Super Smash Bros.

“	Something's gone wrong in the happy-go-lucky world of Nintendo!	”
—North American commercial

Super Smash Bros.
Super Smash Bros. North American box
Developer(s)	HAL Laboratory, Inc.
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Designer(s)	Masahiro Sakurai
Released	Nintendo 64: January 21, 1999 April 26, 1999 November 19, 1999 Virtual Console: January 20, 2009 June 12, 2009 December 21, 2009
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer (2-4)
Ratings	ESRB: E PEGI: 7 OFLC: G8+
Platform(s)	Nintendo 64 iQue Player Virtual Console
Media	128 megabit cartridge Flash Card (China)

Super Smash Bros. (ニンテンドウオールスター! 大乱闘スマッシュブラザーズ), Nintendo All-Star! Great Fray Smash Brothers), often shortened to "SSB", retronymously "Smash 64" or "SSB64", is the first game of the Super Smash Bros. series. As a relatively low-budget game with an unusual concept, there were not originally any plans to export the game outside Japan. Only the game's unexpected popularity led to its worldwide release. It is the only Super Smash Bros. game to be rated E, as Melee and Brawl are rated T, and Smash 4 is rated E10+, according to the ESRB.

The game was released in Japan on January 21, 1999, in North America on April 26, 1999, and in Europe on November 19, 1999. The game is playable on Nintendo 64 and the iQue Player, and is available on the Wii's Virtual Consoles. The Virtual Console version was released on January 20, 2009 in Japan, one day before the 10-year anniversary of the game, and later released on June 12th 2009 and December 21, 2009 in Europe and North America, respectively.

Opening movie

Every time the opening movie plays, the two characters Master Hand picks who appear fighting on a mountain-top at the beginning of the movie varies. If certain secret characters have not been unlocked yet, they appear as silhouettes.

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Characters

Official artwork of the default cast of Smash 64.

The character-selection screen of Super Smash Bros. (all characters unlocked).

There are twelve playable characters in Super Smash Bros., eight of which are available from the start, and four of which are unlockable.

Playable characters

Luigi	Mario	Donkey Kong	Link	Samus	Captain Falcon
Ness	Yoshi	Kirby	Fox	Pikachu	Jigglypuff

_{Bold denotes unlockable characters.}

Non-playable characters

Giant Donkey Kong

Metal Mario File:MetalMarioSymbol.png

Fighting Polygon Team

Master Hand

Planned characters

According to a page on the Japanese Super Smash Bros. site, Mewtwo, Bowser, and King Dedede were all planned to be playable, but were cut, though no other information is available. Bowser would later be playable in Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Super Smash Bros. 4, Mewtwo would be playable in Melee and SSB4, and King Dedede would be playable in Brawl and SSB4. There have been rumors that other characters, such as Meowth from the Pokémon franchise and Wario, were supposed to be included in the game as well, but no official source exists to confirm these rumors.

Stages

File:Ssb stageselect.jpg

The stages of Super Smash Bros.

Stages

Stages
Peach's Castle	Congo Jungle	Hyrule Castle	Planet Zebes	Mushroom Kingdom
Yoshi's Island	Dream Land	Sector Z	Saffron City

Shown in bold, Mushroom Kingdom is the only unlockable stage in Super Smash Bros.

1P Game-only stages

1P Game-only stages
File:Mario Target Smash SSB.jpg Break the Targets	Board the Platforms	Meta Crystal	Race to the Finish	Battlefield	Final Destination

These stages only appear in the 1P Game.

Non-playable stages

Non-playable stages
Kirby Beta Stage 1	Kirby Beta Stage 2	File:TutorialStage.jpg Tutorial Stage

These stages cannot be unlocked or played on in any way without hacking.

