When Super Smash Bros. came out on the N64, I thought it looked like a lot of fun and I loved the concept of Nintendo characters like Link and Princess Peach fighting each other. Pair this with the TV spots Nintendo released for it, which seemed out of character for Nintendo at the time, and it’s no wonder that I wanted to play it.
But N64 games were expensive, and Smash Bros. was released so late in the system’s life that I was more interested in purchasing the cheaper and more readily available PlayStation games. So Smash Bros. remained a rental for me, but I did have a lot of fun playing with friends.
As seems to be the case for many, it was with Super Smash Bros. Melee for the GameCube where my love for the series eventually bloomed, though. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to make up for mostly missing out on the original, and hot damn if they didn’t add a ton of content. The original roster was quaint and didn’t necessarily seem anemic at the time, but when I saw the roster for Melee I was almost happy that I had passed on the N64 classic. 26 characters! Ness from EarthBound! It seemed too good to be true, but it most assuredly wasn’t.
I bought and played both Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, and I loved them both, but they didn’t quite hook me like Melee had. They added characters and levels, yes, but for whatever reason I didn’t find myself obsessively trying to unlock every character and playing through everyone’s campaign. Again, I totally liked them, and I did eventually unlock almost everything, but they just didn’t inspire the same kind of magical tinglies that Melee had.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, however, brought the tinglies. It’s hard to explain why, though. Sure, it has a LOT more levels and characters than the previous games, but the gameplay itself has always been the same, mostly, with minor refinements and tweaks (final smash not included). But when I dove directly into the World of Light, I immediately felt the same kind of excited rush that I had with Melee. Was it that I was forced to unlock characters? Or the cute and inventive ways they would set up matches to reflect certain games or worlds (like Zero Suit Samus in a white costume as The Boss from Metal Gear Solid 3). Or the fact that the graphics were obviously polished and not so jagged and rough, as they were in the Wii U version? It was probably a combination of all of these things and more, but I couldn’t stop playing.
One of my favorite things about the series is the crossover of iconic gaming characters, and I still find myself amazed that this game has fighters from Final Fantasy, Castlevania, Bayonetta, and Street Fighter, with icons like Sonic, Mega Man, and Pac-Man, fighting Nintendo characters from every major series in their history. I do have one small complaint in this arena, though. Perhaps the specific thing I loved the most, and what I spent a great portion of my time in Melee doing, was collecting trophies. Nintendo mentioned during one of their pre-release Nintendo Directs that trophies wouldn’t be a part of this game because of time constraints, and they hoped that the new spirit system would make up for it. The spirit system is great, don’t get me wrong. I am impressed by the number of major and minor characters from all of the games represented, and they are definitely fun to collect and browse, but first of all, looking at 3D models in the form of trophies is more fun, and second, I wish they had included some kind of little blurb about the original game that the character came from. A fairly small complaint, yeah, but it’s definitely one thing this game lacks, even if it’s the only thing.
And last but certainly not least, I have to mention how mindblowing it was to hear the announcement that Joker from Persona 5 was going to be the game’s first DLC character. I’ve rambled on about my love for that game enough, but I will just say that, like seemingly everyone, I was not expecting this at all. Not only has a Persona main title never been on a Nintendo platform, Joker just doesn’t seem like the kind of iconic character that Nintendo has been going for. And I have questions! Will these fighters come with their own set of spirits, like the other fighters? Will there be support trophies, and if so, will Ann be one of them? What about levels and music? What about a freaking amiibo!? Ahem. Okay, breathe, Joey. Breathe. I guess we’ll see. Eventually.
A New Game Plus 