Before I decided to review the whole Super Smash Bros series, this was gonna be my review #200 special, but I decided to go all the way and review all of them. As far as special video games ago, this, Crash Team Racing, and Super Mario Advance 4: Mario 3 are pretty much the trinity of video games that bear the most importance to me.

Much like how I discovered Kingdom Hearts, Super Smash Bros was something I kind of saw in the background over the years without really knowing what exactly it was as I remember seeing copies Melee & this game quite a bit and also hearing people talk about Brawl. As a youngster, I used to browse the Mario & Sonic wikis all of the time out of curiosity. This eventually lead me to discovering more about Super Smash Bros and what kind of game it was. After seeing that the Ice Climbers were not stuck in some semi-obscure NES game and looking at countless screenshots & videos of Melee & Brawl, I was immediately intersted. I HAD to play these games!

A few months later I got my wish as I got to play Brawl for the first time at an uncle's house marathoning through the Subspace Emissary in an attempt to unlock Sonic. I didn't even get halfway there and the worst part of all being that I wouldn't be able to play the game in the near future since my parents didn't allow me to get T rated games. My initial way of coping was to get Smash 64 as I already had an interest in the console anyway and for a little while it worked. Then my craving of playing Brawl kicked in once again despite me pleading with my parents for months to allow me to get Brawl, I eventually showed them this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LW8K-AAMx0. They pretty much immediately approved and I was able to play Brawl and use Sonic to my heart's content. Now that "Storytime with Bright" has ended, I will now go into the game itself.

Before I get into anything else I will address the main complaint that people seem to have with this game, the physics. Personally, I didn't mind the slow physics too much when I first got the game, but upon revisiting it over the years I can understand why people don't like them. Melee and Ultimate feel more fast paced and I think it makes battles feel more thrilling and intense. You can still have those types of battles in Brawl, but the physics are just slow enough to have an effect on that and it feels like you're playing the game is at 0.75x speed sometimes. It's not a huge deal, but its a bit more noticeable to me than it was in the past and I don't think slower physics fit a fast-paced game like Smash. The other thing worth pointing out is tripping. Hence the name, tripping is when your character randomly trips for no reason at all and there is no way to predict when it'll happen. There are a billion of better game mechanics Sakurai could have gone with to make matches unpredictable and intense, but instead we get one that's intrusive and can break the flow of the match or cost someone a match if they are unlucky to trip at the wrong time. I am by no means a competitive player, but I can understand why people have their grievances with some of the gameplay choices that Brawl has, especially after playing and getting used to Ultimate over the years and revisiting the rest of the games.

As far as content goes, there is a lot to unpack that I will mostly go into detail with later. Brawl added tons of new stages and characters, loads of music tracks, game demos, and something that really hasn't made a return in any game since. That being a full-scale story mode that makes Melee's adventure mode look lame in comparison, The Subspace Emissary.

To eleborate more on the roster, I will say that it was insane for its time. We got Meta Knight, Wario, Pokemon Trainer, and the first non-Nintendo characters to ever join Smash, Solid Snake & Sonic the Hedgehog. Before half of the Smash newcomers were 3rd parties seeing characters like Sonic was mindblowing. Sonic was even of the key reasons I wanted to get Brawl as much as I did. Sadly, not everybody from Melee came back. Mewtwo, Roy, Young Link, Pichu, and Dr. Mario were all cut from this entry. It's a shame that Mewtwo, Dr. Mario, Young Link (although I wish they eventually gave him a MM moveset), Pichu, and Roy couldn't return, but even with them gone the game is still loaded with all-stars.

Compared to original and even Melee, Brawl has a lot more gimmicks and stage interactions that breathe life unto them. It's neat fanservice, but I'd say the stage inclusons are kind of a mixed bag because of them. While there are stages where the gimmicks work well (WarioWare, Pictochat, and Pirate Ship) there are also other stages that don't benefit from added interactions and are just plain annoying to fight on (75m, Rumble Falls, and Hanenbow). I appreciate the attention to detail, just not when it gets in the way of good stage design.

As far as extras go, from what I previously mentioned it is very obvious that this game is filled with them. Music in the first two games was limited to 1 or 2 songs per stage, but now each stage has multiple songs to choose from with ones that you can unlock as you play the game. The additional music is a small addition but it goes a long way. There are a lot more trophies this time and stickers which are a new collectible that are basically just a prototype for the spirits you'd later see in Ultimate. Definitely checkout the trophy mini game too, its super addicting. The last thing worth mentioning is that there is a stage builder. Being the first game in the series to include one, there are a decent amount of setpieces to choose from. It's a little bit lacking, but its also the first time a Smash game has had that option. Now to get into the real meat of the game, the Subspace Emissary.

The Subspace Emissary is the first full-blown story mode in a Smash game and also the only one with substance. Ultimate did get another story mode in the form of World of Light, but it is more or less just a looooooooooong series of vs matches with the occasional boss mixed in between. Subspace Emissary is a platformer that is practically a game within a game with several levels, boss fights, and cutscenes.

As for the plot of Subspace itself? It's pretty much what you'd expect from a crossover game. It starts on Mario & friends duking it out in the arena until all hell breaks loose when the Subspace Army invade the Smash universe. As a result, Mario, Kirby, Peach, Zelda, and the rest of the cast join together to save the Smash universe from the Subspace Army who are attempting to move it into a realm called Subspace. The story is able to handle juggling the 30+ characters in the game surprisingly well as each character (except for a few hidden fighters you unlock post-game) with everyone getting a moment to shine over the course of the 10-15 hour adventure. Seeing those moments and watching the cast interact with each other is a real treat and the fact that we didn't get another story mode like this is a real shame.

