Nintendo’s all-stars are ready to do battle! Let the melee begin!
- JP release: 21st November 2001
- NA release: 3rd December 2001
- EU release: 24th May 2002
- Developer: HAL Laboratory
- Publisher: Nintendo
- NGC Magazine Score: 95%
- Mods Used: Widescreen Code
While the N64 Super Smash Bros was a wonderful novelty, Nintendo realised what potential the game had and decided to go all out with Smash Bros Melee, bringing more characters into the fold and adding in a load of extras to make it a love letter to Nintendo’s history. Melee solidified Super Smash Bros as an important franchise for Nintendo, with each game getting bigger and bigger.
Singleplayer has gained a few new features, including Adventure mode, where you play through a mixture of different kinds of stages. Some are platforming levels created specially for this mode, while others are fights on regular stages. The platforming levels do feel a bit odd using the control style of Smash Bros, but they’re still immensely enjoyable and set the stage for more to follow in the next game. There’s also the more traditional fighting mode, event fights and some minigames, like Home Run Contest, which are initially simple but are made quite deep due to the mechanics of the game. There’s plenty to do here when friends aren’t over.
There’s also a ton of options for multiplayer as well, there are stock or points based matches, add special features like making the game slower or faster, making all the characters invisible and you can adjust how frequently items appear and turn specific items on or off. All this means you can come up with your own ideas for matches. A personal favourite of mine was setting items to high, Pokéballs only and everyone had to be a Pokémon character. It’s pure chaos and an absolute blast.
Melee also introduced a compulsive form of collectible: the trophies. Some are earned by completing specific tasks in the game, while others spawn as items during other game modes. I would always dart towards one whenever I saw one. Once collected, you can view it as a 3D model and read a little bit about the character, offering some background on characters that many had never heard of, including some characters who had never left Japan.
What made the trophies extra special in Melee was the amount of trophies that were new depictions of characters. There are a few Custom Robo trophies that bring the art style of the N64 games into more detail, we also got our first 3D version of Pit from Kid Icarus, whose description interestingly ends with “Will pit ever fight again?” and just a ton to discover. It gave weight and meaning to the collectables, which made them so compulsive.
Melee just had a ton of lovely touches all around. The music is wonderful (you can’t go wrong with the DK Rap) and the game scores you at the end of matches in many different ways, with some amusing ones thrown in for being cheap or comedic. Even the menus get some love as you can use the C-stick to tilt them around, just because. It’s a wonderful package.
Fave
Even if Super Smash Bros for the N64 didn’t really do it for you, that’s no reason to dismiss Super Smash Bros Melee as just a bigger, nicer-looking update. You’d be missing out on an experience that matches many of Nintendo’s best moments of the last few years, because SSBM’s reworking of the Smash Bros theme is so comprehensive, you might as well consider the N64 versions as a mere trial run.
Martin Kitts, NCG Magazine #68
Remake or remaster?
A “complete edition” Smash Bros game with the gameplay styles of each previous one would be wonderful.
Official Ways to get the game
There’s no official way to play Super Smash Bros. Melee.
Europe
Japan
North America
GameCube Games by Date
2002: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2003: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2004: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2005: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2006: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
Having played Smash Bros. 64 quite a bit—like, daily at one point—and being all-in on Nintendo, I was looking forward to the follow-up on the new system. I remember sitting up until the wee small hours (playing Conkers Pocket Tales on GBC iirc) to catch a glimpse of Melee on Cybernet or something and was of course blown away by the intro.
As for the game, I enjoyed the models and their descriptions as that was pretty novel. But I didn’t get anywhere near as much play out of Melee and never bought another Smash Bros. game again. I easily got more time out of listening to the Smashing Live CD that later came with a magazine than I did playtime out of SSBM. Playing as Mewtwo in Smash Bros. remains a gaming “one that got away”. 🙁
Melee is still my favourite of the series. Plenty of single player stuff to tackle, satisfying unlockables, not too bloated and a fantastic multiplayer experience. Whilst I have still played and enjoyed every other entry, none have come close to recapturing that magic.
I think Melee is the weakest Smash.
Now that’s not me saying it’s bad, it certainly is not. And it’s definitely not me saying it isn’t hugely important to the series. Like @Cube said, it established the games as the “Gaming museum” it’s become today. Granted, back then, it was only Nintendo, but it kicked that off.
But I find it hard to go back to now. It’s quite stiff, the single player modes get awfully repetitive if you were aiming to get everything. Classic was done way better in Ultimate (Dedicated character routes, and multiple bosses really help with that), Adventure was done way better in Brawl, Event matches were recontextualised as World of Light in Ultimate, which completely dwarfs Melee!
The physics are much more refined later on, the art style of Melee is a bit drab (Not as bad as Brawl, but still), and the character roster is dreadfully balanced! There’s like, 5 characters that are good, and the rest are absolute crap in comparison. Yes, Meta Knight in Brawl was insane, but you could ignore him and most of the other characters in that game were still solid.
Smash 64 is so weird, that it’s still fun to revisit from time to time, but Melee has nothing going for it these days. Still, it did put Fire Emblem on the western map.
Super Smash Bros. Melee was my favourite game ever for nearly two decades. Only Ultimate surpassed it.
I never really felt the appeal behind Subspace Emissary (excessively repetitive and dull), even if it had the right idea. Adventure Mode in Melee was quick, to the point, and kept all of its ideas focused. Like, if a stage in SE was more fun with, say, Sonic than any other character, there was no real reason to explore and find that out. Melee Adventure kept its levels short and replayable, and as a result, I found out, for example, which characters handled the F-Zero level better (Capt.Falcon can just run through it like a champ, but figuring out how to keep myself airborne with Jigglypuff was a legit challenge)
The personalized levels in Break the Targets was also an incredible way to learn the ins and outs of various characters. I learned to wall jump thanks to this mode.
And that’s just single-player, because also in multi-player there’s stuff that it did really well. Even modern Smash games don’t do the cheeky bonuses at the end of matches, nor do they measure SDs properly.
Finally, the gamefeel was incredible, really good use of rumble (whenever you landed a good hit, you felt it). By comparison, Brawl was like punching with pillows. Melee was also quite fast, which made for a very exciting spectacle. I do admit it made it harder to play for beginners. Thankfully, Ultimate matches Melee in the gamefeel area, while still being very accommodating for beginners (partly because there are many more beginner-friendly stages as well in Ultimate).
And there’s a lot more to gush about Melee. That’s why I still put it at the top of any list where I rank my favourite GCN games.