Super Smash Bros. (universe)
The Smash Bros. universe refers to the collection of characters, stages, and properties, original to the Super Smash Bros. series, featured alongside the other licensed game characters and properties seen in the series. Its symbol is the circular symbol with two crossing lines, and it may be considered the universe that "hosts" the Smash Bros. series.
Franchise description
Through 1998, second-party Nintendo developer HAL Laboratory, creator of the Kirby franchise and led by Masahiro Sakurai, developed a fighting game for the Nintendo 64 titled Super Smash Bros.. The game was originally planned to be released in Japan only, and it had a small budget and a small amount of promotion attached; it was developed more as a "novelty product" rather than a high-profile heavily-anticipated video game and was not expected to be a huge success. The event proved otherwise; the game was popular and successful enough in Japan after its 1999 release that it was decided to be distributed as an international release, and it garnered immense critical acclaim and sales figures abroad as well as at home. It was popular for featuring famous Nintendo characters such as Mario, Link, and Pikachu from the phenomenally popular Pokémon franchise, and it gained high marks for its unique take on the fighting genre.
The success of Smash provided HAL Laboratory the incentive and financial means to develop the series' 2001 GameCube sequel, Super Smash Bros. Melee, with a larger development team and higher production values. It was released to a massive amount of glowing, positive reviews and was widely received as a vast improvement over its predecessor, with upgraded graphics and audio, refined gameplay, and a tremendous amount of new characters and content. It became the GameCube's best-selling title, with sales of 6 million copies worldwide. The depth of the game was such that in the years after Melee's initial release, the appearances of various fan-organized tournaments set in motion thriving international tournament scenes for the game, and Melee was soon officially made part of the game rosters of Major League Gaming and Evolution Championship Series. The tournament scene also provided fame for champion players such as Ken Hoang, generally hailed as the best player of Melee in the world.
In May 2006, an E3 trailer depicted the long-awaited third game in the series, Super Smash Bros. Brawl for Wii, and six months later a second trailer for the game was shown at Nintendo World. Slated for release sometime in 2007, Brawl is a heavily anticipated game by any standard. It is the first game in the series to feature characters from third-party developers and is being developed not by HAL Laboratory, but another group headed by Sakurai himself.
In the Smash Bros. series, the emphasis is not on lowering opponents health meters to zero to achieve a KO, but rather sending the opponent Out Of Bounds with strong Smash attacks that send them flying far away enough that they reach one of the stage's four borders and lose a life. Inflicting damage on opponents raises their percentage meters, and higher percentage meters mean that the opponents will fly away faster by attacks. Each of the available fighters aims to be very unique, featuring their own move styles as well as their own collections of special moves. All fighters have the ability to double-jump, and most have a special move that constitutes a third jump, and what is often seen in standard competitive gameplay is a fighter sent flying away by an attack and trying to return to the edge of the stage with multiple jumps to avoid losing a life. With stages that come in all shapes and sizes, most of them featuring their own environmental hazards to complicate the action, and Smash items that can appear and be wielded to assist a character's game, a given entry in the Smash series is always a dramatic departure from the formula of standard fighting games. The popularity and legacy of Melee is such that regularly exploiting game physics to perform "advanced techniques" such as the Wavedash and the Shffl is standard in top-tier competitive tournament play.
The primary reason for the immense success of the series is that it features famous characters, worlds, and properties from many other well-established video game franchises, primarily franchises created by Nintendo, interacting with each other in a grand tournament. The game characters and worlds featured thus far come from the Mario series, the Zelda series, the Metroid series, the Kirby series, the Star Fox series, the Pokémon series, the F-Zero series, the game EarthBound, the game Ice Climber, the Fire Emblem series, the series of handheld game devices titled Game & Watch, the Kid Icarus series, and most recently, the third-party Metal Gear series. Just as the inclusion of so many popular franchises help the Smash series command the attention of the game community, the inclusion of obscure franchises in the series helps gain renewed attention for such franchises worldwide, as is certainly the case with the Fire Emblem series.
In Super Smash Bros.
