april 26 marks ten years since the original SSB was release in America.
this series has truly spawned some great memories that i will never forget.
i eman who doesnt remember seeing this comercial for the first time.
I also thought i would put Life Time sales of the games here to.
Super Smash Bros. 64 - 5.55 m
Super Smash Bros. Melee - 7.8 m
Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 8.55 m
SSB: series total - aprox. 22 m
http://www.gamesradar.com/f/10-years-of-super-smash-bros/a-2009042410036501005
It all seems so obvious in retrospect: take the biggest, most beloved characters of one of the greatest videogame companies of all time and chuck them all into a game where they beat the pixels out of one another. The idea is reminiscent of the fevered dreams of every child on earth who dared to have their G.I. Joes fight alongside their Ninja Turtles, pitting them against the evil forces of the Street Sharks and EXO Squad. Fan service is nothing new amongst the gaming world, but when that fan service is wrapped around a fundamentally excellent game, it becomes something special.
Released in North America on April 26th, 1999, Super Smash Brothers (SSB) came along fairly late in the N64’s development cycle, but managed to capitalize on all the system’s best features. Satoru Iwata, current president of Nintendo and Masahiro Sakurai, creator of the Kirby franchise, had been independently working on a new fighting game that was aiming to be very different from the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat clones that were flooding the market. In an interview between Sakurai and Iwata from Wii.com, Sakurai reminisced:
“Well, I wanted to offer an alternative to the two-dimensional fighting games that were crowding out the market. I also wanted to see if it was possible to make an interesting 4-player game that offered a new experience every time you play. Simply put, I was aiming to design a 4-player battle royal.”
The concept seemed like a good fit for the N64, as it would capitalize on both the system’s 4 controller ports, and the system’s strong multiplayer reputation. With games like Mario Party and Goldeneye being some of the system’s best sellers, it seemed likely that most players would embrace the game’s multiplayer nature. The fact they’d be more likely to have extra controllers sitting around didn’t hurt either.
Interestingly, the original concept for SSB didn’t involve any Nintendo characters at all. The original concept game "Kakuto-Geemu Ryuoh," or Dragon King: The Fighting Game, was a labor of love, with virtually all work done on the game being done by Sakurai and Iwata. Despite their hard work on the game and the huge amount of personal time invested in it, Sakurai had a hard time selling it to Nintendo. He felt the game needed to be more complete than the average arcade fighting game, that it would need something extra to make it appeal to console owners who didn’t necessarily like fighting games:
“I asked to use Nintendo characters since it was so hard to accurately convey to the players the atmosphere of the gaming world where they play a fighting game on home console. […] With a game for the arcade, it’s okay for character development to take a backseat since players are content with the fighting. With a fighting game for the home console, however, you have to set up the general image or the atmosphere of the gaming world right from the start or else the game suffers. That’s why I asked to use Nintendo characters.”
Mario, Donkey Kong, Pikachu, Luigi, Samus Aran, Fox, Link, Jigglypuff, Captain Falcon, Kirby, Yoshi, Ness.
For its first outing, SSB played it safe with the character selection. Virtually all of Nintendo’s biggest names are represented, and with the exception of Ness and maybe Captain Falcon, even the most casual gamer could be expected to recognize them all. It also introduced Pikachu in a party hat, a sight cute enough to warm even the coldest of hearts.
SSB deserves credit for successfully bringing a totally new play style to fighting games, a genre that usually shuns big innovations like the plague. The game’s concept of knocking the other player off the screen as opposed to reducing a fixed health bar is totally unique. It also champions a more simplistic command scheme, allowing the player to press a direction and one button to perform special moves. While at first glance this might seem to detract from the game’s challenge, Smash Bros puts a very heavy emphasis on the character’s movement and predicting where they will be as opposed to mastering special move commands.
While traditional 2D fighters are forced to operate in a fairly confined playfield, Smash Bros. levels are usually far bigger than their characters, putting the focus on pursuing your opponent and preventing him from getting back onto the platform. SSB was also pushing to be the first serious fighting game with more than two players.
On almost all counts, the game was a big success, selling over 5 million copies worldwide and guaranteeing a sequel.
SSB: Melee launched in North America about a month after the GameCube’s North American release, and still stands as one of the system’s brightest moments. After the mostly tepid response to launch title Luigi’s Mansion, SSB: Melee was a breath of fresh air, giving gamers more of what they wanted in a gorgeous package that improved upon everything. The game’s graphics were some of the best for their time, and still hold up, presenting multiple characters from extremely different stylized worlds in a unified design. Some credit must be given to the designers who managed to put Jigglypuff alongside Marth and make it look natural.
Melee was an even bigger success than its predecessor, selling more than 7 million copies and becoming the GameCube’s best selling game.
Mr. Game & Watch, Falco, Mewtwo, Gannondorf, Young Link, Roy, Pichu, Marth, Dr. Mario, Bowser, Ice Climbers, Peach, Zelda/Sheik
Melee featured 26 characters, over twice as many as its predecessor. Among the characters were the classic 12 as well as some more obscure choices, including the Ice Climbers and Mr. Game & Watch, two retro relics whose inclusion certainly garnered collective WTFs. More interestingly, Hideo Kojima had contacted Masuhiro Sakurai about including Solid Snake in Melee, but unfortunately it was too late in the development cycle to allow him in.
The new characters were, for the most part, extensions of game franchises already represented, with the exception of the Ice Climbers and Mr. Game & Watch. For the most part, the majority of the unlockable characters were similar to the original characters from the same franchise. For example Falco’s moveset is almost identical to Fox’s though minor changes are made to the moves’ hit boxes, damage and knockback.
