Imagine you’re at a party. Just you, a group of friends, a low-key and casual environment, and a television. If your friends are the kind worth keeping, then there’s no question what game you’d see on that screen—Super Smash Bros.
The fighting game franchise has defined the gaming scene of generations, the No. 1 party game and the maker or breaker of friendships. I have spent 15 years playing it, from the clunky Nintendo 64 original to the 2014 Wii U iteration. After this many sequels, Super Smash Bros. is almost a sport, as common as a driveway basketball hoop or a ping-pong table, and in Major League Gaming Corp., it may as well be an Olympic category.
This is the precedent Nintendo executives set for themselves, and, when the fifth installment Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was announced, some immense internet hype started building. The instant I received a text message reading simply “Smash is bonkers,” I knew it was all worth it.
The word “bonkers” is appropriate because I could tell the physics had seriously altered the second I started playing. Series Director Masahiro Sakurai apparently thought everything in the game needed to be cranked up to 11, and, since everything was increased uniformly, it scales out perfectly. The hits are harder, the moves are crisper and each blow feels like it really connects. In fact, some attacks are so hard-hitting, they actually change the entire level background or cinematically zoom the screen in just to see how epic the KO is.
The central appeal of the Super Smash Bros. series is the variety of characters one can choose from. Everybody knows at least one Nintendo character, so there’s always a player for you to choose. Maybe you’re the one who enrages the entire room simultaneously by playing as “Little Mac,” or maybe you’re the one who picks “Kirby” every time and waits for someone to stumble into your mouth so you can leap off the edge with them.
But, in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, it doesn’t matter what character you’re good with because everyone who has ever been featured in any Super Smash Bros. game is included, making a roster of 74 different playable characters. A full house like this may seem excessive or unoriginal on its face, but it makes for more variety and accessibility to the game, and you can’t have enough of that.
When you first open the game, though, you’ll be disappointed to see that only the original eight characters are available at first, which means you’ll have to grind quite a bit to one-by-one unlock the full roster. As annoying as this might seem, all it did was make me want to play the game more, and then I valued it that much more when I unlocked the characters I really love. By the end of my first day owning the game, I had played more than 100 matches.
Masahiro made the right call in titling this game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, because, with the maximized intensity and all-encompassing roster, this game really is the “ultimate” Super Smash Bros. game. It embodies everything the fans know and love about the series and everything that made the game so fun to begin with.
So, next time you’re at a party, scan the room. If they don’t have a television with a Nintendo Switch hooked up to it displaying this game’s title screen, put your coat back on and politely leave the party.
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