The first game in the series can be said to feature much more than a standard universe's worth of content based on the universe introduced in the game itself, compared even to the Mario universe.
Characters
None of the following can be considered selectable "characters" (they can't be selected and played as characters without hacking), but they can be considered computer opponents because that is what they are in the game's single player mode.
- Master Hand: A giant floating right-hand glove, this entity is described as the imaginary link between the real world and the Smash Bros. tournaments and can be considered the end-all, be-all host of the series. He features a voice that is heard calling out the names of combatants on the character select screen, as well as calling the status of matches before, during, and after matches, so he can be considered the narrator of the series as well. He functions as the "final boss" of the game in that the final match of the single-player mode pits the player's character against Master Hand in a 1-on-1 duel. He fights with a variety of unique movements and motions, and instead of a percentage meter, he carries a "traditional" health meter that lowers when taking damage from opponents, and reducing it to zero will defeat him and end the game in success for the player.
- Fighting Polygon Team: The "generic fighter grunts" of the game, these are purple, untextured, blocky entities whose shapes and motions are modeled vaguely after the proper fighters in the game. They appear only in the game's single-player mode in two stages: The Race to the Finish stage, in which three of them are obstacles in the player's path to the finish, and in the subsequent Fighting Polygon Team stage, where the player must battle a total of 30 of them as easy-to-KO opponents in a Multi-Man Melee-style match. There are twelve varieties of Fighting Polygons just as there are twelve distinctive fighters in the game.
In addition, an opponent called Giant Donkey Kong appears in the single-player mode. An enlarged version of the Mario character Donkey Kong, this is not necessarily considered an original Smash Bros. property because his universe symbol is DK's. However, his appearance in the game's single-player mode and nowhere else in the game makes him sometimes associated with Smash more than Mario. In the same vein is the opponent Metal Mario, a heavy, slow-moving, and powerful metal entity molded after Mario, whose appearance and role in Smash and its sequel as a "sub-final boss" gives it an association with the Smash series as well as the Mario series (though his universe symbol is a chrome version of the Mario universe symbol). Both opponents can take a lot of punishment before Smash attacks can safely send them flying.
Stages
The game features a lot of environments thematically original to the game itself, and none of these are selectable in the game's multi-player mode (hacking aside); they are only available as single-player content. The following stages would work as multiplayer stages if they were available in the multiplayer mode:
- Master Hand's Residence: The "final battle arena" of the game, this flat, featureless platform is where the last stage of the game pits the player's character against the enemy Master Hand. It is quite literally the SSB version of Melee's Final Destination stage, but it is not identified in this game by the name given here. The stage takes place in outer space.
- Fighting Polygon Stage: This simply-laid-out stage right before the single player mode's final bout is likewise quite literally the SSB version of Melee's Battlefield stage, but the game does not give the stage the name. Three evenly-laid-out platforms above the big ground platform constitue the balanced battleground where the player's character must battle thirty separate Fighting Polygon opponents.
- Metal Mario's Arena: A small and simple stage consisting of a big platform with a small platform above it, this is the single-player stage where the battle against Metal Mario takes place. It takes place in a metal mine of sorts.
The following stages are more "mini-game"-centric stages featured as single-player content:
- Target Test: Twelve separate maze-like stages are accessible as single-player Target Test challenges in the Target Test mode. There is one stage for each character, and it is specifically constructed to test the character's ability to attack all ten targets in the stage as fast as possible in the time limit. The character will be required to go through his respective Target Test stage early in the game's main single-player mode.
- Board the Platform: Likewise, twelve separate maze-like stages are accessible as single-player Board the Platform challenges in the Board the Platform mode. There is one stage for each character, and it is specifically constructed to test the character's ability to jump onto all ten yellow platforms in the stage as fast as possible in the time limit. The character will be required to go through his respective Board the Platform stage later in the game's main single-player mode.
- Race to the Finish: This five-story stage is a single-player mini-game where the character must race from the upper left to the lower right of the stage and reach the end as fast as possible within the time limit, while avoiding obstacles such as floating bumpers, rolling bombs, and three computer-controlled Fighting Polygon opponents.
