Super Smash Bros. Melee

Super Smash Bros. Melee
Developer	HAL Laboratory
Publisher	Nintendo
System	GameCube
Release Date	JP November 21, 2001 US December 3, 2001 EU May 24, 2002 AU May 31, 2002
Gallery	GH Gallery
Rating	ESRB: E

Super Smash Bros. Melee is a fighting game that was released for the Nintendo Gamecube in late 2001. It is a follow-up to the original Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64 and is the second game of the Super Smash Bros. series.

Plot

The game's story is only vaguely referred to. The introductory cutscene implies that the characters are dolls brought to life by a child's hand (representing Master Hand) to fight for fun. This is most likely to explain the contracting logic that comes from characters who are normally friendly with each other (such as Mario and Princess Peach fighting each other in this game.

Gameplay

This game uses a heavily enhanced version of the previous game's gameplay. Though every character fights differently, they have the same basic control scheme. The A button will let is used for regular attacks while the B button will unleash a special attack. Each character has five different special attacks depending on the direction that the control stick is put towards at the time (with the fifth move being new to this game). The C^ button is used to make the character character jump. Pressing the Z button will deploy a shield or have the character grab a nearby opponent.

There are several 1 Player modes. Classic Mode follows the formula of the previous game's 1-Player Mode by pitting the player against a series of opponents with some minigame areas in between, and Master Hand is the final boss (with the potential of unlocking Crazy Hand as a secondary boss). The new mode is Adventure Mode, which is divided into stages for each franchise which follow loose narratives, and most stages contain platforming areas with enemies from the respective games such as Goombas and Like Likes. This mode has Bowser as the final boss, and it is possible to unlock a second battle with him as Giga Bowser. A third mode, All-Star Mode, can also be unlocked in which the player must battle through every character in the game with only one life.

There are also a variety of extra modes. The game has 51 Event Matches which can be unlocked, and they are all battles in which certain conditions must be followed to complete them. The Stadium section contains more minigame-like modes. The Target Test continues and is accompanied by the new Home-Run Contest, where the player has a limited amount of time to damage the sandbag and send it as far as possible with a Home-Run Bat at hand. These modes are rounded out by the Multi-Man Melees, which are several special challenge modes in which the player is pitted against various wireframe fighters. This game introduced collectible trophies, which could be earned in a variety of ways, and some of which can be unlocked only by performing certain tasks in the various modes. These trophies depicted characters, creatures, settings and items from various Nintendo series, and each playable character had one trophy for each of the three main single-player modes. Players also earned coins with nearly every match in most modes, and these coins could be used for the Lottery to get new trophies or to buy a Continue after getting a Game Over in Classic or Adventure Mode.

The game is primarily known for its multiplayer modes. Super Smash Bros. Melee can be played by up to four players simultaneously. It supports a variety of different play modes including time, stock, and team options. In addition to these modes, there are also a bunch of special melees with different conditions. For example, there is a mode where players can fight in slow motion or can only attack with the A button. Melee also included another type of match called Coin Battles in which players' goals was to collect coins dropped by opponents when hit instead of focusing directly on defeating each other. A tournament option was also available. One other feature was the ability to take snapshots which could be saved to a memory card.

Special Trophies

Some trophies in the game could only be unlocked from the outside. A pair of trophies from Luigi's Mansion and Pikmin could be unlocked only from Melee sharing a memory card with the respective games. There are also a two trophies that were only distributed at Nintendo events in Japan: a Super Mario World-inspired trophy of Mario with Yoshi, and one of Samus Aran without her helmet. The Japanese release also had a trophy of Tamagon from Devil World, but it was removed from international releases to censor religious references.

Playable Characters

This game expands the roster from the previous games with 14 more characters for a total of 26. Ten of them are hidden characters, and they can be locked either by fulfilling certain conditions in the game's various modes, or one character can be unlocked for every 100 matches played in Vs. Mode.

• Mario
• Princess Peach
• Bowser
• Yoshi
• Donkey Kong
• Captain Falcon
• Fox McCloud
• Ness
• Ice Climbers
• Kirby
• Samus Aran
• ZeldaPrincess Zelda/Sheik
• Link
• Pikachu

Unlockable Characters

• Luigi
• Dr. Mario
• Ganondorf
• Falco Lombardi
• Young Link
• Pichu
• Mewtwo
• Mr. Game & Watch
• Marth
• Roy

Legacy

Melee was released shortly after the Gamecube and helped the system to thrive in its early life. Some of the elements introduced in this game would also be implemented into later games of the series, such as the trophy system and splitting single-player mode into multiple modes.

This game also boosted the popularity of the more obscure characters that were featured, particularly Marth and Roy, whose games in the Fire Emblem series had only been released in Japan. This seems to have been a factor in the overseas releases of Fire Emblem games which started with Fire Emblem.

Sequels

In 2008, it was followed by Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Nintendo Wii.

See Also

• Items in Super Smash Bros. series
• SSBM Trophy Guide
• Stages in Super Smash Bros. series