Super Smash Bros. Melee

And so Samus Aran threw her mighty parasol and liberated the Charizard, thus saving the area from Kirby with the anthropomorphic tree from the evil laser-wielding Jigglypuff (with hat).

Though you may not have admitted it to yourself at the time, this is the reason you bought a GameCube. If you don't have any friends, you'd best figure out how to get some real quick.

The 2nd Annual Nintendo All-Star Celebrity Battlethon
Not quite a fighting game, not quite a party game, the original N64 version Super Smash Bros. was the video game equivalent of the NBC Celebrity Variety Battle Telethon. It was an illogical multiplayer king-of-the-mountain flurry that threw nearly every remotely memorable character from the Nintendo universe into a series of small arenas and let us watch as they pummeled the crap out of each other with mallets, Pok?balls, repeating lasers, and decorative parasols. Don't mess too much with a good thing, says the Nintendo Think Tank. Just add a bunch of crazy crap to it, and everything will work out fine.

As with the recent GameCube "update" of Wave Race, you'll immediately notice that Super Smash Bros. Melee's core elements--including characters, moves, levels, rules, and the strictly 2D controls--have been ripped directly from the N64 version and run through the graphical-improvement wringer. Melee, however, goes the extra mile that Blue Storm didn't by including an entire game's worth of new stuff along with all the GameCube-enhanced old. That means there's tons more characters (14 to start with, and nearly a dozen hiding in the shadows), more levels, more secrets, more variety of things to do in single-player mode, more bizarre customization options, and just more absurdist multiplayer cross-genre carnage in general.

The concept is simple: Two to four Nintendo franchise characters are placed in a Nintendo franchise arena--Mario vs. Captain Falcon vs. Jigglypuff vs. the two Eskimos from Ice Climber, for example, battling it out on Brinstar. Items rain from the sky. Lava rises and falls below. Absolute chaos--almost too much of it--ensues for about three minutes as said characters bounce off walls, explode, and fly off the screen over and over again until the timer expires and one character is announced as the "winner." It's ridiculous. It's fun. It is, in fact, ridiculously fun and stands as one of the most memorable multiplayer experiences ever to grace a console system.

Melee's control scheme is identical to that of its N64 counterpart... intuitive moves, frustrating quirks, and all. Every combination of a direction and the A or B button performs a different--and totally logical--attack, and you'll find none of the elaborate joystick swirls required by most fighting games. Plus, pressing left and A at the exact same time still performs the signature "Smash" moves. The scheme takes a little getting used to at first--especially for newcomers--though once you master it with one character, learning the others will be no problem. Old problems like difficult quick turns, a high frequency of accidentally hurling yourself off ledges (*cough*Fox McCloud*cough*), and a lack of controller customization options still linger. The addition of a mid-air dodge and the ability to use the X and Y buttons as jump buttons (as an alternative to pressing up) are both more than welcome.

Entropy and The Arts
If you have the expanded mental capacity required to pick such things out of storms of chaos, one of the most striking things you'll notice about Melee is that the graphics are ungodly gorgeous... even by the ungodly gorgeous GameCube standards set by games like Rogue Squadron. The animation is absolutely masterful, and there are in-game moments that rival Pixar-generated computer-animated movies in terms of quality and color. And even though the gameplay is rooted in two dimensions, the graphics are not: Pause the game, and you can rotate, zoom, and roam around the level, checking out the detail in the dust flurry kicked up by a character or examining the reflection on Samus's armor joint.

The level variety is huge--while some "N64 redux" stages are stupidly simple, other new levels will confound you with their complexity as floors melt away and giant chunks of architecture morph, rotate, and disappear at the whim of some cosmic poltergeist with annoying gravity-bending powers. Stages like these tend to quickly counteract any of the anti-confusion benefits derived from the GameCube's super-sharp graphics.

And then there's the sound... the sweet, smashing sound. Certain levels--like the Metroid-inspired stages--feature brilliant, sweeping remixes of already-classic musical scores; others, like the Pok?mon Stadium, boast orchestral magnum opuses with crazy crescendos and spine-chilling warbling wails from ghostly Pok?mon-loving church choirs. The sound effects seem huger-than-life, and little touches like how Pikachu's voice deepens when he embiggens just prove that artistic detail was way at the forefront of the Nintendo hive design-mind.

How To Win Friends and Influence People
While Smash Bros. is still the undisputed champ of the party game circuit, the game biggest weakness is still its one-player mode--though it's quite a bit better than it used to be. There's increased variety in the bonus stages, much more human-feeling A.I., and an ungodly number of secret (and scarily, unnecessarily hyper-detailed) trophies to obsessively collect. Nintendo also threw in two new modes--a series of 30 Event matches (theme battles that have you doing things like battling 128 tiny little Marios or just killing only the female half of the Ice Climber duo), and a nifty little Adventure mode, which enables you to play 2D platform-style Smashed mini-versions of Mario, Metroid, and Zelda stages. While both modes are cool, they don't have very long legs... you'll probably get through the Adventure Mode once or twice, say, "hey, that was cool," and then fruitlessly yearn for a new 2D side-scrolling Metroid game.

While games like GoldenEye somehow managed to have it both ways--brilliant single-player mode, brilliant multiplayer mode, too--such creatures are rare finds indeed. Super Smash Bros. Melee is the most complete multiplayer console package to date--an absurd, wild, and wickedly fun game with lots of variety, unbelievable visuals, and more longevity than most of the gods of Olympus. Got a GameCube? Got some friends? Then what the hell are you doing still reading this stupid review?

Note: More screens of SSBM madness are on the next page... don't miss 'em!

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WarioGarlic

This game should've gotten a 5.0 rating; it deserves it. This game was so addicting. I traded it in because Brawl was going to come out, but its release date got pushed back twice, making me wish I hadn't traded it in. When Brawl came out, it stole Melee's addictive fighting, but Melee is still fun and it will never loose that.

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