Super Smash Bros.

Super Smash Bros. is a fighting game that was developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo, the game allows players to fight as various characters from Nintendo's other franchises such as Mario, Donkey Kong, Link, Pikachu, Samus Aran, and Kirby.

It is the first installment in the Super Smash Bros. series, and the game was a commercial and critical success and since then spawned four sequels.

The game was available on Virtual Console for all people with gold membership for Club Nintendo in 2013.

Premise
The game has a loose premise involving a being known as Master Hand bringing to life doll versions of classic Nintendo characters to fight. This is mainly illustrated in the game's opening movie. Master Hand is the end boss of the single player mode, and after beating him a short movie plays showing the fighter return to a lifeless doll.

Gameplay
Super Smash Bros. is unlike most traditional "arcade-style" fighting games such as Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. Whereas most fighters task the player with depleting an opponent's health meter, in Smash Bros. the goal is to KO your opponent by knocking them off the stage. Instead of a health bar, fighters have a percentage which increases from 0% to a maximum of 999% as the player takes damage. The higher the percentage, the easier it is to be sent soaring off the stage by an opponent's attack. Stages are rendered in three dimensions, but characters are restricted to moving in two dimensions, though they are allowed to roam freely around the stage.

Most stages consist of floating islands and platforms, making it possible to be KO'd in any direction. If a fighter is knocked off the stage, they may use a series of jumps in an attempt to recover. Some characters like Kirby have many jumps, making their recovery much easier, while others like Donkey Kong have a weaker recovery but are heavier and thus harder to knock off the stage. Smash Bros. offers up to 4-player matches with twelve Nintendo characters to choose from. Each of the characters have distinctive attacks, most of the time based on their moves from their own respective series of games. For example, Mario's Fireball originated in Super Mario Bros., Yoshi's Egg Throw from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island and Pikachu's various electrical attacks from the multiple Pokémon video games.

Despite each character having their own move-sets, the way in which they are controlled is almost identical. In most "arcade-style" fighting games, each character has their own unique, sometimes complicated, combinations of button presses that must be executed to perform certain abilities. Smash Bros. however, uses only a one-button and control stick combination at a time for every character, offering a wide range of abilities that are all easily accessible. Other moves such as dodging, shielding, grabbing and throwing are also used.

Characters
The game features a cast of twelve playable characters, four of which must be unlocked by completing certain tasks.

Stages

 * Princess Peach's Castle - Mario's homestage. A Bumper flies above the middle of the playing field causing 1% damage to all who get hit
 * Kongo Jungle - A short field which is Donkey Kong's homestage. A barrel at the bottom of the screen aids characters from falling to their certain death. But Watch out, because the barrel could point the wrong way and blast you off the stage!
 * Hyrule Castle - Link's homestage. A large Stage that features many platforms and a tornado appears once in a while.
 * Yoshi's Story -Yoshi's homestage. A large place with many platforms and clouds that hold the player up before falling.
 * Dream Land - Kirby's homestage. It is really big and contains Whispy Woods as an obstacle. It is designed to be easiest when playing as either Kirby or Jigglypuff.
 * Planet Zebes - Samus's homestage. Acid rises from the bottom and damages everyone who makes contact with it. Acid causes 16% and lots of knockback.
 * Sector Z - Fox's homestage. The largest stage in the whole game. Watch out for Arwings that shoot players.
 * Saffron City - Pikachu's and Jigglypuff's homestage. A Fairly Big Pokémon stage. Sometimes Pokémon appear and attacks someone.
 * Mushroom Kingdom - Luigi's homestage. In the 3 pipes you can go down, you appear in a different location. Piranha Plants come up from the pipes and attack people. Lastly, a POW block appears and whoever hits it knocks the other players,who are on the ground, up into the air. (this stage is unlockable)
 * Other Stages - Metal Mario's Residence, Battlefield (the fight with the Fighting Polygon Team), Master Hand's Residence (considered to be the original Final Destination).

Items
To make things more interesting, you can also use items. Some of these are the Poké Ball which summons a Pokémon that attacks the enemy or does something to the stage, a Bob-omb that explodes when you throw it, or if it's left on the ground for too long it starts to walk around and if it hits anyone it explodes, Motion Sensor Bombs that explode when a character walks over it, a Heart Container which recovers health, and a Fire Flower which acts as a Flamethrower when you use it.

Development
Apparently, the game was first going to be released on the SNES with the use of the Super FX Chip, just like Star Fox, though it was transferred onto the Nintendo 64. This was most likely done so the game could have better graphics and controls.

Initially when HAL was developing the game, they didn't implement characters from Nintendo's games, but rather just had standard polygonal characters in a Japanese setting (in fact in the background of one of the stages the Nintendo headquarters in Kyoto could be seen). Eventually they made the move to Nintendo characters.

The game also had a very small budget. Nintendo did not expect it to be a big hit!

Abbreviations
Since the release of Super Smash Bros., it has gained quite a few nicknames which are:

Reception
Super Smash Bros. was supposed to be a Japan released game only, however the sales were great, so Nintendo released it worldwide.

The game sold over 4.9 million copies, making it one of the Nintendo 64's best selling games.

Legacy
So far, the game has spawned four sequels - Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and ''Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.  At Nintendo's press conference at E3 2011, they announced a sequel to Brawl'' that will be released for the Nintendo 3DS (the first portable Smash Bros.) and the Wii U. The two platforms will work together in some way.

It was released on the Virtual Console for the Wii for 1,000 Wii points ($10) in 2009.

Trivia

 * Super Smash Bros. was originally going to be a Japan-only release, but because of it's success it eventually saw a world-wide release.
 * Jigglypuff was a last-minute addition to the game. It was chosen because its model could be easily made out of Kirby and because it was one of the more popular Pokemon of the era.
 * Originally Bowser, King Dedede, Mewtwo, and Meowth were going to be playable, but weren't included. This is because Nintendo wanted the playable characters to all be heroes, not villains, for the first game. A similar thing occurred with Banjo from Banjo-Kazooie, but this was because they couldn't get the licence from his original company, Rare.