And there are some environments that exist within the game cartridge but are totally locked away from normal players, and can only be accessed through hacking. First off, Tutorial Stage 64, the environment seen in the game's How To Play segment, is a simple green stage with one platform above it; it appears to be Dream Land with the Whispy Woods background and the top and right platforms removed specifically to allow the segment to demonstrate gameplay. Dream Land also appears to have two additional early beta-versions of itself present in the cart as separate stages. Kirby Beta Stage 1 is Dream Land without the Whispy Woods but with a different looking tree in its place, while Kirby Beta Stage 2 is a version of Beta Stage 1 with a much wider ground platform and a lot of odd aerial platforms above it; it is clear this stage and its objects were used for testing by the developers. All three of these versions of Dream Land may be considered Kirby properties as much as they are Smash properties.
Items
Roughly one-third of the game's items are original to the game itself.
- Beam Sword: A powerful energy sword, this bludgeoning weapon carries sound effects similar to a Lightsabre in the Star Wars movie franchise in the Japanese version of the game, but it was changed for the U.S. release, possibly to avoid copyright trouble.
- Home-Run Bat: This bludgeoning item is the most potentially deadly offensive measure in the game; while normally featuring unremarkable power with standard attacks, a Smash attack with the Bat carries so much knockback that it often causes a One-Hit KO to the target, regardless of how healthy the opponent is. Some consider it a property native to the EarthBound franchise, but Melee's Trophy Gallery identifies the bat as having made its first game appearance in the original Smash and not EarthBound.
- Fan: The polar opposite to the Home-Run Bat and the Hammer, the Fan is weak enough that picking it up may be considered a handicap. While it can attack extremely quickly, it does tiny damage and offers no knockback, so it is not considered a helpful item.
- Ray Gun: This item is the standard projectile weapon, firing laser beams that do good knockback. Melee describes it as having originated in this game, contrary to the popular belief that it originates from the Star Fox universe.
- Bumper: A unique item not seen in the sequel, the thrown Bumper creates an obstacle on the ground that knocks back any opponent that touches it, and the bumper in response slides in the opposite direction. If another opponent gets in its way, the process repeats.
- Crate: One of the game's four Item-containment units, the crate is by far the biggest. It is a giant wooden box with the Smash symbol on it, and it can be picked up, carried, and hurled at opponents as a projectile. When it crashes into the ground, it splinters and up to three items contained inside can appear.
- Barrel: Another item that can contain items within, the Barrel is somewhat less large and may contain less items than the Crate, but as a hurled weapon it can roll on its side before breaking. Some consider it a property native to the Donkey Kong franchise, but Melee's Trophy Gallery identifies the barrel as having made its first game appearance in the original Smash and not Donkey Kong. (Not to be confused with Melee's Barrel Cannon item).
- Capsule: This pill-shaped item contains a single item inside. It can be thrown as a fast projectile.
- Egg: This is a white egg that acts just like a Capsule. Some consider it a property native to the Pokémon franchise, especially considering that Eggs are scattered about by the appearance of the Pokémon Chansey, but Melee's Trophy Gallery identifies the Egg as having made its first game appearance in the original Smash and not Pokémon. All four of the game's item-containment units have a chance that they contain an explosive rather than an item, so these units can sometimes be used as Bob-ombs.
In Super Smash Bros. Melee
The sequel to Smash is noted for being an immensely larger game than its predecessor, and the amount of original properties featured in the game is seemingly increased proportionally.
Characters
Like in the previous game, none of the game's characters are considered true "characters" in that they are selectable for play (without hacking, anyway). These all make specific appearances as single-player opponents.
- Master Hand: The "master of ceremonies" and "narrator" of the series returns in Melee as a "final boss" enemy like before, but it certainly is no longer the only one. With a slightly redesigned look and some new moves, Master Hand is otherwise not much different as a final boss of the game's Classic Single-Player mode, though he can perform some two-on-one moves with his newly introduced "twin", Crazy Hand.
