Super Smash Bros. (Series)

Super Smash Bros. is a series of crossover fighting games published by Nintendo, featuring characters drawn from franchises established on Nintendo systems.¹² Known in Japan as Dairantō Smash Brothers (大乱闘スマッシュブラザーズ, “Great Fray Smash Brothers”) and commonly abbreviated to Smash Bros., the series was created and directed by Masahiro Sakurai?, who has helmed every entry.¹² Its gameplay departs from traditional fighting games: rather than depleting a health bar, players accumulate damage and attempt to knock opponents off the edges of a stage.¹² The series stands, alongside Mario and Zelda, as one of Nintendo’s powerhouse properties.⁵

Origins

The series began as a passion project at HAL Laboratory, the developer of Kirby and EarthBound, where a three-man team started work on a prototype fighting game in 1996.²⁰ Sakurai?, the creator of Kirby, conceived a four-player fighting game as one of two prototype ideas; the other was a stealth adventure in which players hacked cameras to progress through levels.⁴¹³ The fighting prototype was programmed by Satoru Iwata — then president of HAL Laboratory, later president and CEO of Nintendo — who worked on it in his spare time, including on weekends.⁴⁵¹³ Sakurai, who was nineteen when he joined HAL under Iwata, later recalled that Iwata “sprang to life” whenever he found time for the side project.¹¹²⁰

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The prototype was titled “Kakuto-Geemu Ryuoh,” or “Dragon King: The Fighting Game,” and featured generic human combatants in multi-colored jumpsuits rather than Nintendo characters.⁴⁵ It already contained the fundamental mechanics that would define the series: smash attacks, midair jumps, shields, dashes, and five-directional aerial attacks.⁴ Iwata disliked traditional fighting games built on lengthy combos and wanted something more strategic and accessible to a wider range of players.¹³²⁰ Sakurai reasoned that, unlike an arcade game where character development could take a backseat because players were content simply to fight, a home game required a stronger hook.²⁰ Following the cancellation of several projects, including the original Nintendo 64 version of Mother 3, Sakurai judged the fighting game the quicker of his two prototypes to complete and moved it forward.⁴

Sakurai then proposed using Nintendo’s mascots to give the game atmosphere, an idea initially rejected by Shigeru Miyamoto.⁵ He built a well-balanced demo in secret featuring Mario, Fox, Samus, and Donkey Kong, and upon showing it to Miyamoto, HAL was granted permission to use Nintendo’s characters.⁵¹³ According to Sakurai, the games do not represent the characters genuinely fighting; a framing story presents them as toys brought to life in a child’s imaginary battle, established in the original’s intro in which a hand — Master Hand — places action figures on a desk.¹³ Satoru Iwata later said he wanted the fighters to be “friends who were settling a little disagreement”.¹

The games

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - Overview Trailer feat. The Announcer - Nintendo SwitchNintendo of America

Super Smash Bros. was released for the Nintendo 64 in Japan on January 21, 1999, and in North America on April 26, 1999.⁵ It featured twelve playable characters — eight available from the start and four unlockable — all created by Nintendo or its second-party developers.¹²⁵ Its multiplayer Versus mode supported up to four players in Time matches, won by the most knockouts, or Stock matches, in which each player has a set number of lives.¹² There were nine playable stages, eight available from the start and each themed to a starter character, plus the unlockable Mushroom Kingdom.¹² Single-player content included an adventure mode culminating in a battle against Master Hand, plus the bonus modes Break the Targets and Board the Platforms.¹²¹³ Originally planned as a Japan-only release with minimal marketing, the game passed one million copies in Japan on word of mouth, prompting a wider rollout.¹³¹² Nintendo of America, which struggled to explain the concept to parents, promoted the game with a full-page spread in Nintendo Power issue 119 in April 1999.⁵

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Super Smash Bros. Melee followed for the Nintendo GameCube, released in Japan on November 21, 2001, and in North America on December 3, 2001, as a launch-window title.⁵² Revealed at E3 2001 just seven months before its North American release, Melee was far more expansive than its predecessor, with 25 characters, nearly 30 stages, three single-player modes, and collectible trophies.²⁵ Its combat shifted emphasis from throwing toward chargeable smash attacks; new mechanics included light-shielding, dodging, and ledge-grabbing.²⁵ The game rendered its fighters, arenas, and items in full 3D, where the original had used sprites for items.² Running at a constant 60 frames per second with fully orchestrated music, Melee became the best-selling game on the GameCube and remains the fastest-paced and most competitively played entry, sustained by techniques such as L-cancelling and wave-dashing.¹²⁵² Its lavish opening full-motion video was farmed out to three separate Tokyo computer-graphics houses to meet the E3 deadline.⁷

Super Smash Bros. Brawl was released for the Wii in Japan on January 31, 2008, and in North America on March 9, 2008.⁵ It was announced by Iwata at his pre-E3 2005 press conference — while the Wii was still codenamed “Revolution” — as a title that would support the console’s Wi-Fi capabilities for online play out of the box.¹⁰⁸ Iwata made the announcement without consulting Sakurai, who had left HAL in the fall of 2003 and was a freelance developer at the time.⁸ Iwata later explained that Nintendo had polled many players on which of its titles they most wanted for network play, and Smash Bros. topped the list.⁵ During E3 2005, Iwata summoned Sakurai to a Los Angeles hotel room and asked him to be involved “near the level of director”.⁸ Brawl added an extensive story mode, the Subspace Emissary, along with cooperative and online play.¹⁵ Sakurai had conceived the idea of “Final Smashes” — all-powerful signature attacks — as far back as 1999, and they finally debuted in Brawl.⁵

The fourth installment, Super Smash Bros. 4, launched on the Nintendo 3DS in September 2014 and on the Wii U in November 2014, introducing an eight-player mode, amiibo support, and custom Mii Fighters.¹²¹⁵ The Wii U version added guest characters from other franchises, including Fire Emblem’s Robin and Lucina.¹⁷ The series’ fifth entry, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, was released for the Nintendo Switch on December 7, 2018, and returned every fighter in the series’ history alongside newcomers, over 100 stages, and a new adventure mode called “World of Light”.¹²¹⁶¹⁵ The base game shipped worldwide at midnight local time, accompanied by a day-one patch, and received frequent post-launch updates and downloadable fighters through 2023.¹⁹¹⁷ Ultimate supports two-to-four-player battles and can be played in TV, Tabletop, or Handheld modes, or with GameCube controllers.¹⁸

Legacy

Across all five games, Sakurai has served as director despite HAL handing the series to a new developer for Brawl.¹² The original starting roster of eight — Mario, Donkey Kong, Link, Samus, Yoshi, Kirby, Fox, and Pikachu — has appeared in every subsequent game and forms the starting roster of Ultimate.⁵ The series draws its cast from Nintendo franchises reaching back to Donkey Kong (1981), The Legend of Zelda (1986), and Metroid (1986), functioning as a continuous celebration of video-game history.²¹²² It has also become a fixture of professional fighting-game tournaments, particularly Melee, whose competitive community has kept the game active for well over a decade.⁵² The prospect of adding non-Nintendo characters, long a subject of fan rumor — including a notorious Electronic Gaming Monthly April Fools’ hoax in 2002 claiming Sonic and Tails were hidden in Melee — eventually became a defining feature of the series’ later entries.⁵