A look back at the almost-launch title that many of us are still playing today.
Why am I reviewing this game so late?
It's not old.
That is the genius of Super Smash Brothers: Melee (SSBM). I've tried my hardest to make it old. I've begged the game to get stale. Begged it. It refuses every plaintive whimper. The simplicity of the game's capacity for infinite entertainment is astounding. Take 25 stages times 4 players times 25 moves times 25 characters times 50 items times 30 Pokemon, and you have 93,750,000 possibilities.
Why do these possibilities possess such sheer capacity for joy? Simple. There is nothing more fun in life than beating the crap out of your friends. You can't do that in real life; they might get mad at you. But for a measly 30 bucks, you now have 93,750,000 ways to beat the crap out of those that you care about the most. Only one way, Jigglypuff's "Rest", truly infuriates them. Good enough for me.
The controls are what make SSBM the greatest game since "Thok hit Ayla with rock and laugh". HAL has provided a set of controls so instinctive that they can be learned in the womb. (We're only a step away from eXistenZ-type fun.) Even those who have never touched a Nintendo can be stomping me within 20 minutes, although that might not be saying much.
The character designs vary, from the super-deformed Ness to the detailed and fluid Bowser. Whether you like the character designs or not, it doesn’t really matter, as 99% of the game's graphics are just fine, and you'll be too busy beating the crap out of your friends to notice.
The sound reminds me of when I first discovered girls. In fact, it’s better than that. It reminds me of the time when girls first discovered me. There's no other way to describe the wonder and childlike joy I feel when the orchestra grabs my nostalgia and pleasure centers and massages both. For you Ralph Stanley fans, there's even a bluegrass blast from Mario and Yoshi’s past. You can simply turn on a level and listen to the music in a curled fetal position with a smile on my...I mean your face.
As the mouse keeps hitting the cocaine lever in the laboratory, so too will you continue to play this game. Exacting vengeful death on your buddy and getting him to laugh about it in 93,750,000 ways is about all you can ask for in any game. Of course, there is also a deep one-player mode, with unique adventure levels that will stroke the nostalgia even further. Twenty-something gamers rejoice, for your childhood has returned!
The game is tremendously balanced. It’s easy to tell that each character has been carefully tweaked to balance out with the rest. Some characters are straightforward and easy to master (Roy, Marth, Mario), while others are difficult to control but offer rewarding and unique fighting styles (Ness, Mewtwo, Peach). Throughout my 100 hours of gameplay so far, I have come to see that each character’s combination of advantages and disadvantages produces 25 unique fighting styles. There are 25 characters in the game, and 24 of them are wonderfully designed. Even the runt of the litter, Falco Lombardi, is fun to use for jumping off stages on purpose.
This is an extremely social video game, which, unfortunately, is quite necessary for some of us. Not only can you beat mercilessly your friends, but you can even make new friends out of strangers by beating them mercilessly. The value of the game is endless, in the sense that you will probably die before you exhaust the possibilities. The graphics are only a relative disappointment because they are simply excellent in a game that is otherwise cosmic in its wholesome goodness and radiance of love.