Super Smash Bros. Melee

"Within Nintendo, we've had a lot of discussion about which of our most popular characters should be ready to appear in games when Nintendo GameCube comes to market. We think we've got a great answer."

- Shigeru Miyamoto moments before the Melee trailer was unveiled to the public at E3 2001.

Super Smash Bros. Melee (called Dairantō Smash Brothers. DX in Japan) is a 2001/2002 crossover fighting video game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the GameCube video game console. It is the second game in the Super Smash Bros. series, following the 1999 release of the original game. It was released in Japan and North America in 2001 and in Europe and Australia in 2002. Super Smash Bros. Melee was followed by Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii in 2008.

Why It's A Wombo Combo

 * 1) Solid controls, the controls are fairly easy to move and attack, unlike other fighting games, this game lets you move and attack faster and there's more moves than many other fighting games.
 * 2) Like its predecessor, you can play with up to four local players for lots of fun.
 * 3) Fantastic graphics for a GameCube game released in 2001, it looks much advanced than many Xbox and PS2 games.
 * 4) It has a great competitive scene with very hardcore gamers still playing the game as a competitive e-sport.
 * 5) The Adventure mode, where you can adventure and fight through many large stages until to the goal, similar to the Classic mode, which has more freedom to explore around.
 * 6) Tons of more game modes to choose from through the menus, including Tournament, Special Melee and many more, which nearly no one plays.
 * 7) Amazing soundtrack of the game, with 4 composers that arranged previous soundtracks from old and classic games, especially Princess Peach's Castle, with the drums being very awesome to any sound device, it also appeared in many animations and fan games like Super Mario 63.
 * 8) Trophies can be obtained in-game to unlock details about characters and objects in each franchise. There are 292 unique trophies to collect in the game. And like dolls in the first game, it keep the description origins for fighters, but compared to Smash 64 it adds non-playable characters in the game as well.
 * 9) It introduced Marth and Roy from the Fire Emblem universe to western audiences, allowing the franchise to release outside of Japan due to western players being interested in the franchise.
 * 10) The amazing and beautiful intro that this game has, especially the Bowser and Sheik/Zelda part.
 * 11) The gameplay has vastly improved over the original.
 * 12) Crazy Hand and Giga Bowser are officially introduced as bosses. Now you can fight and beat Master Hand and Crazy Hand.
 * 13) Melee has three times the number of selectable stages from Smash 64, even having a Mother and F-Zero stage for the first time, since Mother and F-Zero did have Ness and Captain Falcon in previous games. The number of stages skyrocketed from 9 to 29, plus you can select Battlefield and Final Destination from the menu for the first time.
 * 14) It also has over twice as many characters as the first game has, upgrading to 26 from 12. This means that the game allows players to play tournaments to choose the characters with and later uploaded to social network, like YouTube.
 * 15) You can now perform Side Special attacks. For instance, Mario uses a cape to reflect projectiles and turn opponents, Donkey Kong uses a headbutt to bury opponents and do massive damage, and Link's throws a Boomerang (since the Bow became his new neutral special). In fact, this would later be reused for future games, thanks to this.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) There are some flaws with characters, much like in the previous game:
 * 2) *Ganondorf is made into a clone of Captain Falcon, which makes no sense as they are from different franchises. Despite that, it didn't cause Ganondorf to be a bad fighter, and is good to play, despite cloning Captain Falcon's moveset.
 * 3) *Some of the newcomers such as Bowser, Pichu, Mewtwo and Zelda are bad to play as.
 * 4) **Pichu damages itself with most of its electric attacks badly. Its terrible range also makes it one of the worst and hardest fighters to play as in the game. Due to this, Pichu was removed in the next 2 games after Melee, until it received proper balancing for its return with Ultimate, which reduced the major problem, thanks to the update.
 * 5) **Mewtwo is nonsensically made into a Lightweight and also suffers from Lack of Reliable KOing Options with most of them having little reach, and many weak attacks.
 * 6) **Zelda suffers from poor mobility as well as poorly-placed hitboxes or unreliable finishers on almost all of her moves.
 * 7) **Bowser suffers from a poor air game (especially his awful recovery) and a poorly framed projectile. He also suffers from a bad approach towards opponents and a bad dashing animation.
 * 8) *Kirby had been seriously nerfed badly in this game, where he is weak and has poor KO potential, and he ended up being the bottom tier for that matter.
 * 9) *Ness is barely any better than the terrible fighter he was in the previous game.
 * 10) *Fox McCloud is too overpowered. Nonetheless, he was considered a top favorite among players.
 * 11) ** What doesn't help is that his blaster is incredibly nerfed from the previous installment as it no longer causes any knockback and only deals very minimal damage to his opponents. Not to mention that every game in the series is like this since then.
 * 12) Some Specials are practically useless or just garbage.
 * 13) *Mario's one barely makes opponents flinch.
 * 14) *DK's one, while strong, leaves him wide open.
 * 15) *Samus' Missle moves so slow and is easy to evade.
 * 16) Plenty of glitches since the game had a short development cycle.
 * 17) Cruel Melee is an unfair mode.
 * 18) Some terrible stages.
 * 19) * Icicle Mountain for example as it's an autoscroller that not only interrupts the fighting between playable characters but can lead to cheap deaths.
 * 20) Melee is the only Smash Bros. game to not have unique on-screen appearances, which is disappointing. These would return with the next game.
 * 21) Sometimes the A.I. can be frustrating or make strange mistakes like falling off the stage for no reason, with the same problem being included in the challenge mode. The A.I.-controlled opponent can even fall out of the stage, allowing for an easy win, especially if you are getting away from the A.I.-controlled opponents without attacking them.
 * 22) Some event matches are frustratingly hard and/or nearly impossible such as Pikachu & Pichu, Space Travelers, Time for a Checkup, and The Showdown.
 * 23) Collecting trophies, while new to the series, adds nothing to the game except for 100% completion.
 * 24) Some parts of the game have poor grasp of the source material, such as the Moon in the Great Bay stage being thrown to its previous position instead of disappearing.
 * 25) While the game is rated T due to its increased level of violence and some comic mischief compared to the first game that was rated E, it would have been easily re-rated as E10+ like the newest two games in the series, as the E10+ rating did not exist until 2005. This game's level of violence is more equivalent to a PG rating in movies.
 * 26) Giga Bowser, the hidden final boss in the Adventure mode that can only be fought if you complete it on Normal or higher in under 18 minutes without using a continue is way too difficult to beat due to his attacks being very powerful, allowing him to launch you off the stage easily, and also barely suffers from your damage unless his damage ratio is at 200%.

