- Hey, y'all. Scott here and I love Super Smash Brothers so much I could scream. The fighting mechanics,
the cast of characters the collectibles, the clone characters the online, big battlefield,
this (beep) menu Smash Tour, fire emblem. (screaming) Super Smash Brothers the most prolific crossover
series on the planet allowing you to pit Nintendo and gaming icons against each other. Mario versus Link, Samus versus Kirby Brown vs. Board of Education. The fighting game series has blossomed into not just a game, but an event. Every time a new Smash
Brothers is announced people go wild, speculation runs rampant does to what new characters
will be included. What stages will we fight on,
what modes will be available? When a new characters are
revealed as a playable fighter there's simply no game that can live up to that amount of excitement. It's so much more than being able to play as that character and Super Smash Brothers and pit them against other gaming legends. It basically solidifies that characters place in gaming history. That's the power of Super Smash Brothers. Nowadays, we not only have dozens upon dozens of Nintendo
characters and stages but third-party ones as well. Online play, one of the
biggest competitive scenes for any game out there,
merchandise and Street Smash. However, the Super Smash
Brothers series started all the way back in 1999 with a game oddly enough entitled
Super Smash Brothers. Created by Masahiro
Sakurai, the creator of everybody's favorite pink
tumor based platformer Kirby. It's immediately pretty
obvious if you're a fan of both series that a lot
of Kirby's design philosophy went into Smash Brothers. Not only do both series
have a few similarities in terms of controls and gameplay but Kirby was always meant
to be a game for everybody. Easy and simple enough for
newcomers to pick up and play but with enough depth,
charm and fun to keep even the most seasoned of
video game players around. Smash Brothers is the same,
but for fighting games. It's a fighting game that anybody can play without having to learn
various button combinations or anything like other
fighting games at the time. Games like Street Fighter
required some specific button inputs to perform key moves
and thus would encourage newcomers to just mindlessly button mash. Smash Brothers was much
simpler to understand. You have two attack
buttons, a standard attack and a special attack and
you can combine those with directions on the analog
stick for different moves. You can jump, shield, grab
and that's fundamentally all you need to know. It makes it easy for many to understand but if you truly want to get good you're going to have to think
about when and where to pull off a specific move whether
you're in the air or not whether a special attack
or standard attack would be more effective. Super Smash Brothers
thankfully doesn't sacrifice a depth for simplicity and
it's safe to say that Sakurai succeeded in terms of a simple to learn hard to master fighting game. It was originally pitched as
Dragon King the Fighting Game with some mannequins as the characters. Sakurai wanted the game to
have instantly recognizable and likable characters Thus, he wanted to include the wide array of Nintendo All-Stars. His colleague who coded the prototypes Satoru Iwata buttered up Shigeru Miyamoto on the concept of using
characters like Mario in the game in which he was initially
hesitant on the idea. Regardless of getting permission for it Sakurai threw together
another prototype of the game featuring Mario, Donkey
Kong, Samus and Fox fighting. Showed it to the Nintendo higher-ups and the game we know of today
was officially green-lit. The game was released
in early 1999 in Japan and the rest of the world
throughout the year. So now let's get into
the full game itself. Super Smash Brothers kicks things off with an intro that tells you
everything you need to know. Some kid who's a
disembodied hand is playing with his Nintendo dolls, which ranged from all right yeah a Mario toy to how the (beep) did he
get a Captain Falcon doll? The concept of the characters in Super Smash Brothers being toys has been carried on
throughout the series life but it's not shoved in your face. It's a fact that makes everybody go oh yeah, that's right rather than being the
focal point of it all To me, it always felt like a workaround for a grown man to beat the
(beep) out of some yellow rat without the ESRB shaking their
fist furiously at the game. This is the only Smash Brothers
in which their dolls though. Future games feature the
characters as trophies instead. We then go into this crazy
minute long slap in the face to anybody that ever doubted
the concept of Smash Brothers. I always liked the section of the opening with Mario and Kirby at a standoff. A moment in which every
Nintendo fan said, oh (beep) The characters clash together we're given a preview of
four unlockable characters. and then now that's what I
like to call an ambiguous logo, A logo that's been the main emblem of the Smash Brothers series since this very moment. It's synonymous with Smash
Brothers at this point but what does it mean? According to Sakurai
himself, the cross symbolizes the crossover of characters
with the four sections representing the four player multiplayer or at least that's what this napkin I found at Arby's tells me. After the logo appears,
