Super Smash Bros. Melee

System : GameCube

Price : 49.95

Genre : Fighting with a dash of Platform and salt.

Gentlemen, meet your new addiction. Super Smash Bros. Melee is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the best game currently on the GameCube and one of the best next-gen titles period.

For those who've never owned a N64 or have never seen the game, the original Smash Bros. was a glorious thing. Able to suck up the minds of many a college student by just the simple premise of Nintendo's finest characters duking it out in an outrageous King Of the Hill style battle made for many hours of gameplay. Now, with SSBM's release, those days are on us again.

The game plays as such. Pick a character. "Smash" your opponent with your various special moves and Nintendo-nostalgic items off the edge of the screen, off of your usually platform styled stage to the degree where they cannot return by jumping back. So simplistic that young children can play it and not be stumped on how, yet deep enough that fighting game vets will LOVE the air-dodges, sidestepping, delayed hits, multi-combos and other monumental treats.

Oh, and the features! 25 characters grace the game with their presence, some Nintendo's brightest stars, others more shrouded with obscurity but wildly appreciated for being there nonetheless. Along with numerous side modes, such as miniature trophies of past Nintendo icons and props, in depth practice modes, perfect tournament setups so when your friends come calling for a party, Event mode, which gives you a set scenario which can range from you fighting a Giant DK with a Giant Bowser to you fighting 128 teeny tiny Marios, and UNGODLY stat tracking so you can see a ridiculous amount of stuff that's kept on your performance that ranges from how far you've walked to how many self destructs you've had to how many times you've fought a particular friend.

Perhaps the biggest addition to the game has been the Adventure mode, which CONSIDERABLY beefs up the one player experience. Instead of fight after monotonous fight, you swing back into yesteryear and pounce through stages designed after games such as Super Mario Bros. and Zelda, where you would stomp Koopas or try to locate the Triforce. It's a great addition, but you sort of wish not everyone's Adventure was the same. Still, gggggggreat!

Graphically, silky, silky smoooooth. Character models are beautiful and animate fluidly and without fail. Seeing it all would make even a hardened gaming vet smile. The backgrounds themselves are nice, but certain stages (Fountain Of Dreams comes to mind) could use a bit of clean-up to remove the fogginess. The presentation of the menus is good too (mostly because there are a lot of them.) , so it is pretty easy to navigate. All in all, very nice.

Sound is damn perfect. There, I said it. Re-orchestrated tunes are unbelievably well done so much to the point if you were to play this game without music, it would extremely detract from the experience. It's really that good. The voices are great as well, with all of Mario's trademarked quips, Link's grunts of attacking, Pikachu's...uh..."Pika-ing"...it's all there. Explosions are deep and bassy, the effects from weapons are extremely gratifying to hear (especially the bat, *PWING!*) it's an aural overload that will drive the Nintendo fanboy to his knees.

Controls are great as well. Extremely easy controls that only command that you press a direction and a button with varying degrees of pressure for different moves adds more to the game than one would think. No memorizing complex controller motions, with the harder stuff out of the way, all one has to do is focus more on timing and honestly, it makes it so much better and despite the GameCube's funky controller layout, it still feels perfect. Even younger players can (and from experience, usually do) learn and master the controls with frightening precision. My only gripe is that the analog is entirely too sensitive in situations where you only need to move a little.

If you plan on buying SSBM, be prepared to kiss your free time goodbye. Easily a Game Of The Year contender and more than enough reason to get a Cube, Nintendo has made a magnum opus right at the system's birth. Unbelievable.

The Reverend Mofat Jones STILL wonders why Pit isn't a playable character, only a trophy.

-Mofat

(Editors note: After this article The Reverend and SSBM were married in Vegas.)