Wow, has it already been 10 years? I feel old.

Smash Brothers was one of the few Nintendo 64 games I bought on release (or maybe it was couple days after...), even although I didn't even want it originally. I was out shopping with my friend, he picked up this game and said "check this out, Mario is in a fighting game!" I looked at the box in disbelief as Mario pummeled Pikachu on the cover; I never thought I'd see such a sight. Skeptical as I was, there was nothing else I wanted so I took it home. After all, you can beat up Pikachu with a bat so it couldn't be all bad.

I'ma gonna need to slide this into my N64 on April 26th, for old time's sake.

Around this time 10 years ago, I made a website about how cool Smash Brothers was going to be.  I can't wait to buy it again.

as I own Brawl and Melee and have cube controllers having n64 one would be redundant and pointless.

That being said I remember back in the day reading a copy of a gaming magazine. I don't remember what it was called but it had tons of cheats and only like 10 pages of previews in each issue. They still have issues to this day.

Anyway they had a preview of than Japanese game Super Smash Brothers. I was shocked and amazed at the game concept and I wished and hoped it would come out in America. I rented it on day one and loved it. I never bought it but I picked up melee and brawl on day one. I still got them both, I haven't touched melee in God knows how long. So buying n64 would be so pointless.

I just love mr. Game and Watch and Ice Climbers to much.

What the heck is Zoids Revelation?

Um, a licensed game based on Zoids?

I don't know man, the game actually holds up pretty well today, and has its own unique feeling compared to both Brawl and Melee. Additionally, the game still runs extremely smooth, and never feels like a sluggish old N64 game. If you are a fan of the series, I'd still recommend it.

My friend had this and shortly after Brawl came out and we were all playing it he dug it out of the closet and gave it a play.  Man did it look old! I used to think the N64 had such great graphics at the time but these days it's like looking at an Atari game.  F*CK.  I was surprised how slow the original SSB seemed in comparison to Melee and Brawl.  The N64 analog stick felt weird to smash with.  It felt really dated.  My friend agreed which is important since I wasn't a big fan of the original SSB in the first place.  I got into the series with Melee.  I never got into Brawl as much as I got in Melee.  I think I played Melee so much that it was impossible for Brawl to feel fresh and exciting.  I think I may be SSB'd out.

The reason I didn't care for the original SSB is twofold.  First of all it didn't play like Street Fighter and at the time I was some dumb high school kid who wasn't very open-minded.  I felt like a *gasp* casual fighting game for people that couldn't handle a "real" fighting game.  In a way it kind of still is but working my ass off to unlock the sound test in Melee really showed me the depth the game has.  The other issue was that I couldn't really give the original a chance because my friend was such a cheapo dickface.  He would just spam Samus' grappling beam throw again and again and never really gave me proper instructions on how to play.  He told me what each button did but never told me how to smash or that smash attacks even existed.  And then he kicked my ass with Samus.  With Melee I owned the game and thus learned how to actually play it and the throws aren't so cheap.  It should be noted he is a very average player now that the playing field is level.

The use of the passive tense in this post makes me smile.  ;D

I wonder if he's even aware of the implications of what he just said.

I loved the original Smash Bros. If it comes out Stateside, I may very well buy it again, for old time's sake.

Because I'm obviously still a dumb high school kid.  At 27 "dumb" is the only type of high school kid I could be. ;)

Yeah, stay in school.

I like the feel of the original SSB, but the small character list would drive me crazy after spending so much time with Melee and Brawl.

On the positive side, no Ice Climbers!

I personally love the wacky, cartoony feel of the original. The intro alone makes me happy.

As much as I liked Melee and loved Brawl they were too serious.

The serious gamers ruined it for everyone.

The seriousness is what makes them wacky.  It's practically mock epic.

I hope Nana pushes you off a cliff.

Yeah, the Super Smash Bros. intro in the original was simply magical. I mean, Melee had a really big cinematic intro that was good to, but it was of a totally different quality from the first Super Smash Bros. intro, which just... I thought it perfectly set up the game's entire gimme, and even provided info on the role of "Master Hand."

