The evolution of Super Smash Bros.

Super Smash Brothers has been around for more than 20 years since its launch day on January 22nd, 1999 for the Nintendo 64 in Japan, later coming out in North America that April and coming out in Europe that November. Super Smash Brothers had 12 characters: Mario, Luigi, Captain Falcon, Kirby, Donkey Kong, Link, Jiggly Puff, Pikachu, Ness, Fox McCloud, Yoshi and Samus. Super Smash Brothers received mostly good reviews. Nintendo would go on to make a second game in the upcoming franchise, called Super Smash Bros Melee. 

Super Smash Bros Melee came out in 2001 for the Game Cube. In this new game, they added some new characters and kept the old character. “Super Smash Bros. Melee differs from traditional fighting games in that inflicting the most damage does not guarantee victory. Instead, opposing players must force their opponents beyond the boundaries of the stage,” according to the Kirby Fandom Wiki. 

Then Super Smash Bros Brawl came out in 2008 for Nintendo Wii. In this game they added new characters like Toon Link, R.O.B, Wario, Lucas, Wolf, Meta Knight, Lucario, King Dedede, Olimar, Diddy Kong, Pit, Pokemon Trainer, Ike and Snake were added and some of the old ones were kept like Mario, Donkey kong, Link, Kirby, Ness, Pikachu, Mr. Game & Watch, Falco and Fox. Like the other games, it did very well, so well that they created two other Super Smash Bros games for the 3DS and the Wii U.

These two versions of the game were in production during 2012 and were announced at E3 2013 and released in 2014. New features include having up to eight players fighting at a time on the Wii U version, and being able to use custom Mii’s as playable characters for both versions of the game. Features from previous games in the series were removed, such as the story mode from Super Smash Bros Brawl. There were issues with online play like lag and getting disconnected or receiving error codes. But both versions of the game sold well, with the 3DS version selling over nine million copies worldwide by December 2017 and the Wii U version of the game selling over five million during the same period. It was followed by Super smash bros Ultimate for the Nintendo Switch in 2018.

The fifth and final game of the franchise is Super Smash Bros Ultimate. This game follows the same algorithm as the other ones. The goal with Super Smash Bros Ultimate was to include every character from previous games in the series despite the various development and licensing challenges this would present. They still managed to get the game out and its a fun game to play with your friends. It’s fun to play with friends because it gets competitive. You can play with eight of your friends and its pure chaos due to some maps being small.