Super Smash Bros. Melee

Super Smash Bros. Melee is the second installment of the Super Smash Bros. series. It is a Nintendo GameCube game that was developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo. The game was released in 2001 in Japan and United States, and in 2002 in Europe and Australia, where it was also a launch title. The game's major focus is the multiplayer mode, while still offering a number of single-player modes.

Gameplay
In Super Smash Bros. Melee, up to four characters fight on a side-view stage with invisible boundaries on each side. When a player hits these boundaries, the player is knocked out. Unlike other fighting games, the Super Smash Bros. series thus does not rely on hit points for each character which have to be brought down to zero, but on damage percentage. Whenever a player is hit, they get a certain amount of percent damage. The maximum damage that can be dealt to a player is 999%. The higher the damage percentage is, the easier it is for the player to be knocked out.

General actions
Players move around on the stages using the Nintendo GameCube Controller's, and can jump by pulling up, or pressing the  or  button. It is possible to jump again in the air a single time. Some characters also have the ability to multi-jump in the air. By moving the down, the player can crouch or move a layer down on the stage.

A basic attack is performed with the button. When moving the into a direction, the player can attack upwards and downwards, or to either side. These attacks are usually weak and do not do very much damage. When the button is pressed repeatedly, the character performs a standard combo, a fast sequence of weak attacks. When the is titled fast and the  button is pressed in time, the player can perform a smash attack. These are very powerful, chargeable attacks, which cause a lot of damage. Each character's moves for the side, up, and down smash attacks are different.

Character special moves
Each character has their own set of special moves, which are performed with the button. When moving the in a certain direction, or not moving it at all, a different special move is performed. The special moves are influenced by the character's individual personality, and have various effects, from doing more damage than with a normal attack, attacking from a distance, or repelling projectiles. Most characters' up +  moves involve jumping, which makes it possible to perform a third jump in the air to prevent the character from falling down. The sideways special move was a new addition to the series.

Item use
Items appear on the stage at random and can be used by the players. Items have various effects, and some trigger by themselves. They can grant the character special abilities for a short time, like becoming invisible, contain a number of items themselves, explode when touched, or can be used as a weapon. When players are standing next to an item, they can use the button to pick the item up. Some items have effects that are activated when the item is picked up or touched, such as reducing the character's damage percentage, or turning characters into a giant version of themselves. Other items can be used as weapons. A held weapon can be used with the button. With the button, or  and  in combination with, the weapon can be thrown away. This thrown item can also hurt other characters when it hits them.

Shielding
When pressing the or  triggers, or the  button, the character's shield is activated. The shield changes color depending on the player number (red for P1, blue for P2, yellow for P3, green for P4, and gray for a CPU). Shields can be used to prevent any kind of attack from a character or an item, only grabbing cannot be prevented. If used at the right time, and for only a split second, the shield can be used as a reflector for items thrown and most projectile attacks. More powerful ones such as Samus' fully charged charge shot, however, will merely be absorbed by the shield. The shield has the form of a bubble (except for Yoshi, where it is a Yoshi Egg). The shield's power decreases every time it is used, and when the shield breaks, the character will be unable to move for a certain period of time. The longer the player waits before using the shield, the stronger it becomes, similar to Bowser's Fire Breath. Also, the harder the player presses on the or  triggers, or  button depends on how thick the shield is, a thicker shield will erode slower from damage but faster from time, while a thinner shield will erode more from damage but significantly less from time duration, adding to shielding strategy. Light characters may even be knocked out by the shield break.

Grabbing and throwing
Players are able to grab other characters and hold them. This allows the player to hit the character while they are not able to protect themselves or fight back. The player can also throw the character in any direction, or smash them to the ground. A thrown character can hit other characters and damage them this way, too. When not holding items and standing next to a character, the player can press, or and  in combination with , to grab the character. The player can now attack the grabbed character by using the or  buttons, and can also throw the other character in a direction by tilting the.

Unlike in Super Smash Bros., however, players can break free from grabs. The less damage the grabbed player has, the easier it is to break free from a foe's grab. However, if the player takes a lot of damage, it becomes nearly impossible to break free from a foe's grab.

