Super Smash Bros. Melee

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Super Smash Bros. Melee
Super Smash Bros Melee Logo.jpg
Studio HAL Laboratory , Inc.
Publisher Nintendo
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 JapanJapanNovember 21, 2001 December 3, 2001 May 24, 2002
North AmericaNorth America
EuropeEurope
platform Nintendo GameCube
genre Fighting Game
Game mode Single , multiplayer (1–4)
control Nintendo GameCube controller
medium 1 mini DVD
language German , English , French , Italian , Japanese , Spanish
Age rating
USK released from 6
PEGI recommended from 3 years

Super Smash Bros. Melee (short SSBM , 大乱 闘 ス マ ッ シ ュ ブ ラ ザ ー ズ DX , Dairantō Sumasshu Burazāzu Derakkusu for "Riesenrauferei Smash Brothers Deluxe") is a video game for the Nintendo GameCube and the second part of the Super Smash Bros. -Line. The game was developed by HAL Laboratory and first published by Nintendo in November 2001 in Japan. In North America the game was released in early December while it was only released in May 2002 in Europe.

The game is assigned to the fighting game genre and is a crossover from various Nintendo game series , including Super Mario , The Legend of Zelda , Metroid and Pokémon . As such, the game contains characters from the various game series with which the player can compete against one another.

Super Smash Bros. Melee received critical acclaim and was also a commercial success with over seven million units sold. The game is the successor to Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64 and received a successor in 2008 with Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Nintendo Wii .

Gameplay

Super Smash Bros. Melee is a two-dimensional fighting game . The player fights with one character in different arenas against other characters. In order to defeat the opposing figures, they must be removed from the picture. To do this, the player must weaken the opposing figures with punches, kicks and other attacks, which increases a "damage display" given in percent and results in opposing figures being thrown through the air by attacks and thus easier to remove from the picture.

Overview of the playable characters
character Game series Can you play right from the
start?		 Playable in
Super Smash Bros. ?
Mario Super Mario Yes Yes
Donkey Kong Donkey Kong Yes Yes
link The Legend of Zelda Yes Yes
Samus Aran Metroid Yes Yes
Yoshi Yoshi Yes Yes
Kirby Kirby Yes Yes
Fox McCloud Star Fox Yes Yes
Pikachu Pokémon Yes Yes
Jigglypuff Pokémon Unlockable Yes
Luigi Super Mario Unlockable Yes
Ness Mother Yes Yes
Captain Falcon F-Zero Yes Yes
Bowser Super Mario Yes No
Peach Super Mario Yes No
Ice climbers Ice climber Yes No
Zelda The Legend of Zelda Yes No
Falco Lombardi Star Fox Unlockable No
Ganondorf The Legend of Zelda Unlockable No
Marth Fire emblem Unlockable No
Mr. Game & Watch Game & Watch Unlockable No
Dr. Mario Mario Unlockable No
Young link The Legend of Zelda Unlockable No
Pichu Pokémon Unlockable No
Mewtwo Pokémon Unlockable No
Roy Fire emblem Unlockable No

The player can initially choose between fourteen different Nintendo characters, and eleven additional characters can be unlocked as the game progresses. The game contains all characters from the predecessor Super Smash Bros. The attacks of the characters are mostly taken from his game series. For example, Link from The Legend of Zelda fights with sword, bombs and boomerang, while Mario throws fireballs around. In Melee's multiplayer mode , a total of 29 arenas can be played, 18 of which are playable from the start, 11 must be unlocked during the course of the game. Apart from the Fire Emblem series, there is also at least one arena for each game series from which a character comes, which takes up at a certain location from the game series. In addition, there are some arenas that can only be played in single player mode. During the fights in the respective arenas, music from the respective game series plays. Items appear randomly in the arenas, which are often based on items from various Nintendo games. In addition to the characters that can be unlocked, by fulfilling certain conditions, the player can receive trophies based on characters and items from various Nintendo games. There are a total of 293 trophies in Melee , of which 292 in the NTSC version and 290 in the PAL version.

