Super Smash Bros.

"Smash Bros., the top game for N64 any day."

Super Smash Brothers, released in 1999, has been a hit even today in the year 2005. That is six years that this game has been entertaining and competitive to all the players. What makes this game so enjoyable and exciting? Most of the fun and excitement come from challenging your friends and smashing everything in your path. That sounds fun, but is it really that kind of "fun"? The creators aimed for something different in this game. The Mario Party series, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, were completely different from Super Smash Brothers. This was not a party, nor was it a sport. It was simply a average action-fighting game.

Super Smash Brothers contains 12 different characters that you have seen almost all the time from different games. They now join in together to create a massive smash fighting game and battle it out to see who is the winner of them all. These characters include Mario, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Kirby, Link, Fox, Samus, Pikachu, Ness, Luigi, Jiggly Puff, and Captain Falcon.

All of these characters battle it out using all unique attacks, making all characters completely unique in style. Mario can throw fire balls, Fox can shoot with a ray gun, Captain Falcon can do a Falcon Kick, etc.. All characters have at least 10 different attacks to use in battle. All attacks do damage of course, and as more damage is on your opponent, the farther they will be blown away after another attack. After you or your opponent has been blown to far from the level, you will lose a life. This repeats until you run of out time or you or your run out of life stock.

The options of gameplay include one player mode, where you can compete against all the characters with a numbers of lives and time limit. You can also do training mode, which is used to train and experiment different things on an opponent on your desired stage. You may also practice breaking the targets and boarding the platforms, which is some sort of exercise to get a feel for the game. Then there is VS mode, which allows 2-4 players to join in and duke it out with each other, or do a team battle with 2 vs 2, or 1 vs 3. You can set CPUs incase you do not have any human players playing with you. The CPU can have a level of 1 to 9, where as 1 is the easiest, and 9 being more advanced. You can adjust the level of the CPU to your experience to the game.

That is the basics of the gameplay in multi-player. While you are playing, you'll notice the sounds and music during the game. The sound effects are very loud and the voices are hard to understand. You may want to turn down the volume slightly unless you really like loud noise while playing. All the levels have different sound tracks and they go along with the theme of the level. However, some of the music, such as Hyrule Castle, can be annoying or boring after a while. Nothing new with music. Just the same old sound track repeating themselves every five to ten minutes.

Super Smash Brothers had average graphics, similar to all the other Mario games for Nintendo 64. All the characters looked pretty much the same in all the other games they starred in, but you are able to switch their character model to a different color, such as Mario wearing a yellow suit, instead of his red. Every character has a total of 4 different models, but they are same clothing, just different color. As for the stages in Super Smash Brothers, they are all very large, detailed maps. Stages, such as Hyrule castle, look very much similar to the real castle in Zelda: Ocarina of Time. There is also Yoshi's Island, with lots of platforms and clouds that vanish and disappear. Donkey Kong's Jungle stage wasn't to detailed as the other stages, as it merely had completely d2 barrels on the stage, but had moving platforms going in a boxed shape circle, and a barrel under the sage moving back and forth from left to right. All the stages has a background to it, to go with the theme of the level you fight at. For example, DK's Jungle has the big trees and forest, as if it were a real jungle your fighting in, and Saffron City has Pokemons flying in the background of the stage.

How long does it take to uncover all the secret characters, unlock everything, and finish the game? My suggested time would be around one to two weeks. There isn't much to unlock if your experienced, but if your completely new to the game, and depending on how often you'll play, it should take no more than two weeks. Now the question is, what is there to do after completing the game? There is always experiencing different characters or testing some new characters or levels you unlocked, or try defeating one player mode at an harder difficulty. If that doesn't seem to be fun and you get bored of it, perhaps you should challenge some friends to see how well you fight compared to them.

Now that you know a lot about Super Smash Brothers, what should you do? It is best to buy the game, since it is practically impossible to rent these days. It is an old game, but it should be around 5 to 10 bucks, which is definitely worth your money. Take my advice, you will not regret it. If you ever feel liek selling it, there is always ebay. My final recommendation of the game's features are accurate, so you can trust me.

Gameplay: 9/10
Sound/Music: 7/10
Graphics: 7/10
Difficulty: 8/10
Replayability: 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/24/05