Other actions
In single-player mode, the player can use the to zoom the camera in or out. In VS mode, the player can move the in any direction, allowing them to perform uncharged smash attacks easily. By pressing Up on the, the player can use the Taunt.

Certain characters even have attacks called meteor smashes. These attacks can send opponents falling downwards, but they are not impossible to recover from. Some meteor smashes are very weak, while others pack a strong punch.

Fighting modes
There are four standard fighting modes, which can be freely chosen in VS mode. The regular matches in Single-Player mode only feature Stock matches, but different rules appear in the Event Matches. In all modes, it is possible that there is a tie between two or more players. When this happens, there will be a Sudden Death. It is a quick battle, where each of the players who are tied will fight. They each start with 300% damage, and the last player standing wins. The winner of Sudden Death wins the entire battle.

Time
Players gain points by knocking out other players, and lose points by getting knocked out. When the Time Limit has run out, the player with the most points wins. It can be set by the player whether self-destructs cause players to lose 0, 1, or 2 points. A special function that displays the player's points during battle can also be unlocked. This mode is used by default in the VS. Mode, though it is rarely used in the Single-Player events.

Stock
Players have a set number of lives. They lose lives when they are knocked out. The last player standing wins. Optionally, a time limit can be specified. When the time has run out, the player with the most lives wins. This mode is featured throughout the Classic and All-Star Mode, and there is always a set time limit in these modes.

Coin
Players have to collect Smash Coins. Coins appear by hitting an opponent. When a player gets knocked out, they will lose half of his coins. When the time limit has run out, the player with the most coins wins. This fighting mode is rarely used in the Event Matches of the single-player mode, but is also available in VS matches.

Bonus
Players get points for their fighting style. There are 249 different kinds of bonus points. Bonus points can be simplified for knock outs, for jumping a lot, for looking in the same direction all the time, for getting a rare Pokémon out of a Poké Ball, etc. When the time limit has run out, the player with the most points wins. Most bonuses also have humorous names.

Playable characters
Super Smash Bros. Melee contains a total of 25 playable characters (26 including Zelda's alter ego, Sheik). The 12 original characters return from Super Smash Bros., and the other 13 characters are newcomers. 14 characters (15 including Zelda's alter ego, Sheik) are available by default, while 11 are unlockable. Most of the unlockable fighters are introduced for Super Smash Bros. Melee. Seven characters are from the Mario franchise.

Stages
There are 29 stages; 18 are available by default, while the other 11 must be unlocked. Three of the stages return from Super Smash Bros. and are subtitled "Past Stages".

Containers
All containers originate from the Super Smash Bros. series. They contain item(s), and can be picked up and thrown at opponents. Although Party Balls also count as a container, they are grouped with the regular items in the Item Switch menu.

Classic


The Classic mode is based on the single-player mode of the game's predecessor. However, it is no longer set what opponents will be fought and where. They are chosen randomly. Still, there is a set pattern for the battles. For setup, the players choose the difficulty (very easy - easy - normal - hard - very hard) and the number of lives (1 - 5) they will have for the whole mode.

All battles are in stock mode, with the opponents having one life, and a five-minute time limit (if in a rare case that if time runs out in a battle, the player will lose one life and will have to play that stage again from the beginning). The arena is one of the opponent's home arenas. There are also three bonus stages. When failing in one of them, the players do not lose a life for their upcoming battles.

When the players run out of stock lives during the mode's progress, they can use a continue to gain all lives again, but they lose points for that, and at any setting except for Very Easy, they will have to pay coins for the Continue. Those coins are won in any regular battle by performing smash attacks, or in the Bonus Stages of the Classic Mode. They can also be used to pay for the Continue in the Adventure and All-Star mode and in the Trophy Lottery mode.

Adventure


Adventure is a mode taking place in most of the worlds of the games featured in Super Smash Bros. Melee. It features some special side-scrolling stages only available in adventure mode. As in the Classic Mode, the player chooses the difficulty (very easy - easy - normal - hard - very hard) and the number of lives (1 - 5) they will have for the whole mode.

