and clunky. Typical for a heavyweight but here it's just bad.
• Peach, the damsel in distress now fighting as an equal. Man, she looked good from her dress to her overall design. She had the best alternate costume masquerading as Daisy, short gloves and all. She even had a few nods from Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA).
• Zelda, the titular character of The Legend of Zelda. When you use her down special, she becomes Sheik, an alias used in Ocarina of Time. Two characters in one. Her design here along with the other Zelda characters lean on their renditions in that game.
• Sheik, who despite having the masculine design is referred to as female. If you didn't play Ocarina, spoiler alert. Oh well.
• Popo and Nana, the Ice Climbers, a duo from Ice Climber,  one of my very first games if not very first game overall. Seeing them made me happy. One of my favorite characters to use in Smash.
• Falco, Fox McCloud's cohort in Star Fox. Falco in the metagame and competitive scene is arguably one of the top characters in the game compared to most of the roster. He's also one of the infamous 'clone' characters the game was criticized for at release. Along with him were a few other clones, such as...
• Dr. Mario, Mario as a doctor. He's slower and heavier than Mario but has more power to his moves. Funny enough, he also has a few other moves that make him stand out from regular Mario but not by much. Even the game says it's just a matter of taste. Who do I prefer? Luigi.
• Pichu, the first stage of the Raichu line. Pichu is the lightest character throughout the series and has a gimmick where it hurts itself from its specials, akin to its Pokedex entries. It's prone to getting knocked out very early on, so it's somewhat of a joke character. Somewhat.
• Young Link, Link as a kid. I like Y. Link more than Link because of the increased speed and my love for Majora's Mask which gives him that slight connection that sadly never got expanded on. He also has one of the most frustrating Break the Targets board in the game until you learn how to use him.
• Ganondorf, the last character to be added. He is a clone of Captain Falcon and overall the strongest character in the game after Bowser. He also has better mobility surprisingly despite his slow movement. What I find interesting about this Ganondorf is that people cried that he never used his sword when he never used it in Ocarina. Not once. The only thing he used in the fight was magic, not dark magic but spell magic. Shows how much people really know about the series and that alone is enough to have a dedicated section to, so let's hold that one on the shelf until then.
• Marth, from Fire Emblem. Until Smash, Fire Emblem was a Japan-only series and upon localization, he and another character, Roy would be cut from the western releases. Thankfully, Nintendo of America's boneheaded call was not followed and the two lords made it to the west, Japanese vocals and all.
• Roy is Marth's clone with notable differences in the real meta of stats and attributes, but mainly being shorter and having some fire effects in his attacks.
• Mewtwo, the supposed final Pokemon in Gen I. It appears with its voice from the first movie and in the Japanese audio, actual speech. Pokemon later on from certain movies would get voices and lines retained in localization.
• Mr. Game & Watch, the 'joke' character of Melee. A flat representation of the Game & Watch handhelds Nintendo released back in the 80's. Every one of his movements and attacks are choppy and in 2D, but G&W isn't a flat cutout but an actual model. If you use the Metal Box item, you'll see it better.

Overall, from the first game, you have over double the amount of characters albeit in a very rushed manner but it was said conditions that made Melee what it was and I think it was a good call considering the short timeframe the game had. Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of the series knows to some extent what to give in a game. Of course I can't not mention Masahiro Sakurai. Of course.

He created Kirby as well, though he only worked a few games while Shinichi Shimomoura worked on the rest at that particular time. But nonetheless. He directed the first two Smash titles in conjunction with HAL Laboratories. Melee was a game that not only had a unique roster but also had many other modes. Adventure mode was a nice nod to various other series and had a very particular envisioning of Bowser in the form of Giga Bowser.

Wow.

Pretty scary all things considered. According to Sakurai, he envisioned Bowser as a scary monster and noticed that as the games moved onward to 3D, Bowser grew more cuter and rounder. If Paper Mario is anything to go by, he was right. My issue with Bowser was his hunch once more. An intimidating character looks like a joke when he's staring at your torso. I get he can't be too big but an upright stance would make him look better. All the issues mentioned go away with Giga Bowser and that may have been intentional. Who knows.

But one of my favorite parts about Melee was the trophies. Man. The trophies in Melee were beyond some of the best in the series, a good chunk of them made from scratch, and hoo boy does it show.

There are other examples, but let's not waste time on that. What did make me giddy were the trophies that were present:

Yes, in case you haven't realized, I am a Mother fan. This is why people are angry about trophies being absent in the near release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. But that'll come eventually. This gallery of Nintendo characters showed every other corner of their catalog with some notable omissions and very vague references as well (Two items in Melee were from GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, labeled under TOP SECRET. Both games were from Rareware who at the time was being purchased and sold to Microsoft). It was beyond amazing to find trophies from games you never played, were going to release and games that never made it outside Japan. A few did get omitted from the US release, mainly Tamagon from Devil World for obvious reasons. The Devil from that game would return in the next Smash title in a limited role.

Overall, Melee was worth every penny. I had few friends to play with but I played the game regularly and unlocked all the roster within two years of purchasing it. I wasn't that big on Smash but it was one of the few games I had out of my library of Zelda and Sonic titles, so it stands out. Melee released very early in the Gamecube's life throughout the five-year run, so people were anticipating the next Super Smash Bros. title. Around 2005, the same year I had Melee, the announcement was made for the next Smash title and with all the support Melee gained, this was something that I felt changed video game hype forever, for better...and for worse...