Super Smash Bros.

"A game where it makes sense to smash a Pikachu with a baseball bat"

Once in a while, a great game comes along. Not just any great game, mind you, a game that can be loved by anyone. A game that four people can play at the same time and have endless fun. A game where all your favorite Nintendo mascots and characters battle it out to the end. Well, actually, this is the first game of its kind, but the very thought is riveting. Seeing the commercial of this game, I thought of it as nothing particularly special. It just looked like another fighting game...yawn. Then, when I played it over at a friend's house, I was mesmerized. I absolutely had to get the game, no questions asked. As soon as I could I rushed to my nearest video game outlet and shoved 50 bucks into the cashier's face to pay for my new treasure. As soon as I got home I was probably glued to my TV for hours, which turned into days, then weeks, the months, and still going. Read on to learn why.

Gameplay: 10

Too bad 10 is the highest number you can use, because this game should at least have a 15 in Gameplay. There are two modes, of course. 1 Player, and Vs. Mode. In 1 Player you can pick the character of choice (Mario, Link, Donkey Kong, Samus Aran, Pikachu, Kriby, Fox McCloud, or Yoshi) and battle through levels of increasingly harder opponents until you reach the last battle, or boss, Master Hand. One would only use 1 Player Mode to unlock the four secret characters (which I'm not going to say). After you did that, there really is no use, unless you're extremely bored. Vs. Mode is a bit better, and can have up to four human players at a time. In Vs. Mode you can pick which character you want, then your friends pick theirs. Everybody can even have the same character. You can even play against the computer by selecting their character and setting the difficulty (1 being the easiest and 9 being the hardest). Then you can pick your location, which includes Mushroom Kingdom, Congo Jungle, Planet Zebes, Saffron City, Dream Land, Hyrule Castle, Sector Z, and the Yoshi's Island place (I forget what it's called, unless that is what it's called...). There is also one secret level. There is also a huge amount of great weapons to use to battle your opponents. All of these weapons originate in some other Nintendo game, such as the Pokeball from Pokemon, the Life Heart from Zelda, the Fire Flower, Shells, Bob-ombs and Starman from Super Mario Brothers, and the Hammer from the original Donkey Kong (complete with the same music when you use it, too!). You can also set Vs. Mode to your liking by changing the amount of time, stock, turning off and on certain weapons, and whatnot. It will certainly have you playing for a loooong time.

Sound/Music: 10

And what better way to make your gaming experience more enjoyable than a plethora of perfect sound effects and great music? Super Smash Brothers has both. There's different music for every battling arena, and they're all remixes of great themes from the game they came from. Yoshi's Island has that one song from Yoshi's Story that will be stuck in your head. Mushrooms Kingdom has that nice music from the original Super Mario Brothers, and Saffron City has that familiar Pokemon theme everyone knows. In addition to the music, there's the sounds. The sounds are fantastic. Every character has the right voice and about 15 different things they ''say''. This means Pikachu says his name in about 10 different tones (unfortunately). With the Pokeballs (a weapon) are about 10 different Pokemon, and they all have voices as well. There are about 20 different weapons, and they all have different sound effects. And I have said ''different'' about six times already...anyway, so, yeah, the sound is great.

Graphics: 10

Perfect. The graphics are perfect. I don't notice any glitches or anything. Backgrounds and foregrounds are smooth. Characters are smooth and make facial expressions. Their movements are true to life. When an item appears you can actually tell what it is. There is some movement in the backgrounds, which add to the experience. Some of the characters' attacks look really cool. There are what seems to be about 1000 different shades of color. Master Hand's finger movements are cool. What else can I say. Oh, the backgrounds of the bonus levels, such as Break the Targets and Board the Platfoms actually have really bad backgrounds. They are hard to explain...it's like two colors that keep overlapping eachother or something...anyway, it's not anything to lower the score about. It just kinda bugs me, that's all...

Story: N/A

I honestly don't think there is a story. The best thing that can be considered a story is that a kid takes his action figures in his room and starts battling them. Other than that, I'm pretty sure there's no story. I don't even consider that a story anyway, so I'm just leaving it at that.

Replayability: 10

Once again, I wish I could grade higher. I got this game last Christmas and I still find it enjoyable whenever I play it. There's just so many things you can do in this game, like expirement with different things in Vs. Mode, or beat your Target Breaking score, or stuff like that. Of course, since Super Smash Brothers Melee came out, which has about 50 times more content and objectives, this game is kind of collecting dust buried in closets everywhere. Oh well, I guess you will get bored with it some time, but it hasn't happened to me yet.

Overall: 10

Yes, a solid A+. This was one of the best games for Nintendo 64, and may actually become a classic one day. Who knows? All I know is, this is one of those games that you either love or hate, and since you can rent it anymore, you might want to take the risk and buy it if you have a Nintendo 64. If not, you can rent Super Smash Brothers Melee for Gamecube. It's pretty much the same thing. Now if you'll excuse me, I have an urge to destroy a couple of Pikachus now...

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/24/02, Updated 11/24/02