SUMMARY
Super Smash Brothers is a Nintendo 64 four-player fighting game with the unique feature that in order to beat an opponents, you have to knock them off the side of the map to the edge of the screen. In order to do this, you have to weaken their resistance to power attacks using damage attacks, which are not mutually exclusive. Also, there are dodge and shield commands.
GAMEPLAY
This is a game that reliably got me and my friends very excited while playing on the multiplayer mode. It was very fun and interesting. There were a lot of elements that made this the case--the music, sound effects, items, attack artwork, maps, and dodging/shielding commands. Together, all of these elements result in a fast-paced dance that involved a surprising amount of technical skill to master.
The characters were great because they are mostly taken from old Nintendo games, so they were familiar. Additionally, the characters fell into different tiers of potential effectiveness (and there are handicaps available), so competing players could balance out their skills by choosing appropriate settings.
The first person story mode of this game was fun because all of the levels were very different from one another. Some had one slow powerful character to defeat, some had targets to break, some had lots of small characters, and some had a few standard characters. It was very varied.
The social aspects of this game should not be underestimated. In all honesty, I found this to be one of the most socially conducive games around. Again, there are a lot of reasons why this is the case, but I think the most prominent one is simply the feature of having to knock your opponent off of the map to the edge of the screen—for some reason, this feature has a really interesting effect on the format of the battles.
DESIGN
The levels all contributed to the gameplay differently. The most straightforward levels were those which were larger and more flat. These allowed for more complicated fights in terms of technical moves. However, the smaller levels created a greater conflict by making the battle more imminent. In this sense a large part of the battle is made to take place in simply observing the map.
The tone of the gameworld is largely cartoonish and happy, although some levels are kind of dark. This changes with the items that are equipped and the characters that are being played. Overall, it stays true to the time-tested Nintendo theme of accessibility.
The game exhibits a great amount of emergent complexity in the battle system. The largest contributors to this are the shield/dodge functions and the double jump. Because of these moves, there are a large number of attack and defense combinations that can be used. There are specific movements which counter others, and there are specific combinations of movements that work synergistically.
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