Yeah, but after Brawl, which had some great mock epic moments... there might be such a thing as too much mock epic...

Has Kairon played enough onrine Brawl with NWR folks to substantiate that?

I refer, of course, to the single player mock epic campaign.

I couldn't agree with this more when it comes to Brawl. The art style of that game uses dramatic shading and colouring that does not fit in with many of the characters in the game, such as Mario, Kirby, Pokémon, etc. It is to such an extent that the art style is rather drab and depressing to look at. Melee got a tad more serious than the first game but it was still bright, cheerful, colourful, and wacky. Brawl has only the fourth of those things, though not to the extent of Melee.

Brawl only looks drab and depressing next to something like a bowl of Easter M&Ms, and even then only if you never play most of the stages.

I recall people demanding serious texturing like that for all Nintendo games...

I repent! I don't want it anymore! Oh why WHY did Nintendo give us what we wanted?!?!?! T_T

I would never wish for such a thing as dull colouring. Any game featuring Mario should look like a rainbow exploded.

Whoever decided to make the Mushroom Kingdom stage in Brawl look like a desert deserves to be dragged out back and beaten severely with a bat of many colours.

I'll be the first to say it. Sakurai has failed us!

I actually thought that the Mushroomy Kingdom stage was a sort of satire on that concept. Some combination of "This is what happened to the Mushroom Kingdom during all those years" and "This is what the game would look like if it were developed today"

Looking back, Melee was more serious than SSB64, but still had its tongue firmly in its cheek. The music was more refined, but had quirky Nintendo charm. As was already mentioned, the graphics were colorful and vivid.

Its as if Sakurai really wanted people to take Brawl seriously, that it was more than just a party fighting game.

The best way to describe Brawl would be this...

Its what a Nintendo game would look like if it was developed by a hardcore gamer.

*Note I still love Brawl, but I stand behind my belief that I miss the wacky feel of the original.

That is quite an interesting observation LuigiHann, and it wouldn't surprise me if that were the case. However, such a thought depresses me even further.

Wasn't Brawl developed by a team who usually makes RPGs? That probably has to do with it being serious, and having an opening theme which does not fit the game one bit.

Pap64: If Sakurai wanted people to take Brawl seriously as a fighter then he shouldn't have dumbed it down and added a slew of overly powerful items and cheap attacks which can be spammed to victory. I don't think making Smash more serious was really his intention anyway, as the whole reason he made the original Smash in the first place was because he wanted to make a 4-player fighting game which wasn't as complex as your traditional fighter. Of course, after eight years perhaps his vision had changed. Sure seems like it...

The original SSB was an off-shoot project they didn't expect to do so well. They didn't have any expectations for it. But lo and behold, it was a hit.

I think the proof that Sakurai wanted the game to be epic lies in the SSE mode. Out of all the features the SSE mode was hyped the most. It was Sakurai's vision to create an expanded adventure mode, and that's where the epic lies the most.

Even if the game played the same, Sakurai did note about the game's deeper mechanics.

So again, its as if Sakurai wanted Brawl to be taken seriously as an event game, not as a party fighter.

That's because it was.  Back in 2005 when Sakurai first revealed some info, he said he was introduced to a mystery studio (that we'd later find out was Game Arts) to help him make the game by Miyamoto and that the people at the studio were all huge fans of Melee.  He also said that the according to games data, these guys had put in thousands of hours into the game.

Of course I wouldn't say Brawl is all serious though.  There's still quite a few silly and charming things in the game. 

Now if Sakurai goes and makes the next Smash Bros look like this

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v287/luigidude/mariof180.gif

then I'd say there's a problem.

LuigiDude delivers.

Oh come on, Cho Smash Aniki would be hilarious.

I'd say each game appears to be more serious entirely because of the "status" of the series at the time.  The first SSB sounded on paper like a minor novelty title.  They reused models from other N64 games for it.  It became a big hit.

