Most realized early on into Nintendo’s life of the 64bit era that there was a serious lack of fighters gracing the console. The fact of the matter is, there was. As far as I can tell, in order to solve this problem Nintendo developed one itself that rose to the top, that is, Super Smash Bros. This fighter was unique to the genre, as the gameplay wasn’t just push this button to kick that person or whatever, there weren’t really a load of moves to memorize and this is probably one of best things about the game, as all others had an abundance of special moves for each individual character. This game was addicting, and Super Smash Bros. Melee is sure to add to the multiplayer enjoyment. The games presence at the Electronic Entertainment Expo ’01 captured the eyes of gamers instantly, especially considering that the game wasn’t that far fetched from the first game. But, with more characters, new items, and a more enhanced single player mode, wonderfully detailed characters, and that old fashioned feel of the first title.

What was seen by gamers at first glance at E3’01 was that only the graphics had been upgraded, and that the gameplay remained some what the same. The single player mode, however, took a much larger revamping as like in the first level, you would face your opponent at their level, say on top of Hyrule castle while fighting Link, but in SSBM, you would go deep underground into a maze filled with zombies and octorocks and once successfully completing the above aforementioned creatures, you would eventually encounter link, thus, the battle begins. Trapping yourself in this new single player element, the old 2D side scrolling comes back to life with 3D graphics, but that old fashioned element is there, giving gamers a look back at the past, and the fun.

Overall, the multiplayer stays unique to the feel of the old SSB gameplay, but there are upgrades and additions. Now in the versus mode, you can pick from a variety of options to chose from, including Melee, Tournament, and Custom Rules. Melee is the same kill, kill, kill just like in the original. On top of this, Coin mode and Decision mode are added to the fun. In coin mode, your battling your opponent in order to collect the most coins that are falling from the sky, thus, the longer you opponent is “unconscious”, the more time you have to collect coins. Decision mode is much more of a challenge, because many people that I know usually have certain characters they use and do the same move over and over until your K.O. But in this, the objective is to do the most combos and wide variety of moves and the one with the best wins!! This is much like skateboarding or games of that kind where combos and original moves gives you points, and actually matters in the end, because it determines the winner. So, knowing all the moves you can and doing the advanced and simple moves can give you a highly earned win. If you are in tournament mode, now it can be experienced with up to four human players, and using the DigiCard you can keep track and save all those precious wins and records. In the Custom Rules option you can pick the options you want and save them to a DigiCard for future use.

From the characters of the original, the same original moves remain, but with these a new special move is added to each to ensure gameplay doesn’t get old too fast, and the animations for ordinary moves such as kick and punch have been greatly enhanced for a better visual effect. A big change from the original however is the offense vs. defense kind of thing. In SSB, there was really no defensive moves other than that little bubble that surrounded your character, however, in SSBM, defense is more focused upon, and new deflect, block, and evade moves have been added in order to have a much more realistic game. Also, on top of the old items, new items include ice blocks that can be slid across the stage, a parasol to bat opponents with, and the Super Scope, for those of you who remember, that shoots out fast ammunition that even though doesn’t do much damage, can pretty much freeze someone in place by not letting up on the trigger.

The control of the game is almost identical to that of its predecessor, so the distinctive handling is still there. The graphics are wonderful still giving a 2D world with 3D graphic effects much praise, keeping the old style gameplay somewhere in the future of gaming, but now including and improving real-time lighting, reflections, and shadows.

One interesting thing is that almost similar to SSB, SSBMelee has a level for pretty much every character in the game, and with the abundance of characters this time around, that’s a lot of courses, and there are supposedly several secret characters this time around. We’ll just have to wait and see. The following is a list of characters that we currently know about in the game…

*Mario
*Bowser
*Peach
*Yoshi
*Donkey Kong
*Ness
*Ice Climbers
*Kirby
*Samus
*Link
*Fox McCloud
*Captain Falcon
*Shiek

This game is looking to be very impressive and fans gave quite a response as most that I’ve talked to know for a fact this is at least one of the games they are picking up at the GCN launch.

Thanks to IGN for their info