Pros: Replay Value, Graphics, And All of The Little Extras
Cons: I Really Don't Know
The bottom line: Just a rehash? I think not.
The original Smash Bros. game on the Nintendo 64 introduced to the world a new type of fighting game, and despite it's cutesy graphics, toned down sound effects, and it's not quite decent single player mode it was a fun game, but mainly just the mulitplayer mode. Now I admit it, I was sceptical of Smash Bros. when I first heard about it, but after watching those commercials for it I was sucked in and couldn't get back out, I bought the game the first chance I got, but I was a little dissappointed in it, there were few characters, few stages, and the single player mode just got downright repetitive after playing through it more then once. And so with the release of Nintendo's newest console, the GameCube, a new Smash Bros. game was announced, but it didn't seem like a big deal to me, well before I downloaded a couple videos of it in action. I was hooked a second time, but this time was different, I knew I would not be let down like the first time.

Ok let's face it, with only 12 characters total in the original Smash Bros. the game became old pretty fast, and the small handful of levels didn't help it any. Well lucky for us Nintendo has added a plethora of characters and levels to Smash Bros. Melee, some have returned while others are new to the series, and Nintendo has added even more then I initially anticipated, there are a total of 25 characters (11 hidden) and almost 30 stages. This is a whole lot more then the original, but that's not half of all the new stuff that Nintendo has added to this game that wasn't in the original. The playable characters in this game are: Mario, Bowser, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Captain Falcon, Fox, Ness, Ice Climbers, Kirby, Samus, Princess Zelda, Link, Pikachu, Dr. Mario, Luigi, Ganondorf, Falco, Young Link, Pichu, Jigglypuff, Mewtwo, Mr. Game and Watch, Marth, and Roy.

You may be familiar with some of the characters, and probably have played most of their games. Kudos to Nintendo for adding the Ice Climbers to the lineup, I never got to play the Ice Climbers game but they are an interesting character to play as in this game, and trust me, interesting is the best word to describe them with.

The stages are much more impressive in Smash Bros. Melee then they are in the original game, and there are a whole lot more of them too. I'm not totally sure, but I believe that there are somewhere around 30 levels to play in. The levels are: Icicle Mountain (Ice Climbers), Princess Peach's Castle (Princess Peach), Rainbow Cruise (Mario), Kingdom (Mario), Kingdom II (Mario), Kongo Jungle (Donkey Kong), Jungle Japes (Donkey Kong), Great Bay (Link), Temple (Link), Yoshi's Island (Yoshi), Yoshi's Island (Yoshi, Form original SSB), Fountain of Dreams (Kirby), Green Greens (Kirby), Dreamland (Kirby) Corneria (Fox), Venom (Fox), Brinstar (Samus), Brinstar Depths (Samus), Poke Floats (Pikachu), Pokemon Stadium (Pikachu), Onett (Ness), Fourside (Ness), Flat Zone (Mr. Game and Watch), Mute City (Captain Falcon, Big Blue (Captain Falcon), Battlefield (???), Final Destination (???).

Whew! I might have accidently missed a few of the levels, if so please inform me and I will fix the problem.

The gameplay is what makes Smash Bros. Melee unlike any other fighting game, instead of having a bar that represents each characters health, Smash Bros. Melee has a little percentage indicator at the bottom of the screen for each character that is involved in the battle. And also, instead of a character simply perishing after taking a certain amount of damage, each character is knocked around more as their damage percent increases. So how do you kill opponents? Well it's a little more complicated then your average fighter, you can only kill an opponent by knocking them off of the screen. And as I said earlier, as your percentage increases you can knock your opponent around more, so as the enemies percentage increases the character is knocked further with each hit, until is ultimately knocked off of the screen. Something that has returned from the original is the use of items, some items are so helpful that they can sway the flow of battle. Items continually drop from the sky, and can be anything from a Poke ball to a heart container that can restore your health. You can select which items you want to appear in a match, and how frequently they appear, these settings are edited using the item switch option.

Also characters are not the only thing that can inflict damage upon each other, some of the courses have certain things that will damage a player if they get to close. For example, in the F-Zero stage called Mute City the F-Zero vehicles are in the middle of a race, and if you fall off of the platform and they hit you your character will recieve damage and could possibly die.

The default fighting mode for Smash Bros. Melee is Time, Time allows each match to continue for a given amount of time and the player that has the most points at the end of the match wins. Speaking of points, they are accumulated by killing characters in a match, players lose points when they kill themselves. The other fighting modes for Vs play are stock, coin and bonus. In stock mode players do not earn points to win, they simply take out all stock (lives) from each character, the winner is the last person standing. in coin mode characters hustle to collect coins, coins are left behind whenever a character takes damage. And in bonus mode the winner is based on the number of points accumlated in battle, points are earned in tons of different ways based on your fighting styles.

Each character has 4 special moves that they can perform, and a host of other normal moves can also be used in this game. Each character handles differently, but sometimes in the case of a clone the characters will handle very similarly. A clone is a character that has the same moves of another character, but may have different stats than that particular character. A prime example of a clone is the character Young Link, he uses virtually the same moves as normal Link, but he is faster and less powerful.

The Many Game Modes


1-Player Mode

Regular Match

- Classic
This is at heart the single player mode from the original Smash bros. except instead of having the fights all in the same order they are randomized. This is nice because it takes away a tiny bit of the repetition that we all experienced in the N64 version.