When the player runs out of stock lives during the mode's progress, they can use a continue to gain all lives again at the cost of some coins, but a penalty is received (it is Continuation, which subtracts 20,000 from the player's current score). Coins are won in any regular battle by performing smash attacks, or in the Bonus Stages of the Classic Mode. They can also be used to pay for the Continue in the Classic and All-Star mode and in the Trophy Lottery mode.

All-Star


The All-Star mode can be unlocked by unlocking all secret characters. Unlike other modes, players only have one life for the whole mode, and their percentage of damage is not set back after a battle. However, players can use up to three Heart Containers to restore their health. For setup, they choose the difficulty setting (very easy - easy - normal - hard - very hard). Unlike the other game modes, this one does not have a time limit.

In the All-Star mode, players have to fight all 25 characters of the game. All battles are in the stock system, with each combatant having one life. When players get defeated in a battle, they can use a continue to continue playing, but they lose half of their points for that, and will have to pay coins. Those coins are won in any regular battle by performing smash attacks, or in the Bonus Stages of the Classic Mode. They can also be used to pay for the Continue in the Classic and Adventure mode and in the Trophy Lottery mode.

Event Match
Event matches are specially designed missions. They have a certain goal to be achieved. All the player can choose is his character, though even that is pre-defined sometimes. Event matches can break the rules of a normal battle in Super Smash Bros. Melee. The following table provides a rules summary of each of the 51 event matches.

Stadium
In the Stadium, special minigames are available. Each minigame opens the way to unlock one of the Past Stages from the original Super Smash Bros.
 * Target Test: Here the player can play the Break the Targets! minigame, as it appears in Classic mode, but without a time limit.
 * Home-Run Contest: The goal of the Home-Run Contest is to throw the Sandbag as far as possible. The player gets a Home-Run Bat to do this. The player has ten seconds to damage the Sandbag before hitting it, so that it will fly farther away.
 * Multi-Man Melee: In this special mode the goal is to fight Fighting Wire Frames.
 * 10-Man Melee: The player has to KO 10 Wire Frames in the fastest time possible.
 * 100-Man Melee: The player has to KO 100 Wire Frames in the fastest time possible. When winning, the player can unlock Falco.
 * 3-Minute Melee: The player has 3 minutes to KO as many Wire Frames as possible.
 * 15-Minute Melee: The player has 15 minutes to KO as many Wire Frames as possible. When winning, the player can unlock the Past Kongo Jungle stage.
 * Endless Melee: The player has an unlimited amount of time to KO as many Wire Frames as possible.
 * Cruel Melee: As in Endless Melee, there is an unlimited amount of time. However, there are no items, the Wire Frames are harder to KO, and the player can get KO'd easily at low damage percentages.

Training
The player can practice here. There are no rules such as Stock or Time, and the opponent can be controlled either by the Training menu, and set to actions such as walking and standing, or by a human player. Items can be created to practice with them specially. When the player performs standard combos here, the maximum number of combos is saved for each playable character, and the player can unlock several Trophies when getting a high number of them.

Melee


Melee mode allows players to set up the battles entirely for themselves. They can freely choose their characters, the stage, and have a variety of modes to play in. When using names, records are saved for the Melee mode which can be viewed in the Data menu. Up to four players can join the fight, either human or CPU-controlled players. It is possible to only let CPU players fight against each other.

Players choose their characters from the selection screen, and human players can set names for their characters to be displayed above the characters' heads during battle, and also recognizing the battle for their individual Melee Records rating. Multiple players can choose the same character to play as, and the characters then come in alternate outfits for each player. Each character has at least three alternate outfits for the team color red, blue, and green, but there can be up to six different costumes. Some costumes feature gimmicks; for example, one of Peach's costumes looks like Daisy, and Mario has an outfit in Wario's colors. When the same characters are on a team, they appear in different shadings.

The CPU levels range from 1 to 9, with 9 being the most advanced AI. An optional handicap mode also ranges from 1 to 9. The handicap determines how fast a character is knocked out by other fighters, items, and the stage environment. After all preferences have been set, players can go to the stage selection screen, where they select a stage to fight on or a random one to play on.