Modes

1-Player

• 1P Game
• Training mode
• Break the Targets
• Board the Platforms

Multi-player

• Versus Mode

Tournament play

Unlike its successors, Super Smash Bros. never enjoyed a large professional competitive scene in North America. However, interest in the game has been renewed in recent years with the popularity of Melee and Brawl. Players can play Super Smash Bros. online through Kaillera using the Project64k emulator. Recently, there have been more and more tournaments of Super Smash Bros. due to an influx of new players. Most Super Smash Bros. tournaments are paired up with Melee events and most (offline) SSB tournaments are located in California, Canada, or New Jersey.

The standard tournament rules differ little from that of Melee. The most common standard tournament rules are as follows:

• The required number of victories to win are generally the best of 3 matches; the only exceptions are finals, in which the number of matches are 5 or 7.
• Double eliminations are in place.
• 5 stock with a 10 minute time limit, if it is possible; most emulators don't have time limits.
• Items are turned off.
• Handicaps are off.
• The first match is played on Dream Land.
• Counterpick stages are Congo Jungle and Peach's Castle.

• The loser of each match picks the stage for the next match from the list of counterpick stages or Dream Land
• In some more restrictive rulesets, such as the Japanese ruleset, only Dream Land is legal and every other stage is banned.

• For the first match, characters are chosen double-blind - at the same time, so that neither player knows their opponent's character beforehand.
• Players may re-pick characters after each match. However, the loser of each match gets to pick last (known as slob picks).

Reception

Super Smash Bros. was a commercial success, selling 5 million copies worldwide with 2.93 million sold in the United States and 1.97 million copies sold in Japan. It was the 5th best selling game for the Nintendo 64. Reviews were mostly positive, with many critics praising the game's addictive and fun multiplayer gameplay and simple controls, but it was criticized as well, mainly due to the game's lack of content and somewhat limited single player mode.

Online play

Although Super Smash Bros. does not feature online play, emulators have the ability to do so. Project64k and Mupen64k are the most used emulators of playing online.

Gallery

• 

  Super Smash Bros. Japanese box art

• 

  Super Smash Bros. PAL box art

• 

  Group artwork depicting Kirby, Mario, Fox and Link, including some items like Bob-omb, Star Rod and the Fan.

Commercials

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Trivia

• Early in development, Super Smash Bros. was called Dragon King: The Fighting Game, and didn't have any Nintendo characters at all. [1]
• The starting eight characters are placed in the order of when they first appeared in their respective titles on the character selection screen, starting with the oldest, Mario and Donkey Kong, and leading to the most recent, Pikachu.
  • However, because of the placing of the unlockable characters on the sides of the character selection screen, Luigi gets listed first before Mario and Donkey Kong, despite the fact he debuted 2 years after Mario and Donkey Kong's debuts. The same is true for Ness next to Yoshi, only it is a four-year difference.
    • Nevertheless, the four unlockable characters are placed in chronological order of first appearance relative to each other. Luigi (1983), Captain Falcon (1990), Ness (1994), and Jigglypuff (1996) appear in this order left to right, top to bottom, occupying the four corners of the character selection screen.
• This is the only time Samus and Ness appeared on the Nintendo 64, and so is also their first appearance in 3D.
• This is the only game to feature playable protagonists only. However, two characters had previously appeared as antagonists -- Donkey Kong in Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong 3 and Mario in Donkey Kong Jr. and Donkey Kong Circus.
• Super Smash Bros. is the only game to use the phrases "Game Set" and "Time Up" in matches in both English and Japanese versions. Melee, Brawl, and Smash 4 use the phrases "Game!" and "Time!" in the English version, while each one still uses "Game Set" and "Time Up" in the Japanese version.
• Samus is the only definite female character in the game, as Pokémon were not considered gendered at the time of this game.
• This is the only game to lack stages from the F-Zero and EarthBound universes.
• This is the only game to introduce characters from the Yoshi and F-Zero universes.
• This is the only Super Smash Bros. game to be rated "E" by the ESRB.

External links

• Official Japanese Super Smash Bros. website
• Official English Super Smash Bros. website (archived)

References

smash bros rules