If there is one thing that gamers have grown accustomed to, especially Nintendo Gamers, it is that Super Smash Brothers will find a way to include any character. It started off modestly enough on the N64, and even with a limited character selection, the game was a gigantic hit. The games, it seemed, only got more and more awesome as they went through each generation of Nintendo game consoles. After the 64, the Gamecube took up the mantle, and Smash Brothers Melee became the favorite for a lot of fans, even today!
The concept is ridiculously simple. You fight one to three opponents in a match where it's either limited by time or by falls. You fight them to knock them out of the arena once they've reached a percentage of damage. Honestly, the percentage of damage has been a bit of a point of confusion for a lot of fans, because sometimes you can get mega hit when you're at 110% damage and not get knocked out, but the same hit will send someone with 59% out of the ballfield. Each character has their own unique (ish) set of skills with which to fight each other. Some of them are amazing to the point of being over powered, like Marth or Link. Some of them are just terrible moves with a long span and very little damage like Cloud or Sonic.
It really depends on your playstyle. A lot of people say that Ganondorf is way too difficult to use, but yet there are tournament winners who mained Ganondorf from the start. There has been character rosters that reach ridiculous heights. Smash Brothers Ultimate from the Switch was a huge success, having the biggest roster in the series but when you look at the unlockable characters (or DLC characters), it was lacking in the wanted challenge. All of that, and the fact that Cloud was one of the final characters to get made it a lackluster experience in the long run.
The main gameplay we all know and love is the Free For All or 2v2 but there were also plenty of platformer levels or bonus levels where you jump and run around to find bullseye targets. Some of these even come in the form of a makeshift boardgame where you find levels to fight enemies, go on platformer levels and even have some boss battles. Boss battles can come in the form of multiple forms of Kirby or even metal mario characters. The biggest one everyone remembers is the Master Hand. Your basically a toy fighting the hand that controls you in the form of a kid or something. I can only imagine the little kid wearing bandaids and having scratches all over his hand once you beat the entire single player campaign.
This is also one of the few game titles that brings Sonic and Mario into the same game. Many fans loved this little feature, especially the trailer where Sonic smashes his fist into Mario and knocks him out of the arena. Then again, that's the fun of the game in a nutshell. Many of these characters have never met before this whole thing. Even when Mario and Sonic had the Olympic games, they didn't have a smash down knockdown dragout fight like in Smash Bros. Now, you can bring in Cloud from FFVII, Kirby, StarFox, Pikachu, Mr. Game & Watch, Ryu from Street Fighter, Samus from Metroid in several forms and even Isabelle from Animal Crossing! There are so many games that are not even in the Nintendo library, they just wanted a piece of the pie!
Sony also wanted a piece of the pie. They wanted it so badly that they created an entirely "different" game that had a lot of the same... "ideas". Playstation All-Star Battle Royale was already a terrible title to begin with. I literally had to look it up by typing in "Sony Smash Bros Knock-off" and Google knew exactly what I was talking about. This game was abysmal in more ways than one. Not only did it have the second-hand characters from other franchises that Sony owned, but its gameplay was so complicated, it ruined the entire experience. Dante from Devil May Cry was already in Smash Brothers, so they couldn't even use their own character. So what do they do? They use the emo knockoff from DmC, which was rather fitting when you step back and look at the forest for the trees.
You've got the Big Daddy, Sly Cooper and Jak from some interesting Sony properties, but there was no real draw from any of them. They had Raiden!... from Metal Gear Solid.... Yeah, there wasn't much to see here at all. It already had the problem of being two or three generations too late to the party, but now they're putting in complicated gameplay on what should be a simple concept. There is a sequence you need to follow to knock someone out of the ring, instead of just smashing them to a certain damage point and knocking them out with a well-placed strike. No, you actually need to build up Action Points and then execute a proper special move in order to actually knock someone out of the ring. Rinse and repeat. So, you've got a knockoff game with half the roster star power and an over-complicated fighting mechanic that makes the game take longer and become more monotonous. Nothing strange there!
That's not to say there weren't more knockoffs of Super Smash Brothers, but this one was the most glaringly obvious and highest budget attempt. The idea of having a character stew of several intellectual properties all mashed together is not even close to being an original one. The Marvel vs DC or X-men vs Street Fighter crowd has always gravitated toward these types of games and for very good reason. Sometimes, the character roster can be really daunting, but there are plenty of characters for everyone with fandoms and fighting styles that you're more accustomed to.
As fighting games go, it has a solid set of mechanics. Sometimes, the screen can get overly busy and your characters can get overly small to where you lose them. That has happened more than once and it can screw up the gameplay. It's still a perfect game to get some friends over and beat the snot out of each other. Whether you have current game consoles or retro game consoles, Smash Brothers is a great fit for you. The Wii and the Wii-U versions are no slouch when it comes to solid gameplay, and it was the Wii version that was still available when the Sony Battle Royale was released, so it still romper-stompered that whole idea into the earth, never to be seen again. When it comes to fighting entire groups and absolute carnage in the fighting arena, Super Smash is as good as it gets. Looney Tunes has tried it, Cartoon Network has tried it but none of them even come close to the greatness of Smash. Remember to Smash responsibly and knock your opponent into the water!! They need a little drink.