Because of that Melee was not just some game, it was a sequel to smash hit.  So they gave it more attention.  A big part of it is that it's jammed full of Nintendo references and has the trophies and everything.  It's been described as a love letter to Nintendo fans.  Well if you're going to do that you're going to go the trouble to really make the best presentation you can.  I am someone who wanted those graphics in other Nintendo games but that was entirely because SSB Melee looked almost FMV quality and Super Mario Sunshine looked like a Dreamcast launch game.  HAL made a good looking Mario and EAD didn't.  Mario Sunshine looked half-assed and lazy in comparison.  Fortunately EAD did a great job with Galaxy both in gameplay and graphics so things worked out.

Anyway Melee turned SSB into a BIG Nintendo franchise.  It's not treated like some spin-off, it's like one of Nintendo's major system-selling franchises now.  So Brawl has to meet such expectations.  It has to be an event.  So of course it's going to turn out the way it did.  I didn't see any problem with it.  Any backlash I'm seeing here seems to be "hardcore gaming is teh sux" bias, which never existed with Nintendo fans until Nintendo informed them that the last 20 years of Nintendo games was actually no good and we should really just want dumbed down gameplay with intentionally half-assed graphics and sound.  I don't see much of a difference between Melee and Brawl (as a result I prefer Melee as it was more fresh) and everyone loved Melee's graphics.  But Melee came out at a different time when Nintendo wasn't trying to train its fanbase into thinking "hardcore games" are bad.

Though one thing to note is that SSB has to have a graphics style that works for all these characters from different games with different styles.  You have to make a world that both Kirby and Samus Aran have to co-exist in.  I think HAL has done a great job at that.

I don't know, SSBM felt much older than SMS when I played it. The reflection in the fountain of dreams left a big impression with me though it was not positive.

As someone who played Both Turok 2 and Yoshi Story on the 64, before all this hullabaloo, I really couldn't agree with you less Ian. At least for me, this isn't about graphics or serious or silly at all. It is entirely to do with the innocent, yet sublimely cynical charm of stuffed dolls fighting each other on a table, being manipulated by a gloved hand, that's present only in the original Super Smash Bros.

That doesn't mean to say that I don't enjoy Melee and Brawl. But it does mean that I can recognize that I've lost something along the way. Make of that what you will.

I agree that they did a great job in that respect. I almost want to disagree with the premise, and say that it'd be awesome if each character appeared as if they had popped directly out of their own world, but I suppose that wouldn't work quite as well in practice as it does in my head.

I like that storyline too but I'm more annoyed that the sequels don't really explain the context of what's going on very well.  The characters being toys was a good way to explain it while the later games have some weird ass crap to do with figurines or something?

That has no effect on the presentation or look of the game to me though.  I see the original SSB as being largely thrown together using models from other games and the sequels being given more attention and thus having their own models and a clear "SSB look" that the original doesn't have.  I don't think the original has much of a style, it's mostly Nintendo being lazy.

Haha, then I gotta decouple myself from this visuals argument. All I really care about is that N64 intro, and the whimsy it imparted to the rest of the game.

SSB64 definitely had its own style. It was a bright and happy style, but a style nonetheless. Also I wouldn't say a significant number of models were taken from other games. A good chunk of SSB's characters had never been seen in 3D before, and you couldn't mistake the models used for Mario, Link, or Donkey Kong for the ones used in their solo outings. The SSB models were extremely low-poly and simplified. It was the animations and the relative cleverness of the movesets that really made them feel like familiar characters.

I remember going into training mode and watching some of Link's animations in slow-motion. For a Nintendo 64 fighting game, I was impressed that for each of Link's item-based moves, they animated him reaching into his invisible backpack and pulling out the weapon before using it. There was a lot of attention to detail there.

I don't know, I think that was more of a stylistic choice than laziness. Mario has always been a character with a simple personality, and as such having a simple art style suits him the best. Mario's overalls shouldn't have the stitching of the denim visible, Mario's hat shouldn't have a visible crease; his clothes should just be a singular colour with no texturing, which captures greatly a character of no complexity. The Mario model used in Melee and Brawl may be better designed in the technical sense, but it is too intricate to fit the character it represents. It looks too... real.

Simple, bright, colourful: that's Mario. There's no reason to change that.

Lucky Japan!

I lost my copy of it... Hope it comes here soon!