Editorial Review
All of your favorite Nintendo characters have come together to answer the question: who is king of the Nintendo hill? The format can aptly be described as
Super Mario Kart meets
Mortal Kombat, which makes for an odd, yet addictive game. The object is to throw, punch, smash, or blast your opponents off the edge of the beautifully rendered, themed arenas. Numerous power-ups, weapons, and surprises help or hinder the melee. Your eventual goal is to fight your way through to a bizarre final boss character. Victory in this battle rewards you with another character to play, such as the scene-stealing Pokémon, Jigglypuff.
From Star Fox's laser pistol to Link's hook shot, each character's trademark special abilities are utilized to knock one another off the screen. The game does a great job balancing the characters' widely differing powers so that no one character has an insurmountable advantage. The sound and animations are also dead-on: Donkey Kong is a huge, cartoonish ape, while Link is much more detailed and realistic. And Pikachu's famous thunder shock attack is accompanied by a fearsome yell of "PIKA!"
Unlike most fighting games, Super Smash Bros. allows you to team up with a computer partner and take on other teams in both single and multiplayer modes. But the most fun is had when four human players play in a battle royale. The game quickly becomes a scene of incredibly fun chaos: picture Mario beating up on Luigi, while Donkey Kong is chased by a scampering, sledgehammer-wielding Pikachu. It's the perfect party game. --Hugh Arnold
Pros:
- Great characters: Mario, Luigi, Pikachu, Kirby, Donkey Kong, Link, Star Fox, Yoshi, and more
- Simple gameplay
- Computer partner option
- Colorful arenas
Cons:
GameSpot Review
It's an idea so simple, it makes you wonder why it took so long to happen: Take all your top-notch characters and toss them all into one game. In this case, the characters are Nintendo's, and the game is a new spin on your typical fighting game. The result is Super Smash Bros., a fighter that is easy enough for anyone to pick up, yet it has enough multiplayer appeal to stay interesting for a good long time.
The characters are, of course, what makes this game interesting. All the characters that have made Nintendo what it is today are represented, including Mario, Link, Samus Aran, Donkey Kong, and Pikachu. There are eight characters to choose from initially, and four more hidden characters to unlock. The game's backgrounds also reflect the various characters' natural envirornments: The Starfox stage is complete with buzzing Arwings, while Link's stage looks somewhat like a castle. The game's music is also pretty amazing, with tunes lifted directly from past games. So you'll hear the Legend of Zelda overworld theme, the world-famous Super Mario Bros. tune, and other littlepieces of incidental music, like the SMB star music and the Donkey Kong hammer tune. The look and sounds of the game really give it a "greatest hits" type of feel. The sound effects have been changed a bit from the Japanese version (the energy sword doesn't sound like a lightsaber anymore, and some of the speech has been changed), but not enough to really matter.
The game's object is pretty simple. Each stage hangs in the middle of nowhere, and you must knock all the other characters off the level to win. But it's not as easy to knock the fighters off as you might think: The characters can double jump, and several have attacks that can also be used to shoot upward., However, the more damage you inflict on fighters, the easier it is to send them flying. While you can rely on your standard arsenal of punches, kicks, and special moves to do damage, you can also pick up occasional items that randomly appear on the level. Items range from simple bats, swords, and guns to the more exotic Donkey Kong hammer and Pokeball, which spits out a random Pokemon whenever you use it.
Two-player battles are fun and all, but the game's real charm comes out in four-player mode. In any of the multiplayer games, you can either set a time limit or give players a certain number of lives to expend. Graphically, Smash Bros. does pretty well. Each character moves pretty nicely and looks about as good as you'd expect. Characters that have previously appeared on the N64 look about the same as they do in their own games. Samus Aran, who makes her first N64 appearance in this game, looks OK, although she is a little on the blocky side.
The game is extremely simple to learn and reasonably easy to master. The one-player game won't exactly last a long time, unless you count the time you have to spend unlocking all four of the hidden characters. So, if you've got a crew of friends ready to pick a Nintendo character and throw down, then Super Smash Bros. is definitely worth a purchase. --Jeff Gerstmann
--Copyright ©1999 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. GameSpot and the GameSpot logo are trademarks of GameSpot Inc.
See all Product Description
(188)
(14)
(312)
Cart
Visit our huge selection of magazine subscriptions often to see the latest special offers and bonuses.
