Basic Features

• Single Player - tourney style

• Multiplayer 1 to 4 players (bots can replace humans)

• Online Play

• Net Rankings

• RPG-like system

Extras

• Secret Characters

• Extra Levels

• Secret Items

Description

Basically, this game is Super Smash Bros. But it's totally perfected. We're talking the works. Including Internet play mode. But most important of all, villains as fighters. There would be more fighters than the first SSB. At least 20 basic characters, plus secret characters. I don't think it'll be that hard, considering you'd be adding villains and characters from lesser-known Nintendo franchises. The game would play the same as the original game. There would be a 2D playing field and the object would be to knock the other players off the board.

What makes the game so special is the RPG system. You can take your character and through battles he gains experience. When he gains a certain number of points, you can spend those points on upgrading and changing him. You can spend your points on everything from beefed up stats to new moves. You would also earn credits to spend on things like new items to fight with or a new outfit for your character. But the real meat is the Exp points.

The characters would have the same kind of moves as in SSB. You'd have your B move, your up+B move, down+B move, A move, grab, and smash attacks. With the Exp points you could change those moves. So lets say Mario starts with the Mario Tornado as his normal down+B move. You could save up some Exp points and spend them on a new down+B move to replace the old one, kinda like Pokemon, how they can only have 4 moves and if you wish you can replace old ones with new ones. So you save up your points to get the Shoe move and then when you hit down+B Mario pulls out the shoe from Super Mario Bros. 3 and lands on someone.

As you can see, the possibilities are endless with this kind of thing. Everyone's fighter would be totally different, from moves to clothes. The Exp points could also be used to beef up stats. The normal A attack would never change, but through the Exp points you could upgrade the damage it does. Or you could upgrade the defense powers of the shield. Different levels of defense would be noticeable by the color of the shield.

USB: Online Frenzy, as stated before, would also include more characters. A bunch more. In order to keep everyone's character different there would have to be a bunch. There would be at least 20 normal fighters and who knows how many bonus fighters. Bonus fighters would include the likes of Kid Icarus and Saki from Sin and Punishment. The best addition to the characters would be the inclusion of villains. You could play as Bowser, Wario, Ganondorf, or other Nintendo villains.

The online play would have to have some kind of moderation. When I say moderation I mean that people who set up the game session would have the ability to limit the type people who could join the game. Let’s say you have a new character at level 1. When you create and online game you can tell the server not to let in anyone over level 3. This would keep masters with level 100 characters from crashing your good time. There would also be a net ranking system so that you can see how well you stack up against other players. There could be tournaments and the winner could take home a prize or something. The tourney could be set up so there would be different leagues for different level characters, so that you wouldn't need a level 100 character to play.

The single player would be more of a side note. The game is designed for net play and multiplayer. But you could play in a tourney against the computer players, or just vs. battles like in Super Smash Bros. These would help you beef up your character before playing online. Through the single player game you could earn exp and new items to fight with. In the net play, the items the host character has would determine the items in the battle. So if you have a character with all the items hosting the game, all the items are available, and if you have a character with only the starting items hosting, only the starting items are there. The same would be true of bonus arenas. You earn them in single player, but for net play it determined by weather or not the host has them.

The non-internet version would also include vs. battles for up to 4 players (humans and computers). All the stuff you earn in the single player affects the multi-player. If your friends don't have their own characters and you want to battle them with your level 60 character, they could select pre-set characters to balance it out. There would be 10 presets for each character. You pick the level and depending on that level, there are different approximate stats for a character at that level. For example, you pick a pre-set Ness at level 62. All the Ness pre sets have different stats depending on the level. That level determines the pre-set character’s moves. All the pre-sets between level 1 and 10 have the same move set; the same goes for levels 11 to 20, 21 to 30, etc, all the way up to 100.

Experience points would be handled in a few ways. A few things would be determined the number of Exp. These include the number of fighters present, the difference in levels of the fighters, the number of kills, and the number of lives you have left (if you win). This would enable even losing characters to gain experience. For credits, your finishing position will determine how much you earn. For example, lets say the winner gets X number of credits (fights between higher level characters would have bigger credit purses.) Second place would get 25% of what X is, third place would get 10% of what X is and last place gets no credits.

The bonus levels (break the targets, board the platforms) would be replaced by a training mode. There would be 5 training levels for every character. Characters have a max level of 100, so ever 20 levels a character gets a new training bonus level. This is because if every character only had 1 break the targets it would get way to easy once the character leveled up enough. So, with escalading difficulty in multiple bonus training levels we can keep the training levels while still making them a challenge.

I've been brainstorming with Ed on certain items and moves. We've got quite a few fun ones. There'd be an Experience item. It'd be shaped like the letters EXP. When you snagged it, you'd get bonus EXP at the end of the fight. So basically, there would be a mad rush for the EXP. Like how there's a rush for the tomatoes and hearts in SSB. Also is the idea of mushrooms. You eat a mushroom and you double in size and get to stomp around. But some of the mushrooms are poison. When you eat one, there would be a 5% chance of poison and instead you would take 25 damage. Or the poison scale could slide. You could take damage equal to 10% of your current accumulated damage. Because if you're already badly hurt, you're more susceptible to poison.

For bonus moves, Samus could have missiles or a freeze bomb. She could send out homing missiles to kill stuff. The freeze bomb would freeze somebody in a block of ice. Samus could then do with that person what she wished. Obviously, the easiest character to make up moves for is Kirby. He already has an arsenal of moves from all his games. Mario could have different moves based on all the moves he’s had possible in all his games. Wario could wear different hats to give him different moves like in his Virtual Boy game. Link would have different weapons and he could also use the power of masks to beef up á la Majora’s Mask.

Ultra Smash Bros: Online Frenzy would be the flag ship title for Nintendo GameCube Internet play. It could fully showcase the abilities that the GameCube will have to pull people together and have fun over the Internet playing their favorite games. While graphically it wouldn’t be anything special, just improved graphics over the original, it would still be a fantastic title, much like it’s predecessor. Also, trying to run a fully 3D game over a 56K modem is not easy, particularly games that require quick response time. Unless Nintendo would be able to set up a network like SegaNet, which is supposed to be great for gaming, even over 56K, there would be some problems. If the game ran in a psudo-3D it would be much easier to reduce lag times and packet loss, and in a game as complex as this such issues would be a major problem.

Ultra Smash Bros: Online Frenzy is everything I've (and hopefully you've) wanted in a sequel to the massively fun Super Smash Bros, and more. The game will have the ability to bring people together and just have fun for a couple hours of their life. Through the use of numerous characters, a rich experience system, and just plain fun it could very easily be one of the must own titles for the GameCube, much like the game it is inspired by.

By Mike Sklens