I wanna be a real smasher!

Over the holidays I had some visiting nephews who spent afew nights sleeping over here. I made the best of their visit and spent some "quality family time" with them playing games on my Gamecube. One of the games we played was Super Smash Bros. Meelee, which is the sequel to Nintendo's fighting game for the Nintendo 64.



Now I was a big fan of the original Super Smash Bros, but sadly, I was the ONLY fan of Smash Brothers among my friends, so we never really played it that often. We'd rent the game every now and then and have some 4-player, Time-Limit madness with all the wacky items adding their unique spice to the fray. When I bought my Gamecube, I knew that I'd have visiting nieces and nephews coming over on occasion, so I knew it would be worthwhile to invest in some Mario games that I could play with them. Super Smash Bros. Meelee obviously found its way onto that list.

So over the holidays, I ended up having quite afew time-limit battles with 3 other kids. I'd also let them play by themselves while I had real conversation with my brothers and sisters. It felt GREAT to play that game against humans after having spent so much time unlocking all the characters by myself. After afew days I decided to try something a little bit different. I had my first one-on-one fight with my nephew. 3 lives each, no items, no time limit. I was shocked at the impact those changes had on the overall feel. It ALMOST plays like a completely different game. The strategic elements become much more apparent to the point where it feels like some sort of "Mario Tekken" where you can only win by Ring Out. The one-on-one experience with no items shows how, just like Mario Kart, Mario Golf, and Mario Power Tennis, Smash Brothers Meelee is a deep game with a very colorful, kid-friendly wrapper. Now I understand why the Smash Brothers message boards are so active today. Four years after its initial release, I can ask a question on a message board and have 3 people answer in 20 minutes.



For one thing, since there are only two fighters in the level, the camera actually gets the chance to close in on the action instead of being so far removed that you can't really see yourself. The absence of items forces you to pit your movelist against your opponent's to get the kill instead of waiting for some Pokemon ball, or bomb. What happens when a given tactic fails actually MATTERS. On the other hand, I also learned how bad I suck at Smash Brothers, because after afew wins, my nephews started catching onto my tactics, and I couldn't counter-adapt in time.

That's when I remembered why I always insisted on time-limit matches back when we were playing on the N64: I'd almost always lose first and I didn't like sitting there watching the others play. Now that I'm an "educated fighter" who's actually willing to LEARN how to get better, instead of changing the game to make it easier for me, I'm really feeling the sting of having no competition for this surprisingly deep game.

When I tried introducing my friends to the game, they thought it was a pretty dumb, childish game and I can't blame them. Right now, we're in a period where we're tired of playing multiplayer videogames whenever we're together, and we're trying to do other things. Once we start playing videogames again, you can be sure that I'll force them to play afew life-limit games to see what they think. If all goes well, I might actually have some competition, which would get me one step closer to being a REAL smasher!