As the battle ends, the players get to the battle results screen, where they can view their KO scores, a list of their bonus points, and special statistics about their movements. These lists are available in all the VS Game Modes, except for Camera Mode and Stamina Mode.

Tournament mode
Tournament: In this mode, played as a single-elimination tournament, the winner of a battle passes on to the next round CPU-only matches can be skipped. The number of combatants per battle ranges from 2 to 4. The number of entrants is selected and can be up to 64. It is selected how many humans are among the competing players. The stage selection mode is selected; "Single Random" chooses a stage at random on that every match of the tournament is played, "Always Different" chooses a new random stage for each battle, "Choose First" lets the player select the stage for the tournament in the beginning and "Choose All" lets the player choose a new stage for each match of the tournament. The level of additional computer opponents can be set from 1 to 9, applied to all, or to a random value applied to each CPU player. The rules settings for the battles have the same choices as the VS mode. Each player chooses their character and the tournament begins.

Winner out/Loser out: This mode is for human players only. A number of players fight against each other. The winner or the loser of the match, depending on the setting, gives his controller to the next player waiting for his turn to come. This continues endlessly, until the mode is canceled. Players are free to change their characters while the tournament is ongoing. When they hold down and, their character image changes to a Ditto, the placeholder for a random character. Here, too, the number of combatants per battle ranges from 2 to 4, and the number of entrants can be up to 64. The stage selection mode has the same options as in the regular tournament.

Special Melee
This mode offers a couple of different rules settings for the Melee mode. Any records (such as amount of KOs) are not counted.

Trophies


Trophies can be collected in single-player mode, won in the special lottery mode, or acquired on special events, such as playing a certain number of matches in VS mode. There are 290 trophies in the game (293 in the Japanese version, 292 in the PAL version), with a large percentage being Mario series characters, items, and locations. Each of the playable characters have three trophies. One explains the character's backstory in the game they originated from, and is collected by completing Classic mode. The other two explain their Super Smash Bros. Melee background. They can be collected by completing the Adventure and All-Star mode with them, or by completing a sufficient amount of VS mode matches with the respective character.

Unlockable features
When unlocking any of the secret characters, the player first has to beat them in a stock battle with one life each. When the player loses, several characters will appear again after the player has played the next VS match. Other characters require the player to achieve the task again. In addition to their special method of unlocking, all characters can alternately be unlocked by playing a certain number of matches in the VS mode. There is only one method to unlock the stages, and the player does not have to unlock them by an additional battle like the characters.

Soundtrack
Each stage has a track from the game it is from, and some stages also have alternate music tracks which are not necessarily from the game the stage is from. The alternate music is heard more rarely than the regular one. However, the player can force the game to play a stage's alternate music by holding or  when selecting a stage on the stage selection screen. If more than one player is playing, however, every player has to do this action to get the alternate music.

When all stages are unlocked, the player gains access to the Sound Test, where the player can play all music tracks and voices from the game, and might occasionally hear an alternate music track in the menu. Also, if the player uses sound test and then opens the trophy gallery, whichever song was played last in sound test is played in the trophy gallery. However, the music has to loop, or else it will not be played in the trophy gallery.

An orchestrated version of the game's soundtrack was released as a special CD known as Super Smash Bros. Melee: Smashing...Live!.

Reception
Super Smash Bros. Melee received very positive reviews from most critics. The game came in sixth for two GameFAQs events: the Best...Game...Ever contest and as a poll for the 100 best games ever. Nintendo Power named Super Smash Bros. Melee the 16th best game ever to appear on a Nintendo console, and "Game of the Year" in 2001. IGN gave Super Smash Bros. Melee a rating of 9.6 out of 10, and ranked it as the 3rd best Nintendo GameCube game, out of all GameCube games released to date. Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the game a 9.5 out of 10, and it was ranked 92nd on their "Top 200 Games of Their Time" list. Super Smash Bros. Melee was even ranked as the 3rd best Video Game of all time during the 2001 Penny Arcade Award Ceremony.

