An Imagination Gone Wild! (Super Smash Bros.)
If you know me, you know that I've always loved crossovers of any kind. I loved the TV specials as a kid where a character from one show just suddenly appears in another show to bond with the different characters of other shows. When I got a bit older, I loved the crossover elements of The Avengers movies and the "Arrowverse" TV shows in the same way. It should come as no surprise, then, that I've always been a huge fan of the Super Smash Bros. Franchise. Even before I was able to play it because I didn't have a Nintendo 64, I was in love with the idea of all these different brands crossing over to fight each other. It wasn't until a cousin brought their Gamecube to a family reunion that I was able to play a Smash Bros. game, Super Smash Bros. Melee, which even in 2021 is a favorite in the fighting community. This game was incredible, and really introduced me to a lot of my favorite characters from video games period. I will admit that I was one of those kids who thought that Samus was a robot when I first saw her in Smash Bros. Most people were shocked in 1986 when Samus was revealed to be a female protagonist at the end of the original Metroid, but in 2001 I was blown away when I realized she was human, it honestly didn't even really register as being that big of a deal that she was a woman. I was still a really young kid, but right away this game cemented my resolve to get a Gamecube, which I eventually did, and along with it, of course, Smash Bros. was not far behind. Today I would like to pay tribute to this gem of a video game franchise, which doesn't just work as an incredibly fun party fighting game, but also as a sort of museum of video games.
Paying Tribute to the Greats!
The original game, Super Smash Bros. was released for the N64 in the year 1999 by Hal Laboratory, the studio responsible for the Kirby franchise. The team was led by a young man named Masahiro Sakurai, the man who is still the face of Smash Bros. today, 22 years later. The main goal was to show all of these characters in the same game in an interesting setting, and in that way, it's almost like two kids arguing on the playground over who is more powerful. Speaking of that, the original game started out almost exactly like that. The opening cutscene shows a hand taking some toys out of a toy chest, one of Yoshi and one of Samus, puts them on his desk, then counts to three and snaps, which brings the toys to life. In this way, this original game in the franchise shows that it could be happening in the imagination of a child, and that's really one of the best set ups I can think of for any game. There's no need for some crazy amount of canon storytelling to explain why Mario and Link are fighting, it's just for good fun. This original game only had 8 characters to begin with, with four unlockable ones making for a total of twelve characters in all. These characters were: Mario, Link, Yoshi, Pikachu, Samus, Kirby, Donkey Kong, Fox (from Star Fox), Ness (from Earthbound), Jigglypuff, Luigi, and Captain Falcon (from F-Zero). Of these characters, obviously they only put in the cream of the crop out of all Nintendo characters at the time. Captain Falcon, Ness, and Star Fox may be weird inclusions for today's Smash Bros, but during this time, Earthbound was still really popular even though it was an SNES title, and F-Zero and Star Fox both had extremely popular games on the 64. The game sold extremely well, selling well over 5 million copies and is still looked back upon fondly, despite being a bit outdated by modern installments. It did so well that it clearly needed to have more of a presence and became one of the first games to be announced for the Gamecube.