Reception
Super Smash Bros. Melee received universal acclaim, with many critics praising the game's expansion and refinement from its N64 predecessor, Super Smash Bros., as well as its visuals, tight controls, multiplayer mode, and orchestrated soundtrack, although its single-player modes, lack of originality, and similarity to its predecessor received criticism. In terms of raw gameplay and the competitive scene, Melee is widely regarded as the best Smash game by fans, conflicting with Ultimate.

As of August 19, 2020, the user average score on GameFAQs is 4.49 out of 5 stars, and on Metacritic is 9.1 (critics there gave it a mean of 92).

This is the best-selling game on the GameCube, selling over 7 million units as of March 10, 2008.

Videos
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Trivia

 * This game was developed in little over a year because it was designed to be a near-launch title for the GameCube. Sakurai was living a "destructive" lifestyle: at some point he was working for over 40 hours in a row and went back home to sleep for only four.
 * This is the last game in the series to be developed by HAL Laboratory, as Sakurai would leave in 2005 to found Sora Ltd.
 * This is the last Smash game to have Donkey Kong, Kirby, Samus, and Ness as the sole representatives of their universe.
 * Wavedashing was first noticed during the development of Melee by Masahiro Sakurai; according to an interview with the magazine Nintendo Power, he elected to not remove the tactic from the game, as he did not believe it would affect play to a significant degree.
 * You can play as Master Hand if you use a glitch. Since he takes no knockback at all, he cannot be KO'd except in Stamina Mode.
 * There is data for a character called "NONE". Trying to play as this character will crash the game.
 * This is the final Smash game to not have third party characters.