Super Smash Bros. Review
Welcome one, welcome all to my Smash-a-thon! For those of
you who don’t know, Smash Bros. is my all time favorite game series. It takes
the best of Nintendo (and sometimes 3rd party closely tied to
Nintendo) and puts it all in one game for them all to duke it out! It’s a great
concept and needless to say it was executed very well. The way Smash plays is
really simple and easy to learn but also has an amazing amount of depth to it.
To start it off I’m reviewing the game that started it all, which is simply
just called Super Smash Bros. These reviews will probably be longer since these
games are packed with content for me to talk about. Let’s start smashing away
at this game, shall we?
Graphics
This game’s graphics are hard to judge from a 2014 point of
view, but knowing other games that were on the Nintendo 64 at the time, this
game looked relatively good back then, so I’ll give the graphics an ok. It
certainly has aged rather poorly over time but for when it was new it looked
fine.
Plot
This game doesn’t really have a ‘plot’. The closest you can
get to one in this game is the mode where you go through levels and defeat most
of the characters in the game with Master Hand at the end. This would later go
on to be called Classic Mode in the future Smash games. Since there’s pretty
much no plot except for that, which I still wouldn’t really count as a plot, I
will make the plot non-applicable to my final verdict of the game.
Gameplay
Now is where the real meat of the game lies. First I will
talk about the basic gameplay of Smash Bros. and then go through all of the
characters and talk about them. So Smash is unlike your typical fighter.
Instead of HP bars that you’re trying to lower, each character has a percentage
that builds up with every hit that you take. The higher the percentage, the
farther your knockback is. You can roll out of the way to dodge attacks, use
your shield, dodge in place, or dodge in the air. Each stage in the game is
taken from a game represented by a fighter such as the Mushroom Kingdom from
Super Mario Bros. or Yoshi’s Island. Some stages have hazards that you must
avoid while fighting. Up to 4 characters can be playing at a time. Now on to
the playable characters.
Mario is the very
first character I every played as in this game. I make it a tradition to always
play as Mario first in a Smash Bros. game. Well, at least every official Smash
game. He’s an all-around character that doesn’t have much remotely special about
him. However, he does have a recovery move that can be very effective if you
manage to hit someone with it. Overall he’s a good character for beginners.
Luigi is almost
exactly like Mario except his recovery has a different effect, which is when
you get it ‘sweet-spotted’ you can cause it to do this ping sound. Luigi’s
taunt can also do some damage if you use it at the right time. He also has
really poor traction, which has always been a thing about Luigi in general.
Link is another
good character to use for beginners. He has pretty good recovery and his
projectiles are useful. His grab attack, which is the hookshot, works best in
this game out of the 3 currently out games. It doesn’t do a sagging thing if
you fail to grab someone. Link has always been considered a bad character by
competitive smashers. I personally think he’s okay, at least in this game and
in Melee. In Brawl… well, I’ll get to Link in Brawl when it’s time for me to.
Samus is the
lowest-ranking character on the tiers list for the original Smash game. Like
Link, I think she’s not half bad and her charged shot can be deadly if you can
successfully pull it off. She’s heavy
and floaty. She’s definitely better in the later games, but she’s not exactly
terrible in this game.
Pikachu is really
good in this game as well as every Smash game that has come out so far. He’s
fast, has quick attacks, and has a deadly down special that gets even better in
later games. Pikachu also has really good recovery.
Kirby is my main
in this game. He has effective and hard-hitting attacks and phenomenal
recovery. The only thing wrong with Kirby is that he’s lightweight so a good
hard smash attack could send him flying.
Fox is one of if
not the most popular Smash Bros. character ever. He has fast and effective attacks
and he’s quick on his feet. He’s pretty good in this game but he gets even
better in Melee.
Donkey Kong is a
heavy character with powerful attacks and good recovery. The only real problem
with him is that his size opens him up for attacks. His Down B is especially
good as it’s pretty much unstoppable. The Donkey Kong Punch can be very
satisfying to pull off if fully charged and used.
Ness Is by far
the hardest character in the game to unlock. You have to beat classic mode with
a stock of 3 or less without any continues. It took me a while to do this but
once I did it I felt satisfied and relieved. Ness doesn’t really have a
recovery move. PK Thunder is a long range traveling projectile that you can
control the direction of. You can use it to launch Ness forward, sure, but it
doesn’t always work in your favor. PK Fire and PK Cross are effective moves as
well as his side smash, the baseball bat. He’s a good all-around character.