- Adventure
This is the backbone of what could have been a spineless single player mode. Adventure mode brings back the side scrolling goodness of early Nintendo titles. A few levels that you can must complete in Adventure mode are the mushroom kingdom and the underground maze. The rest of the Adventure mode is played out like the normal battle mode, with the exception of the Ice Climbers stage.

Event Match
This is quite a challenging mode to complete, it pits you up against certain enemies under certain circumstances. A good way to demonstrate this is to give you an example, in one event match you are up against 128 small Marios, in another match you are up against Pikachu but can only damage him with pokemon from poke balls.

VS. Mode

- Melee
This is the standard multiplayer mode, you choose your characters, choose opponents, choose options, and even select the stage. You can also select a difficulty level for computer players.

- Tournament Melee
To be honest, I haven't really played much of tournament Melee mode. This mode allows you to have little tournaments with up to 64 characters, you fight until only one character is left, Almost self explanatory.

- Special Melee
This is a pretty crazy mode, you can choose from a list of types of battles, it has everything from Giant Melee to Lightning Melee. Do you wish that there was some sort of health system in Smash Bros. Melee? Well there is, it's in the form of Stamina Melee.

I didn't include all of the play modes, just the important ones. There are others like Stadium mode and Multi Man Melee, but they just aren't very fun.

Trophies
Yet another addition to the game, this one is in the form of trophies. Trophies are earned throughout the game, and can be viewed at anytime. While viewing a trophy you can zoom in, out, and you can even change the lighting source on the trophy. Trophies can be found, earned, and even won in the lottery.

My Ratings
I had to skip the story section due to the fact that this game has no story whatsoever.

Graphics 9/10
The graphics are noticeably better then the N64 version, and nothing less then I would expect from this company. The characters look very nice when compared to the N64's Smash Bros. game, at least they don't look like they were made with triangles instead of polygons. The backgrounds are pretty impressive too, with way more detail put into them then on the original, but the thing I like best about this game's graphics is the fact that they always run at a smooth 60 frames per second. Not even when you are up against the wireframe team where 5 opponents are on the screen at once does the game slowdown, that is probably this games best graphical achievement. If you really don't believe me then just wait til you see the Fountain of Dreams Level, this is the most detailed part of any GameCube title out right now. Some levels, like Kingdom I and II resemble their respective games graphics, but this is not a problem as it was done purposely for the whole effect of nostalgia.

This game contains some of the legendary Miyamoto's most original characters, and in this game most of them still carry that old charm with them. The funniest character to look at is definitly Mr. Game and Watch, for all of those that do not know where this character came from I will briefly explain: Mr. Game and Watch is from Nintendo's first portable gaming systems, sort of like those cheap Tiger electronics games that was only one game and really sucked.

This game has a huge amount of detail in it, you can see everything from the fur on Fox's face to a stitch in Mario's pants, it's all there. Even the small animated taunts are nice to look at, but my favorite thing to watch are the F-Zero cars as they zoom by the level. Sometimes when I'm tired of combat I simply pause the game and look around at all the detail put into it, HAL Laboratories has some pretty talented people behind it.

Control 8/10
What? There is actually an advantage that the original Smash Bros. game has over the GameCube version? Well sort of, you see, the Nintendo 64 controller just felt more like it was made for Smash Bros. for me the GameCube controller doesn't feel like it was made with this game in mind. Everything is easily pulled off, all special moves are easy to remember but the real problem I have with this game is the jumping, sometimes it's hard to push the B button and then immediately jump using the X or Y Buttons. But other than that, most things are easy to pull of including rolls, blocks, air blocks, special moves, and normal moves.

Sound 10/10
Did you enjoy classic themes from old Nintendo games? Well if you did then you will be sure to enjoy the music from this game. This game features remade tracks from their classic games, but these tracks are now orchestrated into songs that will get stuck in your head all day. My favorite track from the game would definitly have to be the remade version of the song that plays in the various temples in Zelda II on the NES. This is one of those very rare instances that I would really like to buy the soundtrack to a game, it's filled to the brim with excellent high quality music that you will want to listen to a second time.

As sad as the truth is, Nintendo actually toned down the sound effects in the original Smash Bros. to make them more child oriented. The good news? Nintendo has realized that they need more mature content, so the more violent sound effects have been brought untouched this time. All of the sound effects are good, although there is one that really gets on people's nerves, and that is the sound that Pikachu lets out after using his thunder move, "Pikkkkkaaaaaa!"

MultiPlayer 9.5/10
The only thing that kept this game from getting a perfect score here is that I was really hoping for some sort of a co-op play for classic or adventure mode, but that's ok because Smash Bros. Melee has some of the most frantic, challenging, and just straight up fun multiplayer modes. And the options are almost limitless, after you have played the Melee mode countless times you can still go back and play the Special Melees, or whatever you choose. To get the full effect of multiplayer you must play with 4 human players, but anything less will do in a heartbeat as long as you play against computer played characters.

Fun Factor 10/10
There are just so many different modes of play that you will keep coming back to this game even after unlocking all characters, stages, and even after beating it countless times. Besides VS mode there is the fun adventure mode for those of you that don't have friends that are willing to play the game. And with all those trophies, your work will probably never be complete on this game, and even though trophies don't contribute much to the game they still earn you the ever so valuable bragging rights.

Total: 46.5/50
Overall Score: 9.3