Developed by: Nintendo Published by: Nintendo Official website Genre: Fighting Number of Players: 1-4 ESRB: Everyone 8 Graphics:....................8/10 Sound:.........................8/10 Documentation:.........7/10 Getting Started:.........8/10 Value:..........................9/10 The Good Press: The game that should have happened a long time ago is finally here, and up to four players can throw down with their favorite Nintendo characters, fighting in each others? environs and even using their competitors? weapons. The Bad Press: There is no bad press--this is a snappy, good-looking, fast-paced game. Of course, the single-player game cannot compete with a full-on four-player brawl--the human element is just too important.

One- to four-player fighter game, featuring the stars of (and set in the home realms of) past Nintendo games.

Leave it to Nintendo--the people who made us see dumpy, stereotyped Italian plumbers in a whole new light--to come up with a melee combat game that has guns, swords, hammers and incendiary devices...and yet still manages to be funny, nonviolent and almost too cute for its own good. In Super Smash Bros., up to four players can whomp on each other as the stars of past and present Nintendo games, each said star presented with his own unique attacks. A short intro presents the various characters and their home realms (Hyrule Castle for Link, Yoshi’s Island for Yoshi, etc.) as toys and playsets in a child’s bedroom a la Christopher Robin or Toy Story. Thus the ultimate object in each brawl is not to kill the other characters but to boot them off the edges of the immediate combat arena, be it Kirby’s candy-colored Dream Land, Pikachu’s Saffron City skyscraper, or the outer hull of a starship in Fox McCloud’s Sector Z. When an opponent’s defenses are worn down, a well-timed punch or kick (or Koopa Shell, or laser blast, or whop upside the head with a baseball bat) will send the target tumbling and wailing harmlessly (but humiliatingly) off into the void. If the victim has good reflexes, he may be able to perform a mid-air trajectory correction and catch a ledge on the way down and climb back into the fray. On the other hand, if the attacker is a real bastard, he’ll be waiting at said ledge with a hammer or a bomb, just to make sure the job gets finished.

To get a sense of the full four-player mayhem, just imagine: it’s Link and Mario and Pikachu and Kirby standing on the shiny metal curves of a starship hanging in deep space--and it’s every man (or whatever) for himself. The camera is in nice and tight, but as the four players begin to scatter, the view zooms out to encompass the action. Pikachu emits his high-pitched battle-cry "PikaaAAAAA-CHU!" and, sneaky little craplet that he is, brings down a bolt of electric unpleasantness on Mario. Link immediately cranks off a boomerang and nails Kirby, who’s just a big dumb marshmallow anyway. Mario charges Pikachu, jumps to close the distance, lands a super jump punch and knocks the shrieky Pokemon off the nose of the starship, to which he now clings for dear life...at which point Kirby calmly walks up behind the Italian, uses his creepy copy ability to morph into a pseudo-Mario, and wallops our plumber hero solidly out into the void. Meanwhile, Link stumbles upon a mysterious crate, finds a Koopa Shell inside and slings it down the metallic skin of the ship, picking off Kirby like a spare pin. Pikachu has finally clambered his way back onto the craft, begins his battle-cry...and Link silences it with a crude but effective bomb, striking a dramatic fighting pose (for which he will actually get bonus style points, a nice touch). The defeated Pokemon howls away into space until he is nothing but a tiny dot lost among the stars. It’s like an evening with the World Wrestling Federation, only with brighter colors and without the concept of "crotch."

Other playable characters include Fox McCloud, Samus and Donkey Kong, as well as four unlockable secret characters. This game also has some just plain strange stuff. Among the opponents you will face in the single-player game are a gang of 18 differently colored Yoshis, a veritable army of polygonal we-don’t-know-what-they-are thingums, a Metallic Mario and a large, disembodied (and white-gloved) Master Hand, which mainly floats around and smacks you a lot. (Then of course there’s the old Yoshi Classic, who snaps you up with his whiplash tongue and lays you as a temporarily immobile, polka-dotted egg). Some 20 special, undocumented bonuses reward and/or punish players for their actions during gameplay--a 5,000-point "No-Smash" bonus, a 99-point "Cheap Shot" penalty--and discovering new ways to rake in the rewards is part of the fun. Super Smash Bros. is only a so-so single-player fighter, but it gets exponentially better with each new added player and, with four players, stands as one of the best multiplayer experiences available on the Nintendo 64.

Tips:

• Remember to pull off your character’s dramatic fighting stance whenever possible--it gets you bonus points, and it looks really cool.
• Strong and smash attacks can be executed while in mid-jump for devastating air-strike assaults your opponent may never see coming.