Super Smash Bros

A long long time ago when I was a little kid I went over to a friend's house and they had a Nintendo 64 (released 1996). The one game that was an instant favorite that we played each time we met up was Super Smash Bros.

This was an incredible game because each and every battle you did was naturally different. We kept switching characters trying to find one we'd perfect in order to beat the tougher and tougher CPU based enemies or each other.

We'd play on different maps and as we played more we realized you could unlock more characters to play as! This is where Ness was introduced that would become the character I'd play for the next 20 years.

Of course the GameCube was released a few years later in 2001 and it was one of the first game consoles we'd own ourselves. So of course another iteration of Super Smash was released and we had to get it.

This was such an excellent 2nd iteration of the game as everything about it just got better.

• They added 14 more characters on top of the existing.
• They added a ton more stages returning some favorites from the first game.
• They added a ton of single player "mini" games like Home-Run Stadium.
• They had a Classic, Adventure, All-Star and Stadium modes.
• They had so many things to set records on, unlock and more.

If a friend had a GameCube they had Super Smash as well. We'd setup tournaments or play some crazy customized rule based battle. Though what was immediately fun was trying to unlock all the characters at whatever requirements was needed for it. This is where online game guides and forums began to really shine as a method for learning how to do something.

A new map introduced was called "Final Destination" which is where you'd face off against the final boss. Once unlocked this became my favorite map as it had nothing special going on. It was just a battle between characters on a flat surface with a few items in the mix. It was my type of battle without the randomness of other stages.

We'd also turn off some of the more broken items, because the random aspect to get an item that almost guaranteed a kill wasn't very fun to go against. I probably to this day have the most hours on Super Smash Melee than any other Nintendo game by quite a lot.

By time the 3rd iteration of the game came out it was for the Nintendo Wii which I did not directly own.

It was fun to play this game when I had the chance as it was once again the same game but a new set of characters, maps and items. It was a pretty fun game to just set some settings and play against some friends locally. However, one item bugged me extremely quick in this game which was not found in the previous. It was the "Smash ball" and granted the hero who broke it their "Final Smash", which was basically an ability so strong it would normally kill opponents. It even felt like if a player was doing so bad they'd be given one off spawn to help re-level a game.

Sure some of the heroes had final smashes you could dodge or avoid, but some seemed so daunting and powerful they acted as an instant kill. So of course if the item spawned everyone would go for it instantly. I'm happy we had the ability to turn it off, since it spawned too often and was too powerful.

We now arrive at the 5th game for the Nintendo Switch, which Alyson and I now own so we picked up the game.

It was cool immediately to recognize maps, gamemodes, heroes and configuration dating all the way back to the Nintendo 64 era. Quickly I noticed a new adventure mode with spirits which made no sense to me, but after some reading it reminded me of the skill based tree gaming that something like Marathon, Overwatch Stadium or Destiny has. I'll have to experiment with that mode at some point.

So many characters weren't unlocked that I reminded myself of the fun just playing to unlock some new heroes. Though I had to do some quick research on how to unlock my main character of Ness. It'll be a slow journey to unlock everything with the little bit we play, but having a game that isn't as stressful as Marathon is a fun alternative.

I bet anytime a new generation of consoles come out from Nintendo you can probably count on a new Super Smash Bros, much like Xbox counts on Halo for each new generation of consoles.