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| Art by pwpk |
History has always been an intriguing subject for me. I always love to look into the past of my favorite movies, books, shows or games and see how they came to be. The history of Nintendo's massive crossover series is quite fascinating to say the least. To say far more, well, read on, reader.
Smashing Beginnings
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| An early image of what would go on to become the biggest crossover series in the history of video games. |
Dragon King: The Fighting Game began development began in 1998 and was directed by Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai, who would later be joined by his colleague and future Nintendo President of Japan, the late/great Satoru Iwata. Placeholders for the fighters were a bunch of generic-looking no names that would go on to supply the move set for a certain captain. Sakurai's idea for fighters was unthinkable because he thought it wouldn't get approval: he wanted the fighters of Dragon King to be Nintendo characters such as Mario, Yoshi, Donkey Kong and Pikachu. Nintendo was a very different company back then, so one could see why Nintendo characters beating each other up probably wouldn't fly with the top brass. And yet, the idea was approved. Sakurai probably knew that giving Dragon King more appeal would help it sell and tossing around some nameless polygons wasn't gonna cut it. Nintendo's characters are known far and wide and it definitely helped supply the game with far more personality than it would have had otherwise. I'm guessing someone (perhaps Sakurai himself) thought that with the Nintendo characters inclusion being green-lit, name change was in order. Good thing, too, because Dragon King: The Fighting Game does not roll off the tongue very well. For all the digging I've done, no one seems to know how the name Super Smash Bros. came to be, but it sounds a heck of a lot better than it's initial name.
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| One-on-one fights were possible in the first Smash... |
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| ...But one of the biggest draws was the four player free-for-all battles. |
I still remember the first time I'd ever heard of Super Smash Bros. It was in an issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly (those magazines that use to rule video game news and reviews back in the day). I'm guessing they were previewing the Japanese version because the full title I recall was "Nintendo All-Stars: Smash Bros." Nintendo's characters had made appearances in other games before, but never like this. This was a full blown crossover. It was so strange looking at screen shots and seeing Nintendo characters whaling on each other. And yet, I knew it was a game, I wanted. Strange as it was, it sounded so cool to play as Mario, Samus, or Link in a fighting game unlike anything else.
The fighting in Smash was also much more comical than other fighting games. Loud, crunchy, cartoonish sound effects were heard when connecting hits on opponents. When fighters were KO'd they woulld sometimes soar off into the background and fade out as twinkle or smack up against the TV screen, adding a element of humor. The method of knocking out fighters was also vastly different from other games in the genre. There were no health bars to be found in Smash, rather the game used percentage meters. The more damage fighters take on, the higher the percent increases, making it easier to knock a fighter off stage Just because you got sent flying didn't mean you couldn't return to the stage. All fighters can perform multiple jumps, bringing them back into the game, so long as they weren't too far away from the ledge.
Stages in which players fought on weren't just random backgrounds but every single level was modeled after themes from the games the respective characters came from. Mario and Luigi's stage took place at Peach's Castle, Samus had Brinstar, Kirby had Dream Land and so on. Each stage also had a type of hazard that players would have to avoid or send their opposition into. Hyrule would spawn random twisters that launched the player upwards, Whispy Woods would try to blow players off stage and random Pokemon would come out in Saffron City. Randomly appearing items also made things pretty interesting. If you threw a Pokemon, you could get aid from Blastoise or Staryu. If you were unlucky, Goldeen would pop out and do nothing. Beam Swords, Ray Guns, Fans, the Hammer from Donkey Kong and several other items could litter the battlefield to turn the tide in your favor. All of this ensured that Super Smash Bros. was an insanely chaotic game and with the option for up to four players at once, it was great for multiplayer. Players that didn't want items on were taken into consideration with the option to disable them being included.
When all was said and done, Super Smash Bros. was the fourth best selling game on the N64 and a sequel would release a little over two years later and a very ambitious one at that.
A Bigger, Better Sequel
With a short development period of only thirteen months, Super Smash Bros. Melee was released on the GameCube in 2001. Melee was a massive step up from the original Smash 64 not only in terms of visuals and sounds, but in gameplay and content. Melee was much faster (the fastest game in the series in fact), had a roaster of 26 fighters over the first game's 12, had way more stages and wealth of modes to ensure that it would be a very long time before players ran out of things to do.
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| Bowser and Peach were two of the many new fighters added to the Melee roster. |
Melee was responsible for getting gamers acquainted with some of Nintendo's (at the time) more obscure characters with the several newcomers to the roster. Popo and Nana, the duo that makes up the Ice Climbers had not been in a game since Ice Climber on the NES. One of the last characters players could unlock, Mr. Game & Watch is one of Nintendo's oldest icons, even predating Mario. He was also the oddball character that no one saw coming and began a trend that would continue with each new Smash title. I'd wager most Nintendo fans and gamers had no clue who Marth and Roy were and the two's inclusion probably helped spark interest in the Fire Emblem series, a franchise that now enjoys steady releases outside of Japan.