Super Smash Bros. Melee was not a day 1 launch along with the Gamecube in 2001, but it came out within the first several weeks of its release, and was certainly among the biggest games to come out for the entire duration of the console's lifespan. On top of showing better character models and graphics for the characters and stages, the biggest thing for any Smash Bros. game is the new characters. The Gamecube installment featured 26 characters, 14 more than the original game, while retaining all of the previous entries. This time they included some princesses and villains to the roster such as Princess Peach and Bowser, in addition to introducing the US to Fire Emblem for the first time by putting Marth and Roy in the mix. Fire Emblem was a big deal in Japan, and Roy was actually included in Melee before the game that he starred in, Fire Emblem: Binding Blade, was even released. Since then, Fire Emblem has become a pretty massive tactical RPG franchise in its own right, and though these were the first two characters introduced to the West, they certainly weren't the last, but I'll get to them later. On top of all these picks of classic characters that they added, they also had some weird retro ones, such as Ice Climbers, which hadn't appeared since the NES title, "Ice Climber" and Mr. Game and Watch, who was a 2D character from Nintendo's days of LCD handhelds. All of the playable characters aside, this game had an extra trick up its sleeve when it came to celebrating all video games, even those without playable characters. Thanks to Trophies that they put in this game, Smash Brothers became even more like a museum, allowing you to read all about a bucket which came from a Japanese game for the Super Nintendo, or to explain the history behind Blood Falcon, Captain Falcon's weird shadow clone which appears in the game as an alternate costume. It's a great touch, and one that stuck around for a long time. Melee went on to sell well over 7 Million units, which made it the best selling Gamecube game of all time, and laid a strong foundation for the sequel. This game was headed by Mr. Sakurai and his team from Hal Laboratory again, though after this game, Sakurai left Hal to create his own studio called Sora Ltd.
Sora Ltd. was the developer of the Wii release in this franchise, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which again was presented as one of the main reasons to get a Wii along with Super Mario Galaxy, although neither of these games were launch titles for the system. This title released in January of 2008, just over a year after the Wii was released, and the wait felt unbearable for me as a kid. With each new update that was released on the Smash Bros. Dojo, the website that updated with new information every day, my seventh grade self got more and more excited every day for this game, and there are few moments in my life that made me more excited than when Sonic the Hedgehog was announced as a playable character for the first time. This was the first Smash Bros. game to feature "Third Party" characters, which is to say, characters that weren't created by Nintendo proper, but had been featured on Nintendo consoles in the past. Though this title only featured Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid and Sonic from Sonic the Hedgehog, the floodgates were open, and the speculation grew to dangerous levels of expectation from the fanbase, and has stayed firmly in that same zone ever since. This game featured "The Subspace Emissary," a full story mode with cutscenes and everything, bringing all of the characters into the same world for an adventure that to this day is almost still unprecedented in scope and scale. Of course we had a plethora of new characters here, which was again, the most exciting development, though not all of the previous characters returned this time around. Characters such as Mewtwo, Pichu and Roy were cut to make room for new ones like Lucario, Pokemon Trainer, and Ike. Wario makes his first appearance, as did many others including Pit from the NES franchise, Kid Icarus, which hadn't been touched since the sequel on the original Game Boy, so many people didn't know who he was, but people quickly became fans of his and he's gained a nice little fanbase since his reintroduction here. The trend of weird character inclusions continued in this game with R.O.B. the Robot, which was an accessory for the NES back in the day. There were many times where a friend would come over and ask if I was playing as Wall-E from the film of the same name, to which I would say, "No, he's obviously a 20 year old game peripheral, come on!" Trophies continued getting more and more impressive as we went along in the series, and continued teaching people all about gaming in all forms. This was really the only game in the series that was put out by Sora Ltd, as the next game would be made by Bandai Namco in association with Nintendo.
Wow, I've been going for a while now, and I think I'll finish up the most two Smash Bros. games next time... though one of those games is actually two different games. I'll get to that next time, as the fourth and fifth installments of this beloved franchise are both just as much fun as you would expect, though some decisions were met with less enthusiasm than others. Either way, Smash Bros. as a whole is a great time and one that has spawned a fair share of imitators and "Smash Clones," which I'll also try to get into next time. As I said before, Melee is still the go to choice for the tournament scene, though one of the new ones has given that game a run for its money.
Thanks so much for giving this post a read, folks! I hope you're all doing well and I really appreciate your support. I hope you'll enjoy this if you read it through. I understand that it is a bit dense, but Smash Bros. is a big passion of mine, and as you should know by now, when I get passionate about something, I write a lot about it. Hopefully me giving my little overview of the series could interest someone in giving the series a shot if they haven't yet. I've been your Self-Proclaimed Smash Brothers fan, and I'll talk to you again next week.
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