‘Super Smash Bros’ and ‘Super Smash Bros: Melee”
When I was a kid in the 90s, the term “video games” was all but synonymous with the word “Nintendo.” The N64 was my church, where I used that awkward-trident-controller as an altar to pay my respects to the trinity of Mario, Link, and the Holy Starfox. Yet while all my favorite characters were tied to the same source, they all resided in their separate cartridge worlds. That is of course, until one fateful day in 1999, when a fun oddity called “Super Smash Bros” hit shelves to merge the franchises in violent glory, only to be followed in 2001 by an even more refined and bombastic sequel, “Super Smash Bros: Melee.”
They were the greatest fighting games I had ever experienced. Sure, I had enjoyed games like “Mortal Kombat” and “Killer Instinct,” but I could never really connect with them as a kid. The camera was too focused and up close, the controls and combos were too complicated to grasp as a six-year-old, and the characters were nearly forgettable. “Super Smash Bros” and “Super Smash Bros: Melee” were the complete opposite. They allowed for four people fighting at the same time, broadening the screen to fit entire iconic landscapes from various games and filling them with a chaos that made each match feel like a real clash, as opposed to a glorified boxing match. Smash Bros had an ingenious two-button system of simple attacks and special attacks that changed depending on how you were moving – incredibly easy to learn, and utterly satisfying to master. Finally, the roster of fighters weren’t shoddy-B-movie caricatures, they were all icons that we all already knew and loved – making it all the more satisfying when you thundershocked Donkey Kong in his smug monkey mouth, or swiped the Master Sword across the insufferable, rock-attack-spamming Kirby.
Also, they were social games. Whereas previous experiences like “The Legend of Zelda” were solitary time wasters, it was always an event to get a group to play Smash Bros together. More than that, it was so fun and accessible to us kids that we were able to discuss and debate the game on the playground at recess; for the first time in my life, video games weren’t just a thing my friends and I all did alone in our own homes. The Smash Bros games didn’t just bring iconic characters together on our TV screens, they brought us together as players in our living rooms.
Whenever I think back on my childhood, I like to think of all the good times I had, a lot of which came from video games. And best memories I have of playing video games? They’re all of “Super Smash Bros” or “Super Smash Bros: Melee.” They were simply all about having fun, and the end of the day, having fun is what video games – or even being a kid – is all about. – Alex Suffolk
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