- Crazy Hand: The "twin brother" of Master Hand, Crazy Hand is a left hand and is a "hidden boss" in the game. It is described as the embodiment of a child who derives pleasure from destroying his creations, as opposed to Master Hand's will to play around. In the final bout of Classic mode on Normal, Hard, or Very Hard difficulty, when Master Hand has had over half of his hit points depleted, Crazy Hand will erratically enter the battle and join the fight against you, making it a two-on-one battle - obviously this is much tougher. Crazy Hand features at least three of his own unique attacks, and the two "Hand Bros." will occasionally perform a special two-hand super attack together. If the player can beat both enemies in the match, he wins with an extra Crazy Hand KO bonus. Both Hand Bros. can also be fought at Event Match 50.
- Giga Bowser: One of the most sensational entities in the Smash Bros. series, this colossus of a fighter is a heavily enlarged, powered-up, and mutated version of the Mario character Bowser, himself the heftiest fighter in the standard Melee roster. Giga Bowser, whose body is proportionally different to Bowser, has larger horns, and has a manic expression on his face, is a hidden final boss in the game's Adventure Mode. At Normal difficulty or above, when the Adventure Mode has been beaten in under 18 minutes and the final Bowser enemy has been KO-ed, Giga Bowser will appear to fight you, and if you defeat him, you gain the Giga Bowser KO bonus and the Giga Bowser trophy if you don't have it. In this Adventure Mode appearance he receives an enormous handicap; Giga Bowser also appears in Event Match 51, with less of a handicap.
- Fighting Wire Frames: The spiritual successors to the Fighting Polygon Team, these easily KO'ed opponents are just what their name suggests: pink wire-frame models of fighters without special talents. Their insides feature a vague skeletal and organ system, however, and a red Smash-universe symbol resides where each Wire Frame's face should be. Unlike the Fighting Polygons, however, the Wire Frames come only in two varieties: Male and Female. Male Wire Frames feature the body structure and movement/attack style of Captain Falcon while the females are the same with Zelda. They appear in the Adventure Mode, Multi-Man Melee mode, and some Event Matches.
In addition, returning from the previous game are Giant Donkey Kong, appearing in the Adventure mode (though in Melee he is no longer so special because most other characters can become giants themselves through various means), and Metal Mario, as a Mario permanently under the influence of the Metal Box item. In addition is Metal Luigi, who battles the player alongside Metal Mario late in Adventure Mode. Metal Luigi will not team up with Metal Mario if normal Luigi has not been unlocked yet, so that fight would be easier. Finally, the Sandbag from the Home-Run Contest mode might be considered a character because it registers damage as an opponent.
Stages
The game features even more environments thematically original to the game itself than the previous game. The two Multiplayer-friendly stages that follow, however, are indeed unlockable for selection
- Final Destination: The Master Hand's Residence arena returns as the "final battle arena" of the game. The flat, featureless platform is where many single-player boss encounters take place, and it is also among the most popular stages for use in Tournament Legal. It floats through outer space, then seems to travel through a wormhole where it will then appear in an earth-like world where landscapes are visible in the background.
- Battlefield: The Fighting Polygon Stage from SSB returns with its popularized name of Battlefield. It is the site of many stages and events such as the Multi-Man Melee competitions, and is where Fighting Wire Frames are always fought. For its basic, standard layout, the stage is very popular.
The following stages are more "mini-game"-centric stages featured as single-player content:
- Target Test: Like in the previous game, each character has his or her own separate maze-like stage that is accessible as a single-player Target Test challenge in the Target Test mode. There is one stage for each character, and it is specifically constructed to test the character's ability to attack all ten targets in the stage as fast as possible in the time limit. The character will be required to go through his respective Target Test stage early in the game's Classic mode. A total of 25 target test stages reside in the game for normal play; a 26th is locked away, however, available only through hacking. This stage belongs to Sheik but it was cut for some reason.
- Race to the Finish: The spiritual successor to the previous game's Race to the Finish, this stage is laid out much differently; it is now a left-to-right path dotted with potential exits, and the character aims to get as close to the end as possible in the time limit.
