Super Smash Bros. Melee

Super Smash Bros. Melee is a 2001 crossover fighting game developed primarily by HAL Laboratory? and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo GameCube, the second installment in the Super Smash Bros. series.¹³ It was directed by Masahiro Sakurai and assembled a roster of characters drawn from Nintendo franchises, who battle by knocking one another off floating arenas rather than depleting a health bar.¹³⁸ The game was released in Japan on November 21, 2001, and in North America on December 3, 2001, shortly after the GameCube’s launch, reaching Europe and Australia the following year.²⁴²⁵

The series itself emerged from modest beginnings as a passion project from a three-man team at HAL Laboratory, the developer of Kirby and EarthBound.²³ Melee is classed as a crossover that blends fighting, platforming, and party-game elements, and is one of two games in the series — alongside its sequel Super Smash Bros. Brawl — to be rated T by the ESRB.¹³

The core concept is straightforward: a player selects a Nintendo franchise character and fights others until they are knocked off the edge of the arena.⁸ Unlike most fighting games, Melee tracks damage as a rising percentage rather than a depleting health bar; as a character’s percentage climbs, each hit sends them flying farther, until they can be smashed clear off the stage.⁸¹¹ The game emphasizes movement and ringouts over complicated button inputs and lengthy combos, with edge-guarding — preventing a knocked-off opponent from recovering — carrying particular weight given the abundance of mid-air jumps and recovery moves.¹³ Most characters can propel themselves upward three times, through a double jump followed by an upward special “recovery” attack, while Yoshi and Jigglypuff are exceptions.¹¹

Smash attacks, the foundation of the fighting system, are performed by quickly tilting the control stick in a direction and pressing the attack button in sync with the moment the stick reaches the edge of its travel.¹¹ The control stick’s varying levels of sensitivity allow a character to walk, trot, or run, and a sharp tilt produces a dash, each yielding a different non-smash attack.¹¹ Melee revised the throwing conventions of the original, allowing an opponent to be thrown upward or downward as well as left or right, and letting a player tap the attack button to land extra hits on a grabbed opponent before releasing the throw.¹¹

Characters and content

The cast totals 25 playable characters, or 26 counting Zelda’s alternate form Sheik, including all 12 fighters from the original Super Smash Bros. on the Nintendo 64 plus 13 newcomers.¹³ Fourteen are available from the start and eleven more can be unlocked; among the unlockable fighters are a number of “clones” — characters such as Dr. Mario, Luigi, Ganondorf, Falco, Young Link, Pichu, and Roy, which share an almost identical moveset with another fighter while differing in stats.¹⁴⁸ A clone usually possesses different statistics from the character it resembles while keeping nearly the same selection of moves, though some, such as Pichu, carry an additional handicap or special ability.¹⁴ Falco, for instance, is unlocked by clearing 100-Man Melee or playing 300 versus matches, and Marth by clearing Classic mode with all 14 starter characters.²¹¹⁴

Melee greatly expanded the single-player offering beyond its predecessor.⁸ The original game’s lone solo mode became Classic mode, with its battles randomized except for the fixed Master Hand encounter at the end, and a new Adventure mode combined character battles with 2D platformer levels.⁸ The game added 51 event matches, of which only ten are accessible at the outset, with some requiring mastery of a particular character and all growing harder as more are unlocked.⁸ It also added a Target Test mode in which a character must break ten targets in an arena without falling out, with the game timing the attempt so players can improve their records, a Home-Run Contest scored on how far a sandbag can be hit within ten seconds, and a Multi-Man Melee against waves of wire-frame fighters.⁸¹² In the Home-Run Contest, Yoshi is the established distance king, easily clearing 2,000 feet, while two characters — Captain Falcon and Sheik — cannot use the bat to deliver the finishing hit at all.¹² A separate training mode lets players learn the controls.⁸ Beyond characters and arenas, the game offers some 290 collectible trophies, obtained largely through luck and patience.⁸

The stage count grew from nine in the Nintendo 64 game to 29, eighteen of them unlocked from the start.¹⁵ Six of Melee’s stages are tournament-legal, including the starters Yoshi’s Story, Fountain of Dreams, and Pokémon Stadium, and unlockable stages such as Dreamland 64, Battlefield, and Final Destination; the latter is earned by completing Event 51, “The Showdown.” ¹⁵ The remaining unlockable stages comprise six newly created for Melee and five returning from the Nintendo 64 original, and unlocks are saved to a memory card.¹⁵ Casual stages are gated behind cumulative play, with Fourside requiring 100 versus matches and Big Blue 150, while Poké Floats demands 200.¹⁵

Development and reception

The game was directed by Sakurai and produced under executive producer Hiroshi Yamauchi, with Satoru Iwata, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Kenji Miki among its producers.³ The credits identify a large development staff, with HAL Laboratory and Nintendo personnel accounting for the named contributors across programming, art direction, and graphic design.³ The development team gave particular attention to the game’s pre-rendered opening movie — the first in the series — working with three animation studios in Tokyo to showcase the GameCube’s graphical power; most of its footage was drawn from the title’s E3 2001 trailer.¹³ An earlier version of the opening was released on the game’s Japanese website in November 2001, nearly identical to the final but with differing gameplay clips.¹³ The controls were arranged so that veterans of the Nintendo 64 original could adapt quickly, with the most notable change being that the grab button became less accessible, and new additions including a C-stick for instant smash attacks and the ability to dodge on the ground and in the air.¹¹

Melee was practically a launch title for the GameCube and was widely regarded as among the best games on the system.⁸ It received universal acclaim, with critics praising its expansion and refinement of the Nintendo 64 original, its visuals, tight controls, multiplayer mode, and orchestrated soundtrack, while its single-player modes, large number of clone characters, and similarity to its predecessor drew criticism.¹³ One contemporary review scored it 9 out of 10, faulting the dull computer AI and judging the game worth owning chiefly for multiplayer with human opponents.⁸ That review noted the game had received more play time from its author than any other on the system and was the sole reason he had bought a GameCube.⁸ It is one of only two games in the series rated T by the ESRB, the other being its sequel, Super Smash Bros. Brawl. ¹³

Strategy guides stress that Melee is not a button-masher but a fast, deep fighter rewarding instinctive reaction over deliberate calculation, a depth that helped sustain a long-running competitive scene.¹¹ The game remained a fixture at major tournaments years after release, with matches contested at events such as Evo 2014.¹⁶

The game’s item-catching and projectile mechanics — exemplified by the egg-throwing of fighters such as Yoshi — went on to influence later independent fighters, including the archery-duel party game TowerFall.⁸