Skip to content
Dom Robinson reviews
Distributed by
Nintendo
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1-4
Ok, so you’ve got your Gamecube,now do you want to play an intellectual plot-driven RPG about inhabitants of amystical forest, or do you simply want to round up all of Nintendo’s mostfamous characters and bash the hell out of each other? If it’s the latter, thenSuper Smash Bros Melee has the answer.
Following a gorgeous cartoony FMV sequence showing you who’s in town to bebashed about (eg. Mario, Pikachu, Yoshi, Donkey Kong and many others includinga few hidden characters waiting to be unlocked), the options present you witha one-player option, multiplayer,the trophy cabinet, a further set of options to alter the screen, sound andlanguage, plus further data accumulated during the game.
In-game proper, the options are all variants along similar lines. On your own,you can play a regular match in ‘classic’ or ‘adventure’ mode, the latterdiffering by starting you at the Mushroom Kingdom, thus mixing in parts of aregular match in with a‘Super Mario’-styleplatformer. There are nine eventmatches – one has you fighting Bowser in a clash at the Mushroom Kingdom,another one litters the arena with bombs and you can battle with Pikachu.Also you can attempt various tests in the Stadium section such as to pick offall the targets on a level, or knockout 100 characters in the 100-Man Melee.
For the multiplayer action there’s a standard melee for up to four players,a tournament mode which can house as many as 64 individual combatants, aSpecial Melee section with various bizarre options such as a ‘Camera Mode’which lets you take snapshots with the Smash Cam for later viewing from yourmemory card, ‘Giant Melee’, in which all the players are… yes, you guessedit – giant, as well as ‘Super Sudden Death’ in which all players start with 300% damage.
Custom rules can also be created to set time limits on matches, handicap thosecombatants who are doing well, alter the damage ratio so you could get KO’dquicker the more damage you sustain and various ways to select the next stageon which to take your grudges out on each other.
The graphics are brilliantly colourful and move as fast as required, but Ido feel that a game with such a simple premise as this isn’t testing the Gamecubeto its limits and that we’ve still got plenty more to look forward to, such aswith the forthcoming release of Mario Sunshine.
The sound is reasonable, with expected thuds and thwacks as you kick youropponents into next week, but there’s not a great deal of difference from onematch to the next and your neighbours won’t be banging on the walls.
As I looked at the menu options for a while whilst writing this review, itstruck me that the music is very reminiscent of one of the original SoulBlade levels. I wonder if this is intentional?
When it comes to the gameplay, the rules are simple – hit your enemies, pick themup and hit them before throwing them about, or just rush at them and thump theminstead. Often, though, things rush by so fast you don’t know exactly what you’vedone to win the level, apart from the fact that you all seem to have to sustainaround 150% damage before death comes calling.
After working your way through the levels in a regular match, each charactermust destroy a giant hand. Yes, someone had been on the happy pills the day thiswas created. Note that you can even shoot at the end-credits list once you’vecompleted a level.
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
PLAYABILITY
ENJOYMENT
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.