- Trophy Collector: This bonus stage in Classic mode is a mini-game where a platform has a container of sorts in the middle, and three trophies will fall down from the sky. The character is to try and attack the falling trophies so they will fall into the container, in order to earn them, and collecting all three will yield the Collector bonus.
- All-Star Teleporter: This grassland environment is the hub between matches in the All-Star Mode. It contains three Heart Containers, a portal in the center that transports you to the next bout, and in the background the progress of the All-Star Mode is displayed; trophies of the opponents defeated thus far stand on the ground, while portraits of the next opponents are displayed in the air above. This features music from the Kirby series.
- Home-Run Contest Arena: This football-stadium is the site of the Home-Run Contest mini-game. On an elevated platform, the Sandbag resides, and in ten seconds the character must damage it without knocking it off the platform, then use the nearby Home-Run Bat to send Sandbag flying east, where the distance traveled is recorded. The stage seems to stretch on endlessly to the east.
Like the previous game, there are some environments that can be seen only through hacking. Test is very intriguing; it is a very wide white-ground stage with several aerial platforms shaped differently. Like the previous Kirby Beta Test 2, this is clearly the "testing ground" the developers used during development. The background actually features a photograph of a pub. Hidden in the game's Debug Menu are the titles of two other stages that crash the game when selected: 10-2 and DUMMY. DUMMY can be opened up with a special hack, however, and the stage reveals itself to be completely empty, black space without any death-line borders. For fun, some players like to hack in death lines and activate an infinite double-jumping hack to allow for a completely aerial bout.
Items
Compared to the characters and stages, Melee's collection of original items is not much different at all from its predecessor.
- Beam Sword: Returns from Smash as a bludgeoning weapon, but the length of its blade now changes based on the power of the attack swining it. Its power and knockback have been degraded somewhat.
- Home-Run Bat: Returns from Smash essentially unaltered.
- Fan: Returns from Smash essentially unaltered.
- Ray Gun: Returns from Smash essentially unaltered.
- Food: A new item that randomly spawns as tiny health-replenishers. There are 27 varieties of food in the game, and they restore usually 3% or so health per item.
- Party Ball: A new containment unit, this is a big yellow ball that can be carried and hurled like the other containment units, but after it is thrown it will float up, make a noise, and open up to drop a bunch of stuff. Sometimes it drops random items, sometimes it drops a load of Food, and sometimes it drops Bob-ombs.
- Crate: Returns from Smash essentially unaltered.
- Barrel: Returns from Smash essentially unaltered.
- Capsule: Returns from Smash essentially unaltered.
- Egg: Returns from Smash essentially unaltered.
Full Trophy List
- Master Hand
- Crazy Hand
- Giga Bowser
- Fighting Wire Frames
- Male Wire Frame
- Female Wire Frame
- Food
- Ray Gun
- Beam Sword
- Home Run Bat
- Fan
- Party Ball
- Crate
- Barrel
- Capsule
- Egg
- Smash Coins
- Target
- Sandbag
- Battlefield
- Final Destination
In Super Smash Bros. Brawl
The trailers released thus far for this upcoming game have primarily shown properties from all the other game franchises such as Mario, without many properties original to the Smash series present. The Battlefield stage from Melee returns, but with a visual makeover so that it now resembles a somewhat Greek-themed island floating far above an expansive canyon, and it seems to go through a day and night cycle. Rumors as to whether this actually becomes a property of the Kid Icarus universe or maybe the Fire Emblem universe are plentiful, like similar rumors concerning the Castle stage(s).
A new item seems to play a role in a new gameplay system in Brawl, the tentatively named Smash Emblem, floating orbs in the shape of the Smash series symbol which characters can collect to build up and unleash apparent "Super Smash" attacks. The full mechanics behind these items are currently unclear.
Another new item revealed more recently is the Gooey Bomb. It is a spherical explosive encased in a gooey bubble. It is a variant on the old Motion Sensor Bomb in that it is an explosive that can be thrown at something, it will stick to it, and explode after a certain period of time. The Gooey Bomb, however, can now stick to characters the bomb is thrown at, and it has a chance to transfer between characters when characters pass by each other.
