Super Smash Bros.
|
|
Super Smash Bros. (ニンテンドウオールスター! 大乱闘スマッシュブラザーズ, Nintendo All-Star! Great Fray Smash Brothers), also called Super Smash Bros. 64, often shortened to SSB or Smash 64, is the first game of the Super Smash Bros. series. The game released in Japan on January 21st, 1999, in North America on April 26th, 1999 and in Europe on November 19th, 1999 for the Nintendo 64. Subsequently, it released on the iQue Player in China on November 15, 2005. It was re-released on the Wii Virtual Console on January 20th, 2009 in Japan, a day before its 10-year anniversary, and later that year in Europe and North America, before becoming unavailable after the Wii Shop Channel shut down on January 30th, 2019. Super Smash Bros. received positive reviews, with most praise going to its multiplayer mode, while its single-player mode received some criticism. The game has sold 5 million units worldwide as of 2001, making it the fifth best-selling Nintendo 64 game of all time. ContentsOpening movie[edit]The opening movie in Super Smash Bros., unlike later games in the Super Smash Bros. series, completely lacks pre-rendered footage. It instead opts to use the game engine to render everything in real-time. When the opening movie starts, two random starter characters are placed by Master Hand on top of a desk, which shortly transitions to a scene resembling Peach's Castle. This process is repeated every time the opening movie is played. As the opening movie concludes, the figures of the four unlockable characters are flashed against a white background. If a character hasn't been unlocked, they will simply be shown as a silhouette; conversely, they will be revealed once unlocked. Finally, the opening movie segues into the title screen, a trend which would be followed by future installments, along with the announcer calling out the game's title. Fighters[edit]There are twelve playable characters in Super Smash Bros., eight of which are available from the start and four of which are unlockable. The highest amount of character slots are given to the Super Mario and Pokémon universes with each receiving two fighters: Mario alongside his brother Luigi, and Pikachu and Jigglypuff respectively, with the latter characters in both universes being unlockable. Two more slots are given to reoccurring Mario characters Donkey Kong and Yoshi as starting fighters from their sub-universes of the same names, Donkey Kong and Yoshi. The other starter characters are Link, Samus, Kirby and Fox from The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Kirby and Star Fox universes, respectively. The final remaining characters, as with Luigi and Jigglypuff, are unlockable: Ness of EarthBound and Captain Falcon of F-Zero.
Stages[edit]The game features nine stages derived from each character's universe, exceptions being EarthBound and F-Zero. While most universes receive a single stage, Mario uniquely has two instead: Peach's Castle and the only unlockable stage in the game, Mushroom Kingdom. Besides of that, the other stages consist of Congo Jungle, Hyrule Castle, Planet Zebes, Yoshi's Island, Dream Land, Sector Z, and Saffron City from Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Yoshi, Kirby, Star Fox, and Pokémon respectively. Versus mode stages[edit]
Shown in bold, Mushroom Kingdom is the only unlockable stage in Super Smash Bros. 1P Game-only stages[edit]
These stages only appear in the 1P Game. Non-playable stages[edit]
These stages cannot be unlocked or played on in any way without hacking. Modes[edit]1-Player[edit]Multiplayer[edit]Tournament play[edit]Main article: Tournament legal (SSB)
Unlike its successors, Super Smash Bros. never enjoyed a large professional competitive scene in North America. However, interest in the game has been renewed in recent years with the popularity of its sequels. Players can play Super Smash Bros. online through Kaillera using the Project64k emulator. Every year, there are more and more Super Smash Bros. tournaments due to an influx of new players. Most tournaments are paired with Melee events and most (offline) SSB tournaments are located in California, Canada, New Jersey or Peru. The standard tournament rules differ little from those of Melee. The most common standard tournament rules are as follows:
Development[edit]After the runaway success of the Kirby franchise, creator Masahiro Sakurai wanted to create another property. A long-time fan of fighting games, paricularly games developed by SNK, he was interested in making a beginner friendly fighting game for four players. A specific inspiration for such an idea came from an experience at a local arcade where had a winning streak on King of Fighters '95 and felt pleased with himself, only to feel guilty upon realizing his opponent was a beginner and their partner. This made Sakurai realize that not everyone is a master, so a game designed for newcomers to have fun regardless of skill level would be a good idea.[1] His initial design for the game was called Kakuto-Geemu Ryuoh (Dragon King: The Fighting Game),[2] which featured simple characters. After presenting the game to co-worker Satoru Iwata, he helped Sakurai continue on with the project. Sakurai understood that many fighting games did not sell well, so he tried to make his game original.[2] His first idea was to include famous Nintendo characters and send them into the fray.[2] Knowing full well that he would not receive permission to do so, Sakurai created a prototype of the game without sanction from Nintendo and did not inform them until he was sure the game was well-balanced.[2] The prototype he presented featured Mario, Donkey Kong, Samus Aran, and Fox McCloud as playable characters. The idea was later approved.[2][3] Although never acknowledged by Sakurai or any developers behind Super Smash Bros., third party sources have identified Namco's 1995 fighting game The Outfoxies as a possible inspiration.[4][5] HAL Laboratory was assigned as primary developers, as Sakurai was employed by them at the time. Multiple characters, including Marth, King Dedede, Bowser, and Mewtwo were planned to be playable at one point, but were all cut for various reasons. To promote the launch of the game, Nintendo created Slamfest '99, an event hosted at the MGM Grand Adventures Theme Park in Las Angeles, Nevada on April 24, 1999. The event included stations that played the game and a boxing match between Mario, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, and Pikachu, using the same costumes from the North American commercial for the game. The event was live-streamed over the internet, which was unheard of at the time, though this caused the unfortunate side effect of regular people having no real way to archive the footage, and the event is considered lost media to this day. Super Smash Bros. features music from Nintendo's most popular gaming franchises. While many tracks are new arrangements for the game, some songs attempt to directly emulate their sources. The music for Super Smash Bros. was composed by Hirokazu Ando, who later returned as sound and music director for Super Smash Bros. Melee. A complete soundtrack was released on CD in Japan through Teichiku Records in 2001.[6] Reception[edit]
Super Smash Bros. was a commercial success, selling 5 million copies worldwide with 2.93 million sold in the United States and 1.97 million copies sold in Japan. It was the 5th best selling game for the Nintendo 64. Reviews were mostly positive, with many critics praising the game's addictive and fun multiplayer gameplay and simple controls, but it was criticized as well, mainly due to the game's lower amount of content and somewhat limited single-player mode. Gallery[edit]
Differences from later Super Smash Bros. games[edit]Super Smash Bros. is the only game in the series with the following distinctions:
Staff[edit]Main article: List of staff (SSB)
Trivia[edit]
External links[edit]
References[edit]
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