Captain Falcon is
one awesome character for one reason and one reason alone; the infamous Falcon
Punch. It feels so good to pull that off and it’s faster than it is in the
later Smash Bros. games. He’s also the fastest character in the game so a
character with good speed and powerful attacks equals a great fighter. Show me
your moves! Yes! (He’s also one of my mains in this game)
Jigglypuff is one
of my least favorite characters in the series. She just never really appealed
to me and it really confuses me as to why Sakurai picked this Pokémon to be
part of the original crew over other Pokémon like Mewtwo (who was only in Melee) or even Charizard.
Jigglypuff does have good recovery but her snore attack is almost impossible to
pull off, which is a one-hit KO move. She does get a little better in Melee (or
according to the tiers list, much better) but even then I just never wanted to
use her. My guess is that Sakurai saw the resemblance between Kirby and
Jigglypuff and since he created Kirby he put Jigglypuff in as well.
Yoshi is a character I just never cared for in general Smash
wise. I’m not a big fan of Yoshi in general either. His Up B is just throwing
an egg so you only get 2 jumps to recoverm but his flutter jump more than makes
up for it. He has decent combo ability and it can be funny when he successfully
eats a character and turns them into an egg, but I just don’t use Yoshi very
much. I honestly don’t really know why.
Now there are many different modes in this game. There’s the
mode that would go on to be called Classic mode in later titles where you go
through several rounds of fighting characters from the game (sometimes “teams”
or multiples of them) and you sometimes have a character or 2 team up with you
such as the level where you fight a giant Donkey Kong. The end part has you
fight Master Hand, who interestingly enough has an HP rather than a percentage
builder. There is also break the targets, where each character has their own
level specifically designed for them to go through and break targets with their
moves. Board the platforms is like break the targets except it has you reaching
platforms. This has sadly not been in any Smash Bros. game since the original.
Race to the finish is a short level where you do exactly what it sounds like,
getting to the end before the time runs out. There are enemies and obstacles in
the way. This cannot be played outside of the classic mode unlike break the
targets and board the platforms. In fights you can have items, which help
spruce up the fight. One of the most interesting ones is the Pokéball, which if
thrown, sends out a random Pokémon that helps the one who threw the Pokéball.
The only one that doesn’t actually do anything is Goldeen. You can do team
battles where you and either a CPU-controlled character or your friend can team
up against up to 2 other characters. You
can either do timed matches or stock matches, the former being where you set
how long the battle will be and you fight until then with the winner being the
one with the least deaths. The latter, stock, is where you select a number of
lives each character has and the last one standing wins. Each character has
their own victory taunt, but some share the same theme. They all have their
different in-battle taunts, which don’t have any effects but are fun to use
when you KO an opponent. You bet this game has great gameplay. It has tons of
variety and ways to play that equal hours upon hours of fun. This game doesn’t
even have half of the stuff the later Smash games have.
Soundtrack
This game’s soundtrack is awesome. It has great remixes of
themes from the game franchises that are represented in this game and awesome
original themes too. My favorite tracks are the intro theme, the character
select theme, the remix of the Zelda theme, and the remix of the Great Gourmet
Race theme from Kirby.
Overall
Super Smash Bros. is a great game. It was the start of
something amazing and while it’s a very modest start compared to what was to
come for this amazing series, it was still a very solid start to probably the
best franchise in gaming. It’s sometimes refreshing to go back to this game
after playing Melee or Brawl to experience a more simple Smash game. I
recommend this game to pretty much anyone out there as I don’t see how you
could not enjoy Smash Bros. I guess it boils down to preferences, but this game
is a blast to play and a great classic. If you have a Nintendo 64, you likely
already have this game, but if you don’t, get it. If you have a Wii you can get
this on the virtual console and of course you can also download a ROM of the
game. The next review of the Smash-a-thon will be Melee, and all I have to say
is that I am going to put my ALL into these next 2 reviews. I am going all out
and putting in my heart and soul into the Melee and Brawl reviews as these
games are worthy of such effort in reviewing.
Not to say I don’t already put plenty of thought in these, but just to
say that the Melee and Brawl reviews will be extra special. See you next time
and happy smashing!
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