Super Smash Bros. (video game)

The brawl that started it all.

Super Smash Bros. is the first entry in Nintendo's insanely popular series of Nintendo's hit Super Smash Bros. series of crossover platform fighting games, and made its humble beginnings on the Nintendo 64 in 1999. Developed by HAL Laboratory with Masahiro Sakurai at the helm, it began life as a simplistic four player fighting game as a result of Nintendo wanting to cash in on the fighting game market. But due to knowing that it would be hard to stand out among genre giants like Street Fighter, Tekken, and King of Fighters, Sakurai gave it a hell of a hook: the game would be star various Nintendo mascots, ranging from household names like Mario and Link to relative unknowns like Captain Falcon and Ness. Nintendo didn't have high hopes for it, but it would prove to be a smash hit among the 64's install base, leading to the birth of a genre juggernaut.

The playable characters are as follows:


 * Mario, Yoshi, and Luigi
 * Link
 * Donkey Kong
 * Pikachu and Jigglypuff
 * Kirby
 * Samus Aran
 * Fox McCloud
 * Captain Falcon
 * Ness


 * Artificial Stupidity: The AI has no idea how to handle edgeguarding. Once you knock a computer player off the stage, all you have to do is interrupt their recovery and they'll drop like a stone.
 * Badass Adorable: Kirby, Pikachu, and Jigglypuff are all small and cute little critters who can fight on par with a heavily-armored bounty hunter and a legendary swordsman. The former two are even considered to be the game's top tier fighters by the competitive scene as a whole.
 * Bee Afraid: Beedrill. If you summon one with a Poké Ball, an entire swarm of them will attack your enemies for you.
 * The Big Guy: Donkey Kong and Captain Falcon are the biggest members of the cast, as well as the heaviest hitters.
 * Book Ends: The opening cutscene shows that the characters are a child's toys enacting their owner's fantasies, and Classic Mode ends with the winning toy being left on its owner's desk once they're done playing with it.
 * The Cameo: You can usually see a few area-appropriate character or two hanging around in the background of the stages you fight on, such as Ridley in Zebes or King Dedede in Dreamland.
 * Cute Giant: Should Clefairy choose to mimic Snorlax upon being summoned, it'll fly up into the air before crashing down on the stage as a giant Clefairy.
 * Difficult but Awesome: Most of the game's fighters are fairly straightforward, but Ness is the sole outlier. His PSI Specials are weird and unintuitive, his hitboxes are disjointed, his jumps are weirdly floaty, and PK Thunder move is not a standard third jump but rather a controllable ball of electricty. But an experienced Ness player is a terror to behold, because what appear to be weaknesses turn out to be his greatest strengths. His floaty jumps give him excellent recovery should he be knocked off the stage, properly-controlled PK Thunders further improve on it while turning him into a powerful electric meteor, and his PSI Magnet? It's a health recovery move, and one that absorbs energy-based projectiles such as the Mario Bros's fireballs and Samus' beams.
 * Dive Kick: This is the first game to feature Captain Falcon's Falcon Kick, which turns into this when used in midair. Hitmonlee also does a powerful, downwards flying kick when it's summoned from a Pokéball.
 * Early Installment Weirdness: Definitely present here and there. The most glaringly obvious example would be the lack of Side Specials.
 * Final Smashes wouldn't be introduced until Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
 * Battlefield and Final Destination aren't default stages, but are instead exclusive to 1P mode.
 * The "Congratulations!" artwork isn't carefully setup screenshots of gameplay footage, but unique art for each character.
 * This is the sole game in the series without any Fire Emblem presence whatsoever.
 * Samus' entirely melee combat-based moveset save for her beam and bomb projectiles is this when compared to other projectile-based fighters introduced later in the series, like Mega Man and Mii Gunner. It was clear that the devs were likely worried that they'd make her too campy if she had too many projectile attacks, but the aforementioned characters show that you can make it work while keeping their range and firepower reasonable.
 * Final Boss: Master Hand is the first and only final boss present in this game.
 * Green Hill Zone: Dreamland, which is a simplistic stage that's perfect for first-time players to fight on.
 * Implacable Man: Metal Mario, who can tank several of your attacks without even flinching or being knocked back. It takes a significant amount of damage before he even starts feeling proper knockback, and at those values you could KO most other characters.
 * Lethal Lava Land: Planet Zebes, which has dangerous yellow lava constantly rise and fall, turning most of the stage into a death trap in the process.
 * Put on a Bus: While they often didn't vanish entirely, several of this game's Pokéball Pokémon wouldn't be summonable allies in any other game, such as Beedrill, Onix, Hitmonlee, and Starmie.
 * Ryu and Ken: Mario and Luigi fall into this role by way of being the closest thing this game has to Shotoclones, as well as having similar playstyles with different mechanics to keep them distinct.
 * The Smurfette Principle: Samus is the game's sole female fighter (though most fans tend to interpret Jigglypuff as a girl, too).
 * Wolfpack Boss: The Kirby and Fighting Polygon Teams, which force you to fight a small army of opponents that fight you three at a time.