Super Smash Bros. Melee can be played in both single-player and multiplayer modes. In addition to the single-player mode known from its predecessor, here called "Classic", in which the player fights with a chosen figure against a fixed order of opponents, the game has been expanded to include a further single-player mode called "Adventure". In the "Adventure" mode, the player has to fight through side-scrolling levels based on some game series and fight opponents from the respective game series. In addition to these main modes , various mini-games can be played in Melee , as in the previous version. Another mode, already known from its predecessor, is the training mode, in which you can practice controlling the characters and dictate the behavior of an opponent as you wish.

In multiplayer mode, one of the 29 battle arenas is played either for a fixed period of time or with limited attempts for each of the maximum of four players. Missing players can be replaced by AI-controlled characters. A grouping of the players in a maximum of three groups is also possible.

Development and publication

Like the predecessor of HAL Laboratory , Super Smash Bros. Melee was developed under the direction of Masahiro Sakurai . In an interview with the Japanese video game magazine Famitsu in 2010, Sakurai described the development of Melee as one of the most unpleasant game developments ever for him: In the last 13 months of development, he had not allowed himself a day of rest and often worked over 40 hours at a time, sometimes with breaks only four hours. Sakurai wanted the game to build on the success of its predecessor and wanted to exhaust the technical possibilities of the GameCube .

During the development of Melee , various characters were planned that ultimately didn't make it into the game. So beat Hideo Kojima , the developer of the Metal Gear series Sakurai before Solid Snake to make the protagonist of this series as a character playable. Also, Sonic the Hedgehog was during the development of Melee planned both characters made it, however, for reasons of time not into the game, but in the sequel Super Smash Bros. Brawl playable. During the development of Melee , a third part of the Mother series for the Nintendo 64 was developed at the same time . Therefore it was planned to add a character from the planned Mother 3 as a character instead of Ness, the protagonist from Mother 2 Lucas . Since the development of Mother 3 for the Nintendo 64 was stopped, Lucas was discarded as a playable character. After Mother 3 appeared in 2006 for the GameBoy Advance , Lucas was playable in the sequel Brawl .

Super Smash Bros. Melee was first shown, as the first GameCube game ever, at E3 2001, one of the largest video game fairs ever, and was also playable there as a demo . The game was released in the same year, on November 21 in Japan and on December 3, 2001 in North America. In Europe, however, Melee was only released on May 24, 2002.

reception

Rating mirror
German-speaking area
publication Rating
4players 88%
International space
IGN 9.6 / 10
GameSpot 8.9 / 10
Jeuxvideo.com 15/20
Meta-ratings
Metacritic 92%

Super Smash Bros. Melee was well received by the trade press and received consistently positive ratings. The game achieved a rating of 92 out of 100 points on the aggregation website Metacritic , which is only slightly behind Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Ultimate , which lead the game series with a Metascore of 93 out of 100 points.

While the predecessor Super Smash Bros. was criticized for the small size, Melee was praised for the larger size due to the increased number of characters and arenas. The easy-to-learn controls and the extensive single-player mode were also the strengths of the game that were often mentioned. This is how Matthias Oertel from 4Players wrote about Melee :

“Motivation is kept at a consistently high level thanks to the easy controls, the varied game modes, the seemingly innumerable extras and the trophies to be found. And the rest is done by the 25 Nintendo characters and the multiplayer mode, which has moved into the background compared to its predecessor and which definitely has to give way to the single player experience, without losing any of its appeal. "

- Matthias Oertel in 4Players (88% rating)

Melee was also largely praised for the technical implementation : David Stöckli from Gameswelt praised the game for the detailed and loving graphics and the imaginatively designed arenas. He also emphasized the stable frame rate . Nevertheless, textures with a slightly higher resolution are desirable in some arenas and Stöckli also criticized the occasional flickering of the edges.