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| Among the copious amount of new content to Melee, Trophies were a fan favorite. [Image from The Mushroom Kingdom.net] |
It wasn't just new fighters in the roster that had players asking questions about who these characters were. Melee gave birth to trophies, unlockable and purchasable (with in game currency) figurines with information about each one. These ranged from tons of know characters to a plethora of less known and to many players, unknown characters from Nintendo's rich history. The inclusion of these trophies made Melee feel like one had their own Nintendo museum.
For all of the new content and character's Melee added, however, perhaps the game's greatest contribution to gamers was that it lit the fire for competitive play. Despite the game being close to 20 years old, Melee still has a thriving competitive community. Not only is the game at Evo every year, but each Smash game to follow has had it's own competitive scene.
As influential as Melee was, the game was not without it's flaws. The game's speedy development period ensured that a plethora of issues either weren't fixed before release or went by unnoticed. A few of the game's issues included character specific moves with insane hit boxes, moves that when they connect cause no damage whatsoever, easy infinites, shielding that doesn't even cover the entire character's body upon activation grabs that don't work or a grab that can be used when you aren't even within grabbing range. You've also got several characters that are just leagues better than the rest of the cast. It is highly common to see Marth, Fox, Falco, Shiek, and Jigglypuff in tournaments due to how well they can perform. Because of this, the majority of the roster isn't viable for competitive play, meaning you end up seeing many of the same characters in matches over and over again.
There Will Be Brawl
2006 marked the year that Nintendo would release the Wii and when that year's E3 rolled around, fans had a new game to look forward to: Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The trailer was heavily focused on introducing newcomers that included, Pit, Wario, and Meta Knight among others. When the trailer was seemingly over, fans were greeted to one very unexpected reveal: Solid Snake. For the first time in the series, a third party character was joining the battle. Apparently Snake's creator, Hideo Kojima was/is a big fan of Smash and wanted Snake in Melee but the game was too far along in development to include him.
Snake wasn't the only special third party guest that would be in Brawl. When SEGA became a third party publisher in 2001, Nintendo welcomed them with open arms. Sonic games sold quite well on Nintendo systems and though SEGA refused Sakurai's initial proposal to include Sonic in Brawl, they later allowed it, which led to the game being delayed.
The hype leading up to Brawl's release was massive. After the phenomenal game that was Melee, a title that improved upon the first Smash in every aspect, fans were expecting a lot from Brawl. In a some ways it delivered, in others, it disappointed. Due to the numerous changes, Brawl is the most divisive game in the series.
As much as Melee was loved, especially by the competitive scene, some felt the game was far too fast. Breakneck speeds can be great for a fighting game, but they certainly aren't everyone's cup of tea. Perhaps in response to this, Brawl was a slower, more floaty game than Melee, which turned a good chunk of the Melee crowed off. The slower speed wasn't the only criticism labeled against Brawl. The game also had a tripping mechanic. You wouldn't trip constantly during fights but the fact that such an eyebrow raising feature was there in the first place made zero sense. Even those that liked Brawl hated tripping. Some believe Sakurai implemented the feature just to discourage the competitive scene that Melee drew in.
Brawl also had the most ambitious single player mode out of any Smash game out at the time in the form of Subspace Emissary. Classic and All-Star Modes were still around as well as Break the Targets and Homerun Contest but Subspace was a full blown story mode where the entire 40 plus character roster united to save the world from Taboo and featured tons of cut scenes that were adored by many.
While reducing Brawl's speed may have alienated some Smash fans, it also made the game more accessible to new players and it didn't stop the game from selling truckloads of copies. It isn't uncommon to have some Smash fans tell you this is their favorite game in spite of it's faults.
Handheld and Console Smashing
After a rocky start in 2011, the Nintendo 3DS was selling units at a very steady pace by the time 2013 rolled around. The Wii U, which launched in 2012, wasn't faring so well. Horrible advertisements and Nintendo's poor communication to the masses of what the system was, ensured that the system only sold over 13 million copies in it's four year life cycle. Nevertheless, the Wii U was still given a Smash title, one it would share (or sorts) with the 3DS.
The wait for this new Smash game was about as unbearable as the wait for Brawl. An announcement that a new Smash game was in the works for both systems was made during E3 2011, but development hadn't actually begun until 2012 and the games would not be released until late 2014.
Going by the bizarre titles of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, the 3DS version was released first with the Wii U version following a month later. Fans often refer to these titles as Smash 4 to alleviate confusion.
