Super Smash Bros. Melee

I would hesitate to call it my absolute "favorite" video game series so to speak, but few series have meant as much to me in my life as Super Smash Bros. [大乱闘スマッシュブラザーズ]. Brawl was an after-school/party favorite of mine back in the day. There was just so much content and with such an epic feel that it felt like a whole universe lived inside it. In high school, 3DS/Wii U were the hottest ones around and felt like a unifying factor a la Pokémon Go, as well as getting me interested in the competitive scene. In college, Brawl and Wii U re-entered my periphery as a dorm room common ground so ubiquitous there was practically a hierarchy surrounding skill at it. By the end, Ultimate had released, which felt like manna from Heaven at the time (I'll have to review that one at some point). This leaves Melee in a rather odd position - as it was the first Smash that I was aware of, the first one I played, and yet, it was just before my time enough that I was never able to share it with anyone.

Thus, Melee has always felt like a solitary, alien experience to me. I can imagine dorm room experiences like mine only hunkered around a dimly-lit CRT screen as opposed to a rather unfortunate miniature flatscreen T.V. The somewhat eerie feel of the game doesn't help it feel any less lonely. The models are too advanced to be N64, yet the Gamecube was still in such a primordial state that they only had games like Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and Pokémon Gold and Silver to go off of. The announcer has a creepy voice as well, and there's so much metallic droning in the soundtrack. When you complete Adventure Mode on Normal or higher in a certain amount of time without getting a game over, you get to square off against this rather freakish Bowser. However, since most players probably won't do this, it just leaves you on this hollow note where you 1v1 Bowser (who is a joke in this game) and the game just sort of ends. The reward for your troubles is your hero being converted into a lifeless statue while sad music plays. Huh? What the fuck?

It was these single player modes that I had to entertain myself with as a kid, and these formative memories of emergency-escaping Brinstar, bounding through what looks to be a facsimile of Ocarina of Time's Shadow Temple, and slogging through a series of disappointing matchups following the F-Zero inspired stages. I would also try unlocking every character to no avail, largely because my dad didn't want me wasting electricity by leaving my Wii on all night. Speaking of, who dreamt up some of these ridiculous character unlock requirements anyways? I know they had less than a year to make this game (itself a testament to Parkinson's First Law of productivity), but you have to be in some serious desperation to come up with "Play the game for 20 hours", let alone see it get approved by the entire staff. Complete the 100-Man Melee to unlock Falco? That's like something you do to challenge yourself, not something the player should be expected to complete, unless you bogart the center of the map with Donkey Kong, pound the ground ad infinitum and just hope your accumulated damage doesn't catch up to you. To unlock Luigi, you have to complete the first stage of Adventure Mode with the last number in the timer (besides milliseconds of course) ending in two? ...Because Luigi is commonly Player 2? Eh? To unlock Mr. Game & Watch, you have to unlock every other character, and then it's your choice between completing Classic Mode, Adventure Mode, or Target Test with all of them. You must be joking. The prior two modes take 10-20 minutes a pop, who has the time to do that? Why not just make it Break the Targets exclusively since that's what anyone in their right goddamn mind is going to do anyways? Still, these are cherished memories. I remember waking up to unwrapping it on Christmas morning and feeling like my young life was complete. I remember finally unlocking all the characters as a teenager and clearing all the events and feeling like some great seal had been lifted.

But it's sad that these memories aren't shared. This game was thought to be dead by the time I got it, only for it to pivot around as fans started to realize that Brawl kind of sucked. However, a development would occur that would completely change this and save Melee from being an empty bees' nest just waiting to be kicked over for its contents, and that's the advent of Netplay. With players being able to face each other online around the globe, it has certainly increased the bar of entry well-beyond "just rally 3 other friends, offer food, and let the good times roll", but they've allowed another, arguably more important piece of the Legend of Melee to continue, which is the competitive scene. To keep it brief, the mythos of the game's competitive scene is like The Lord of the Rings if it were set entirely in Frodo's dad's garage. It's an epic story of dedicated players whose drive and passion aren't dissimilar from someone like LeBron James, only on a much less grand scale. So far nobody has emerged as a threat to the throne of the "Old Gods" of the competitive scene, but it's reassuring to know that although the game will likely decline in popularity and eventually fade out entirely after the likes of Mang0 and Hungrybox finally throw in the towel, there will still be players like Leffen and Plup who can breathe life into this 20+ year old fighting game for a new generation.

All this is to say that Super Smash Bros. Melee is a trip. It's unlike any Smash game before or since, but in not embodying that aesthetic synchronicity, it carves out an identity all its own. Rather than feeling like a "Smash" game, it feels like Melee, and that aspect alone makes worth the price of admission. Bonus points if you can still find a group of people willing to play it with you.

i suck at this shit

the greatest game of all time

It's just a neat game :) what can I say?

i understand it when people don't like melee, but it makes me sad that they will miss out on a lot of stuff. an incredibly intricate, uniquely expressive fighter, an absurd, inspiring history, and top player personalities no other competitive video game legacy could hope to match (hi mang0, hi armada, hi mew2king, hi hungrybox ... the list goes on). it's a game that was never supposed to exist, to thrive, yet here i am in 2023 thinking about how plup and wizzrobe, 2 relatively inactive players, could easily return and dominate Riptide 2023 in a game that's older than me. 99% of people who play melee will never ledgedash or know what grounded actionable ledge intangibility is but those who do open the door to a gaming tradition like no other.

watching mang0 play this game is the closest thing to perfection i've ever seen in a video game