Super Smash Bros. Melee is considered the best game of the series, especially among competitive players, due to its high speed and great depth of play. This allows the game to this day on many is e-sports played Competitions, and often preferred to the successors of e-athletes. Masahiro Sakurai, the director of Melee , commented on this topic in an interview with the Japanese magazine Famitsu and admits that he regrets the lack of beginner-friendliness: While the game offers a very great depth of play for more experienced players, it is very much for new players difficult to get into the game. Sakurai therefore announced that the next parts of the series would rather develop in a more beginner-friendly direction.

Sales figures

Super Smash Bros. Melee appeared relatively shortly after the Nintendo GameCube was released and therefore hardly had to compete with other big titles on the GameCube. In Japan, the game sold more than 350,000 times in the first four days after its release and landed directly on number two in the Japanese sales charts after Dragon Quest IV for the PlayStation . Melee was able to sell more than a million times in Japan by mid-January 2002, within two months, making it the first GameCube game to reach one million sales. Since the Nintendo GameCube had sold about 1.4 million times by then, almost 75% of the Nintendo GameCube owners owned Super Smash Bros. Melee at that time . In the USA, the game sold 250,000 times in the first nine days.

In total, Super Smash Bros. Melee sold over 7.41 million times, making it the best-selling GameCube game . Of these, about 1.37 million units were sold in Japan and about 4 million units in the USA.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Sebastian Küpper: Masahiro Sakurai reflects the development of Smash Bros. , In: GameCube.Gaming-Universe.org ; dated December 9, 2010, accessed on August 13, 2020.
  2. ↑ Renan Fontes: Super Smash Bros. Melee: Every Character Cut From The Roster , In: GameRant.com ; dated May 31, 2020, accessed on August 16, 2020.
  3. ^ A b Mathias Oertel: Test: Super Smash Bros. Melee (Beatings & Fighting) , In: 4Players .de ; dated July 8, 2002, accessed August 13, 2020.
  4. ↑ Fran Mirabella: Super Smash Bros. Melee , In: IGN .com ; dated December 3, 2001, accessed on August 13, 2020.
  5. ↑ Miguel Lopez: Super Smash Bros. Melee Review , In: GameSpot .com ; dated November 30, 2001, accessed on August 13, 2020.
  6. ↑ Super Smash Bros. Melee , In: Jeuxvideo.com .net ; dated May 30, 2002, accessed on August 13, 2020.
  7. ↑ a b Super Smash Bros. Melee GameCube , In: Metacritic .com ; accessed on August 13, 2020 (English).
  8. ↑ Top Results for "Super Smash Bros." , In: Metacritic .com , accessed on August 15, 2020.
  9. ↑ David Stöckli: Test Super Smash Bros. Melee , In: Gameswelt.de ; dated June 7, 2002, accessed August 16, 2020.
  10. ↑ Kristin Banse: The Incredible Rise of Super Smash Bros. Melee , In: kicker.de ; dated June 9, 2016, accessed on August 13, 2020.
  11. ↑ Smash Bros. Melee Hot in Japan , In: IGN .com ; dated November 30, 2001, accessed August 9, 2020.
  12. ↑ Super Smash Bros. "Million" in Japan , In: IGN .com ; dated January 17, 2002, accessed on August 9, 2020.
  13. ↑ Shane Satterfield: Nintendo announces more sales figures , In: GameSpot.com ; dated May 17, 2006, accessed August 9, 2020.
  14. ↑ Martin Maciej: Gamecube games: Top 10 bestsellers - From Metroid to Mario to Super Smash Bros. In: GIGA .de. February 3, 2015, accessed August 16, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Japan Platinum Game Chart , In: The-MagicBox.com ; accessed on July 21, 2020 (English).
  16. ↑ US Platinum Videogame Chart , In: The-MagicBox.com ; dated December 27, 2007, accessed on July 21, 2020.