Making the wait for this Smash that much harder was the character reveal trailers. During E3 2013, it was revealed that among the newcomers were Villager from Animal Crossing and freaking jump and shoot Mega Man, making the third party representation that much larger. More Fire Emblem reps were included with the additions of Lucina and Robin and Little Mac had been upgraded from Assist Trophy to a fully playable character. Even that cherry-chasing dot muncher, Pac-Man showed up to throw hands in Smash 4. For the all of the new characters that were added, unfortunately, some were given the axe. The Ice Climbers were hard to get working properly on the 3DS, so the duo was admitted from Smash 4 altogether. Snake was also cut because Konami ran off to frolic in mobile and pachinko land and were overall being a very scummy company. Wolf was also deleted, making one less Star Fox rep. Still, it was difficult to be too bummed about character cuts when the total roaster was made up of 58 characters including Ryu of Street Fighter fame, Final Fantasy VII's Cloud and Bayonetta, a character people claimed was far too sexy for Smash, never mind the fact that Bayonetta 2 was a Wii U exclusive that Nintendo published. Even Metwo and Roy came back as DLC.
Smash 4 was faster than Brawl, but not lightening fast like Melee, a game some say was too fast. All stages all supported an omega form, which was great for competitive players and onlookers that were sick of seeing the same handful of stages from Melee and Brawl. This was also the first game in the series to receive patch updates making the meta game shift even further. Unfortunately patch updates would cease near the end of the Wii U's short life span and even with the numerous nerfs she'd gotten, Bayonetta was still too much for many players to handle, making her nearly a universally hated character across the Smash community.
The Wii U version of Smash 4 was the first to allow up to eight players to battle all at once. If you thought four players was chaotic, the frenzy is even greater when eight players and duking it out. Only certain stages were playable on eight player Smash and some stages such as the Great Cave Offensive and Palutina's Temple were made with this mode in mind.
Despite the console version of the game being on a console that was lagging far behind the PS4 and Xbox One, Smash 4 was still a best selling title and helped launch the careers of several YouTubers and bring others a bigger spotlight. Alphara, IntroSpecktive and Keef Crew are just a few of the content creators on YouTube that got exposure or even greater exposure by making Smash 4 content. With the fifth game in the series having dropped recently, I imagine these creators and more are only going to keep growing.
The Ultimate Smash Experience
The Switch version of Smash was nowhere to be seen in 2017. Looking back at the incredible year Nintendo had with their new system, that's probably a good thing because the Switch saw so many heavy hitters that year that a new Smash game coming out the same year as titles like Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild would have been overkill. Especially when you consider what the next and current Smash title has slammed down on the table.
Nintendo threw us a bread crumb of the Smash game that was to come during the March 2018 Nintendo Direct. This had many questioning whether the game would be a new game or a port since Nintendo had been porting Wii U games over to the Switch.
You've heard of phrases like "And the fandom rejoiced" or "And the crowed goes wild!" Those phrases and all others like them are understatements. When we were given more information on the coming Smash game during E3 2018, fans went ballistic. You nee only search YouTube to fine dozens of reactions of people losing their minds over the tagline of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: EVERYONE IS HERE! Every single character that has appeared in a Smash game. Pichu, Young Link, the Ice Climbers. Wolf. Every. Single. One of them. Is in Ultimate. Several new brawlers have joined the party as well including Inkling, Isabelle, Simon and Richter Belmont and the long awaited King K. Rool. The base game for Ultimate has over 70 characters, making the previous game's roster seem tiny in comparison. Five more characters are scheduled as DLC with the first character divulged to be Persona 5's Joker. The remaining four character's is anybody's guess.
Ultimate also brings back tons of fan favorite stages with the option for battlefield and omega forms and the ability to turn hazards off. Without taking the two aforementioned features into account that's over 100 stages. The game does a marvelous job catering to both competitive and casual Smash fans. It runs faster than both Brawl and Smash 4 but not insanely fast like Melee. With a wealth of characters, tons of stages and plenty of options for customization, Ultimate truly does live up to it's name.
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So here we are, twenty years after Super Smash Bros. was unleashed upon the world. The game that originally began life as a low budget, Nintendo-characters only game has since exploded into a mega sized crossover brawler that is a celebration of video games as a whole. Whenever a game in this series is released, it is treated like a huge, huge event. Having a character featured in Smash be it as a playable character, or an Assist Trophy is a quite an honor. At the risk of making my age known, it feels a bit strange to know that I was there for the whole ride. At the same time, I'm happy that Super Smash Bros. was a series I've been able to come into from the beginning and see it evolve to the point that it has. It certainly has been an interesting 20 years for Smash.
Masahiro Sakurai and his team always put in so much effort with these games and while I can't speak for everyone, I truly am greatful for everything they've given us for the past 20 years. May we continue Smashing for another two decades and beyond.
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