Anybody who's played the original Super Smash Bros. should know how fun it is to smash your friends as popular Nintendo characters. Not only are the controls so simple even a 5 year old could play, but it's also fast, furious, and most of all, fun.
A little bit after two years after its release, Nintendo announced a sequel to the best-selling fighting game. Shown at E3, it passed Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2 as the most anticipated Gamecube game. Over the next 6 months, Nintendo tortured their fans by revealing saliva-inducing options such as 292 trophies, 25 characters, 28 stages, an much, much more. Finally, the wait is over, and fans are treated to the greatest fighting game of the year.
The graphics are magificent. People claim the backgrounds are terrible, but they look fine to me. The character design is so detailed you can see the furs on Fox and the curves of the cloth for Mario. And most importantly of all, it goes at a blistering 60 frames per second. That's an amazing feat considering most of the things documented in this site goes at just 24 fps.
If anybody's a fan of Nintendo music, then this is the game for you. It remixes many popular tunes from Zelda's Overworld Theme to Pokemon's Battle Theme. The sound effects are wonderful, and best of all, there is none of the sound editing that plagued the first version.
Super Smash Bros. Melee is not a rehash of the N64 version, as it has been often called. It has brand new moves. Now, if you grab somebody, you have a choice of attacking the victim, or throwing them up, down, forward, or back. There are 4 Special Attacks instead of the usual 3, and you can dodge projectile attacks and mid-air attacks.
In the original Super Smash Bros., the one-player mode was going through a fixed set of 13 stages. In Melee, there is Classical Mode, which is a lot like the original, only the stages are mixed. There Adventure Mode, where the player goes through scrolling world with hazards before fighting your enemy. There is Stadium Mode, where you can play your character's target practice level, beat up a beanbag before seeing how far you can hit it with a bat, and fight against up to 100 computer characters. There is an event mode with 51 events where you fight in special pre-set circumstances. And then there are the 292 trophies which include people like Misty from Pokemon or the go-kart from the Mario Kart games.
But the truly amazing part of this game is the multiplayer mode, which is what makes Super Smash Bros. one of the classics for the N64. You can play the usual stock (lives) or time mode, but you can also play coin mode, where you knock coins out of your opponents and collect there. Then there are the special melee modes, with special battles like Giant Melee (where everybody is big), or Special Sudden Death Melee, where everybody starts off with 300% damage. This game WILL last you over 500 hours if you are a fan of the original.
This game is a perfect example of why Nintendo is so successful today. Like what has been mentioned earlier in this review, this game is fast, furious, and most of all, fun. If you are a fan of fighting games or Nintendo, then this game is a must.
