Super Smash Bros.

Super Smash Bros.
Exclusively for the Nintendo 64
Rating: 3 stars


Nintendo is known for many franchises, including the Mario series, the Legend of Zelda series, the Metroid series, the Donkey Kong series, the Star Fox series and the Kirby series. But each of these franchises stays apart. What if they were all put together in an epic crossover? Fans have done this for years in their fanfics. Well, Nintendo is about to become fanfic game writers because they make a Nintendo crossover video game called "Super Smash Bros."

The game starts with 8 characters: Mario (Super Mario Bros.), Link (Legend of Zelda), Samus Aran (Metroid), Kirby (Kirby), Fox McCloud (Star Fox) , Donkey Kong (Donkey Kong Country), Pikachu (Pokemon), and Yoshi (Super Mario Bros. and Yoshi Island). Later on, 4 more characters can be added: Captain Falcon (F Zero), Ness (Earth Bound), Jigglypuff (Pokemon again) and Luigi (Super Mario Bros. again). And it's simple as this: you fight. Your basic attack is the A button. Your special attacks are the B button. They vary with the directional button you pick (up, down, or B alone). The trigger Z is throw and the L/R buttons are shields. With these buttons, you attack one another. The more damage you receive, which is measured in percents, the more likely are to fall off the stage and die. There are 2 ways to play. First, you can play stock lives, which means each player starts out with the same number of lives, and once you lose all your lives, you're out, and the last one standing wins. The second way to play is time. You fight as much as you can in a set number of minutes. You get a point for knocking someone out, but you lose a point for getting knocked out. Player with the most points at the end wins.

This is mad fun to play with your friends. You get to see your favorite Nintendo character, play on stages from familiar Nintendo game settings, and even use items you recognize from other Nintendo games, like Pokeballs, and at the same time, use items newly invented for this game, like the Beam Sword. You can get so into this game with your friends, you will be playing for hours non-stop!

But if you're playing alone, there aren’t too many options. There is a single player story mode, but I use the term "story" loosely. There is not really a story. The "story" is that the Master Hard is playing with this toy box full of dolls from the Nintendo games. The solo mode brings you through 10 stages, leading up to the 10th stage, fighting the Master Hand, who is measured in HP. The 3 of the 9 stages before test the player’s ability to control and manipulate the character with breaking targets and board the platforms and race to the finish. The other 6 of the 9 are just random player fights. Sure, they change it up once a while with a metal character, a giant character, a team battle and numerous enemies, but it's still virtually the same. So there's not much more to do with single player. At this point, you might as well just play multiplayer with a CPU.

Speaking of breaking the targets and boarding the platforms, you can play those individually outside of solo mode. But once again, it's not too exciting. The only reason you do it is just to unlock things, and then you're done with them. In the same area, there is a training mode where you can practice. While it is geniusly made, it's once again nothing exciting.

As I went through my review, I tried my best not to compare it with its sequels that were yet to come. But I can't help it. The sequels show us how much more they game developers could have done, but didn't. Like I said before, this game is really only for its multiplayer use: to play with a bunch of friends. And we all know how socially well a gaming nerd does :P The solo mode is lacking tremendously, and is only played to unlock things. It wouldn't have hurt to think up a better story, as we see with the sequels