SUPER SMASH BROS.
Original Release: Nintendo, 1999, Nintendo 64
Initially meant as a more beginner-friendly fighting alternative, the Smash Bros lineage got its start here
Super Smash Bros. (N64, Nintendo, 1999)
Where to Buy: Amazon
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
Super Smash really is exactly what haute snob gaming nerds criticized it for being when it came out -- mindless brawling of a very button-mashy bent (unless you get into serious competitive tournament play, anyway). I never really saw why this was a problem, though. It's meant to be an accessible, chaotic, fun party game and that's exactly what it is, with that Nintendo first-party polish to boot.
But it does kinda suck in single-player, which maybe drove some of the backlash. The whole series is weighted heavily toward multiplayer, but none more so than this first one. The only thing for a solo player to do is play the same repetitive series of battles over and over, trying to meet the somewhat obnoxious criteria to unlock Ness, Luigi, Jigglypuff and Cap'n Falcon. The only mini-games are these REALLY obnoxious target-breaking levels that I usually suicide dive out of immediately because they're so unfun. There's also a certain level of intentional imprecision in movement and jumping that actually enhances the chaotic fun in multiplayer but makes playing against the robotically precise computer a chore sometimes.
Smash was also a risky property to introduce, at least from the perspective of insular corporate marketing. All of us out here in reality know that people aren't going to start regarding Mario as a psychotic murderer if you make a side game where he can huck Pikachu off the top of Hyrule Castle, but the decision-makers at these big companies are always at least somewhat removed from everyday street-level life and I imagine people in suits at Nintendy were nervously biting their nails about what the game would do to the "brand image" before this shipped. Winning gamble for them, though. Sales were so good they even let you beat up women in the next installment.
Smash Bros. is one of those initial series entries that gets rendered obsolete by the sequels, which do everything it did but bigger and better. If you're putting together an N64 collection, however, this is basically a requisite party game to have on hand. Just don't expect to get much solo time out of it other than a couple cumulative hours of unlocking the hidden characters.
Smash Remix (Nintendo 64, The_Smashfather, 2021)
Where to Buy: Freeware (download at Github)
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
Why add more modern characters, modes, levels and sound/art assets to the original N64 Smash Bros? Well, for the hell of it for one thing. But also because you can emulate this version on any old potato. Some people also prefer the mechanics and stage layouts, which are a bit of a different style from the later games.
The project is ongoing as of this writing, but is fully playable. It retains the fundamental gameplay of Smash 64, along with all the original characters and levels and such, it just hacks in a whole bunch of extras. Such as 16 new characters, a couple of which are not in any of the official Smash games (Conker the Squirrel and Marina from Mischief Makers). There are also new bosses, a ton of new stages (with new background music), new modes cribbed from later Smash games, and some new settings. The pause camera can also now be rotated freely.
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