For my first blog post with this new topic, it seems only fitting to talk about my absolute favorite video game and the one that has probably influenced me the most: Super Smash Brothers. Super Smash Brothers is a series of 2D fighting games created by Nintendo that is essentially an all-out fight between 1-4 players, each of whom plays as a famous Nintendo character. The roster includes Nintendo icons such as Mario, Donkey Kong, Pikachu, and Zelda, and also some less well-known characters for the more hardcore fans. The game was originally created in 1999 and has had five iterations, one on every home Nintendo console since then (the Nintendo 64, Gamecube, Wii, WiiU) and one on the 3DS, Nintendo’s most recent handheld gaming device.
I’ve never played the Nintendo 64 version, but the Gamecube version, Super Smash Brothers Melee (often called SSBM or just Melee) was one of the first video games I ever played. I remember very clearly the night that I went to my friend’s house to play with his new game and getting absolutely destroyed by his older brother. Despite how badly I had lost, though, I was hooked. A fighting game that would let me control Mewtwo and use him to send Mario flying to his death? What 7-year-old could resist? For the next two years, my parents put up with a nonstop flood of requests for a Gamecube until they finally caved. I spent hours playing the game, either by myself against the computer-controlled opponents or, more often, with various friends. For my 10th birthday I invited over 10 of my closest friends and we staged huge, elaborate tournaments for the entire day.
There were other games that I have loved and played, and I’ll talk about many of them later, but none of them have stuck out to me in the same way as Melee. I played it throughout elementary school, middle school, and even high school. I sold almost all of my video games when I moved to Singapore, but the only one that I took with me was my Gamecube and Melee. This game, which was created almost 15 years ago, has endured longer than almost any other game on the market. I still play it fairly regularly today with my roommate and some of my other friends. There’s just something about the feeling of the game that makes it so incredibly hard to put down, and I’m not the only one who feels this way.
As video games in general have become more prevalent in our society and have become a bigger and bigger industry, so has the world of competitive gaming and “electronic sports” (esports). Many games today, especially fighting games, are designed with the competitive community in mind, and games like League of Legends and Dota 2 have fully formed leagues, seasons, playoffs, and multimillion dollar tournaments. In the time that Melee was created, this concept wasn’t even an idea. Super Smash Brothers was intended to be no more than a party game, something to play when you have some friends over, but its creator, Masahiro Sakurai, had no idea how far it would go.
After writing the entirety of this blog, it came out to more than 1,000 words, so I’m going to cut it here for now and post the second half next week. Next week’s blog will explore the history of the competitive Super Smash Brothers scene and what it looks like today. For anyone interested enough to look it up for themselves, there was a documentary released in 2013 that looks deep into the history of the game and some of the most famous players that can be found at http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/smash-brothers/. Thanks for reading!