Super Smash Bros Brawl to me is the most complete that Super Smash Bros has ever been to me even with Ultimate around. Listen to this and tell me this doesn't sounds like final game music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P03SlFSmeXo. Brawl had an amazing cast with a 3rd Party inclusion that would have been a fantastic sendoff to the series if Brawl had been the last game, proper story mode that not even Ultimate really pulled off, and a bunch of content I have both previously mentioned and didn't get to. It isn't totally perfect, but its a great Smash game and video game as a whole that comes close to it.

As far as Smash games go, this is the only one that I don't have much of a sentimential connection to, but in celebration of soon approaching 200 reviews, I decided I would do revised reviews for the entire Smash series.

Almost immediately after the release of the first Smash on the N64, Sakurai would go on to create a sequel for Nintendo's next console, the Nintendo Gamecube. The development cycle for Melee was hectic, but they were able to launch the game shortly after the GameCube's release. It may not be my favorite Smash game, but I will always be impressed with how the game turned out and with how much content they were able to cram into the game with what little time they had to develop it. Super Smash Bros Melee is a massive step-up in comparison to its N64 predecessor released a couple years prior.

When I say Melee is a massive step-up, I truly mean it. Melee added an adventure mode, tons of new stages, new items, more than double the amount of characters, and over 200 trophies to collect. Which again is insane considering how it only released 2 years after the original game.

I know a lot of Melee's appeal is from its competitive scene and the complexities of it. Being a casual Smash player who can't even do a basic wavedash, it is something I find to be a turn-off so as far as gameplay goes, so I will only be looking at Melee from a very casual lens. That being said, as far as the core gameplay goes, its pretty much the same but this time each character gets an extra special move, the side b moves. Adding the extra special move makes the characters feel more complete moveset wise and it allows for more attack options. Considering the rest of the series keeps the same moveset template, its an important addition worth mentioning. The game also feels much smoother & less janky to play than its predecessor partly in thanks to better hardware and the GameCube having a controller with good thumbsticks.

Melee isn't my favorite gameplay wise, but is has the best presentation in the series BY FAR! The adventure mode & target test stages all have themes based on the various franchises represented that make playing through them feel special & unique. It had so much soul and it sucks that Brawl & future games don't have little things like that. Hell, even the trophies weren't as good as Melee's. Most if not all of Melee's trophies were wholly unique as oppossed to Brawl & Smash 4 where a majority of the trophies just use already pre-established renders. The roster was incredibly solid for its time. They added the essential characters like Peach, Bowser, and Zelda but also balanced it out with some deep cuts like Mr. Game & Watch & Ice Climbers. The stages though were top notch. It added several fan favorites like Hyrule Temple, Pokemon Stadium, and Onett but it also has a few of my personal favorite stages which include Fountain of Dreams, Great Bay, and Poke Floats which sadly never returned in any future installments.

Even if you're not a competitive player, there is something in Super Smash Bros Melee for everyone and it is easy to see how this game has withstood the test of time even when compared to Smash Ultimate. I've always been a Brawl & Ultimate person myself but there are several aspects of Melee that I do greatly appreciate and because of that I highly recommend playing it if you have the chance.

Just like Luigi's Mansion, this is another one I've been wanting to re-review as this is a game that is important to me and since it is review 195, I figure I'm at a good number to do so.

In terms of starting my video game collection, this is the one that started it all. As I previously mentioned in my review for Kirby 64, I got that game and this one several years ago with a regular colored N64 (I wanted the Ice Blue one, but I didn't end up getting one until several years later). While it wasn't the first Smash game I played, it was the first one I owned so I played it pretty much every day for months until I wanted to get Brawl. For a game as small as this one, it is a solid first entry to one of Nintendo's most popular franchises. Before I get into it I think its worth summarizing the history of how Smash came to be.

Super Smash Bros started off as a game called Dragon King: The Fighting Game and was going one of Nintendo's newest franchises. However, they eventually came to the conclusion that instead of making it a game with completely original characters, they'd choose Nintendo characters. This lead to the creation of Super Smash Bros. It also was going to be a Japan exclusive, but they eventually localized it as it was a smashing success in Japan.

Smash 64 has a total of 12 characters and 9 stages which for a game franchise with a humble beginning isn't bad at all. Each character is unique and fun to use, the stages are neat, and there are a variety of items that add to the chaos of Smash's gameplay. There is also classic mode which is pretty much just like your standard arcade mode in a fighting game and even has a final boss fight too in the form of Master Hand. The last notable additons are that each character has an individual level where they break targets or jump on platforms. These modes either get dumbed down or outright removed in later entries down the line which saddens me as I liked the individual levels in this game & Melee. With all of the different content there is available, it is a blast to play, especially with friends.

As far as downsides go, the game does have some of that N64 jank and they should have added the classic mode stages in addition to the available 9 stages. Aside from those issues, there isn't really much else to say as it does everything that it could have possibly done given the amount of time it took for them to make the game and the circumstances surrounding it.

When you compare this game to what we currently have with Ultimate, the series has come a long way since its inception. Not only did Super Smash Bros become a flagship franchise for Nintendo, but it popularized an entire sub-genre of fighting games known as platform fighters. For as abstract as the concept of Mario, Pikachu, Samus, and Kirby all coming together to beat the ever loving shit out of each other is, Nintendo and the series director Masahiro Sakurai managed to make it work.