Super Smash Bros. Melee was praised for its increased number of modes and characters, as well as improved graphics. The inclusion of the Adventure Mode and Event Match was highly complimented. Overall, the game's critical reception was very positive, and the game still continues to be a gamer favorite, being frequently played at tournaments alongside more traditional fighting games such as Street Fighter.

Competitive players
There is a large community of advanced Melee players who utilize techniques that casual players are generally unaware of, such as Wave dashing and L-Cancelling. There is even a school that helps players play the game more professionally.

Super Smash Bros. Melee is one of the more popular games to play at video game tournaments. In 2004, the game was added to the Major League Gaming's game roster. The tournaments have been covered in several video game-related magazines including Nintendo Power.

Some time after its release Super Smash Bros. Brawl was deemed too uncompetitive, so Super Smash Bros. Melee returned to be the most prominent competitive Super Smash Bros. game.

At EVO 2013, Super Smash Bros. Melee was shown as the third stream, and gathered the largest viewership that year. At EVO 2014, Super Smash Bros. Melee returned, this time with the endorsement of Nintendo. Reggie Fils-Aimé even gave a message before the finals. Despite Nintendo's endorsement,Super Smash Bros. Melee was the second most viewed game at EVO 2014, with  being the first.

Pre-release and unused content
Through the use of an Action Replay, many unused/unfinished stages can be found. The first is a large, gray stage with the background appearing to be some kind of pub. The music is the same as used on Fox McCloud and Falco Lombardi's stage Corneria. This is assumed to be a test stage because of its name, which on the debug menu is TEST. There are three other stages, "AKANEIA" (a possible predecessor to Castle Siege from Super Smash Bros. Brawl, a home world for Fire Emblem), "10-2", and "Dummy", which all crash the game when loaded. The last stage is named IceTop, which simply loads Icicle Mountain except without music.

Ice Climbers freeze
Pick the Ice Climbers, and while wall walking up to the opponent, make the partner (Nana if the player is Popo and vice versa) grab the opponent, then, right as they have the player enemy grabbed have their main Ice Climber do Side+B. The opponent should now be frozen in place. Simply use a Screw Attack item to get them unfrozen. This does not seem to cause any damage to the disc.

Infinite Super Scope glitch
There is an in-game glitch to get an infinite super scope that will never run out of bullets. It is obtained by shooting fifteen small shots then two charged shots and during charging of the third shot the player must get hit, that will result in an infinite super scope. If the player throws the scope, it will then disappear.

Trivia

 * In Classic Mode, for some unknown reason, the player never fights against Ganondorf or Roy. Ganondorf appears only as a teammate in Classic Mode, while Roy never appears at all as a CPU player. In addition, Zelda is never a teammate for the player in that game mode. Also, the player only fights Mr. Game & Watch in the multi-man battle.
 * Super Smash Bros. Melee is not only the first in its franchise to be Teen-rated, but it's also the first time that any of those Nintendo characters that appear in-game, with the exception of Fire Emblem characters, appeared in a game rated Teen or a foreign equivalent.
 * There were three versions of this game released in the NTSC format. The first version was 1.0 NTSC DOL-GALE 0-00, which was the original version with the words "Nintendo's best in 4-player action" labeled on the front. The second version was 1.1 NTSC DOL-GALE 0-01, which was the Player's Choice version. The last version was 1.2 NTSC DOL-GALE 0-02, which had the words "Best Seller" labeled on the front. While the first two had the original "Official Nintendo Seal of Quality" labeled on the boxes and the discs, the last version had Nintendo's revised "Official Nintendo Seal" on the box due to the patch being released after December of 2003. Despite this, the seal on the updated disc still says "Official Nintendo Seal of Quality". Each newer version had different patches and gameplay improvements.
 * This is the first GameCube game appearance for all of the playable characters excluding Mario, Luigi, and Bowser, whose first appearance in a GameCube game was Luigi's Mansion.
 * However, Mario and Bowser were not playable on the GameCube until this game, making Luigi the only playable character in Super Smash Bros. Melee to be playable in a previous GameCube game, as Luigi's Mansion was released before Melee.