From a gameplay standpoint, the Ice Climbers were certainly the most interesting, as they utilized two different characters models, one of them AI controlled, both with individual damage meters. The AI controlled Ice Climb er would parrot the player’s attacks a moment after the input, essentially doubling every special move or regular attack.
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SSB: Melee introduced some fundamental changes to the game, including chargeable smashes, sidestep dodging, air dodging, and an additional special move for each character amongst others. While SSB: Melee retained the one-button special moves, and generally simple controls from the original, the pace was very fast, demanding incredibly precise play at more advanced levels.
One of those advanced level tactics was Wave Dashing, a maneuver found years after the game’s initial release that exploited an anomaly in the game’s physics engine. It involved doing an extremely short jump and then air dodging into the ground. This would result in the character landing hard on the ground and sliding forward or backward. When done repeatedly, the character would skid around the stage, sliding over the ground. It took practice to master, but allowed most characters to move far faster than they could via traditional running or jumping. It also allowed for very quick set ups for attacks, giving players who knew how to do it a distinct advantage.
Melee also elaborated on the single-player side of the game, including two new single-player game types, adventure mode and the unlockable All-Star mode. Adventure mode was a side scrolling beat-em-up/platforming hybrid that featured enemies and cameos from many Nintendo games, while All-Star mode was more of an endurance test that gave the player limited health items and tasked them with beating every character in the game.
Melee also became the first game in the series to be included in the prestigious Evolution fighting games tournament, standing alongside Street Fighter and many others as a legitimate professional-level fighting game.
One of SSB: Melee’s strongest features was its fully orchestral soundtrack, which reinterpreted classic Nintendo tunes from all the major franchises. Hearing the classic Nintendo tunes updated from their 8-bit heritage and transformed into fully scored songs was sure to render any childhood Nintendo fan dewy-eyed. Nintendo released a live performance of these songs by the New Japan Philharmonic entitled Smashing…Live! as a free gift to Nintendo Power subscribers.
Released March 9th, 2008, Super Smash Bros Brawl continued the more is more tradition of the franchise, adding more characters, more modes and the long awaited online vs mode. Anticipation had been building for months for the game thanks in large part to daily updates from Sakurai’s Smash Dojo website, which unveiled new features, characters and details almost every day for the months leading up to the game’s release. The game’s last minute delay was agony for fans that were, at that point, frothing at the mouth, speaking in Animal Crossing tongues, and waking up in cold sweats wondering whether Solid Snake could beat Charizard.
The game supported a number of control schemes, though the classic GameCube controller compatibility was a godsend for players concerned with the Wiimote’s awkward waggle smash mechanic.
Brawl also included, for the first time, the chance to battle against friends and foes alike online, a huge draw for a game whose appeal is primarily in its multiplayer. While the game was playable online, persistent latency issues made it too imprecise for the more serious players, though it’s fine for a casual game.
Solid Snake, Zero Suit Samus, Sonic the Hedgehog, King DeDeDe, Pokemon Trainer, Diddy Kong, Ike, Pit, Lucas, Toon Link, Wolf, Wario, Olimar, R.O.B, Meta Knight, Lucario.
Phew. Brawl added a slew of characters to the game, many of them villains or slightly less recognizable characters from Nintendo franchises. Most of the characters had also been updated stylistically to resemble their newer games. The Legend of Zelda characters (Toon Link excepted) were now styled after Twilight Princess, while the Starfox characters were now from Starfox Adventures. The game also introduced another character with an oddball fighting style, Captain Olimar, who relies on replenishing his inventory of Pikmin to remain effective.
Sakurai has a history of paying close attention to what SSB fans want, and for Brawl, he turned to them to vote for the character they wanted to see most in the game. Sonic the Hedgehog won the vote handily despite his now decade long trail of god awful, miserable games and became SSBB’s last announced character.
On paper, Brawl looks very similar to its predecessor as it retained virtually all of its combat mechanics, but the game is notably slower than Melee. Characters in Brawl fall much more slowly than they did in Melee, and characters’ movements around the stage are also somewhat slower. To say the game felt a bit more ponderous would not be an exaggeration. Most importantly, wavedashing was removed from the game, slowing down serious gameplay even further. In general, the game is a lot floatier and requires the player to fight in the air even more than before.
Brawl’s single-player adventure mode also increased in scope and size, attempting to work a story into the game via animated cutscenes that followed preset groups of characters around. The Subspace Emissary was more in depth than any of the previous games, featuring multiple paths, secrets and a (relatively) cohesive plot, although attempting to build dramatic tension between Pikachu and Samus will always be an exercise in futility.
The mode introduced multiple original new characters not previously seen in any game, known as the Subspace Army. Their leader Tabuu also serves as the game’s true final boss, after disposing of the franchise’s perennial final boss, Master Hand. While the mode is certainly far more detailed and varied than the previous game’s adventure mode, it’s fairly repetitive and the emphasis on platforming and fighting small enemies makes it incredibly difficult to complete with certain characters who simply weren’t designed for it.
Given the commercial and critical success that the Smash Bros games have received, it’s inevitable that Nintendo will be releasing another sequel, though gamers will most likely have to wait until Nintendo’s next console. In the mean time, speculation will surely run wild as gamers fantasize about the new additions to the roster. Link’s Uncle? Bubbles from Clu Clu Land? One of the Excitetrucks? Bayou Billy? If the previous games are any indicator, Super Smash Brothers: “Fracas” will be full of the classic characters and gameplay that have made the series one of Nintendo’s, and the fighting genre’s, best.
hello how are you.