were greeted to a hearty. ♪ Super Smash ♪ ♪ Brothers! ♪ And with that, a legend was born. The gameplay of Smash
Brothers is different from other fighting games but
incredibly easy to comprehend You and up to three other
players are on the stage get knocked off the
stage, you lose a stock. The more damage you take the easier it is to get knocked off. The last fighter standing or
the one with most knockouts within the time limit reigns Supreme. Elements of the stages can
interfere with the fight items randomly scatter
across the battlefield if you choose to not
turn them off completely. It becomes effing nuts. Before we blast into a match we're graded to a character selection. Eight fighters playable from the get-go four more pummeling in after playing the single player modes
under certain conditions Starting rosters screams Nintendo
there's no debating that. Everybody has purpose here and nobody feels like an odd inclusion. But then when we take into consideration the four unlockable ones Well, I mean Luigi yeah, it makes sense to be in a Smash game Jigglypuff a Pokemon with
popularity but in terms of being included in the
first Smash Brothers game who's considered to be a big
enough Nintendo character to be represented as one 12th of them. (sighing questionably) And then we have Captain Falcon and Ness. Who the (beep) Captain Falcon and Ness
are much more obscure than the other characters, but
hey, they were still a part of a series that were
considered Nintendo staples. Sure Captain Falcon was like
the least recognizable part of F- Zero at the time and Ness was from a cult classic RPG but still you got to have
the more obscure characters in your fighting game. The unlikable seem to be included
due to ease of programming like Luigi's just a
straight up clone of Mario. Jigglypuff repurposed Kirby's model. Captain Falcon seems to be
repurposing the original models from the Dragon King prototype
and Ness is a mystery. He didn't seem easier to program compared to the other characters. Whatever I'm happy, easier. And overall, the roster
of Smash Brothers 64 has the lowest percentage
of Scott's not happy with this Smash Brothers
roster of the entire series. There's really no filler, no
over-saturation of any series. Everything makes sense and
blends together perfectly here. So I like the roster, but
how did the characters play? The Smash Brothers series
nowadays has always impressed me with how creatively they turn
a character into a fighter throwing in as many
references and callbacks to their series origins as possible. A character in Smash truly feels like you're playing that character. Smash 64 not as much. You have a fair amount
with moves that correlate with their games and what
they've done in the past. And then you have your
typical everyday Donkey Kong where it feels like the
developer said oh (beep) he has arms we can make a
move set based around that. Not as much fan service as other games. Loads of moves that were just
made up for Smash Brothers and have no origin based
on the characters games. It's why by the time we
get to Smash Brothers for 3DS and Wii U, you can definitely tell who's been in the series the longest. While the new characters
have incredibly creative and unique play styles Donkey Kong has some punch thing. If you go down to the data
section and click on characters we can see quick little bios on everybody plus see what games they hailed from which is a precursor to the
trophy system and future games. I have to say I always
felt that the work section picked some random honking
game for each character. Like it says Mario is
from Super Mario Brothers All right, that makes sense. Super Mario Kart, all right. Again, a solid inclusion and Mario Kart 64. Why two Mario Kart games? Wouldn't it make more sense to include Mario three worlds 64? I'm getting angsty just thinking about it. Also Pikachu has a vastly
different bio convert to the other characters and
excerpt from the Pokedex. That would be fine but the
other Pokemon in the game Jigglypuff has an actual bio. It feels like they almost forgot Pikachu and quickly slammed this in there. All right, enough of the dawdle sesh lets get into a match,
oh God, this feels wacky. Not bad, it's just in my
opinion, it doesn't feel as good and definitely a bit off compared to the other games in the franchise. Whenever I'm off the stage, man I start fidgeting in my
seat like it's so unnerving always feels like it's up in the air whether I'm going to die or not. Also look at this and those
are definitely polygons there's no doubt about that. It's obviously the very
first in the series but it's still Smash Brothers. The multi-player monsoon we
know of today and you can still garner quite a bit
of fun out of this sucker. Items randomly appear on the battlefield and these can be loads of fun. There's not a ton in the game but we have Pokeballs, Bob-ombs the hammer from Donkey Kong
and the iconic Home-Run Bat. If you're a total prude
you can turn off the items which I prefer doing in the Smash games I'm actually somewhat competent at but for Smash 64 crank
those bad boys up man I (beep) blow at this game I crave a good maximum
tomato from time to time. Of course none of this matters
if the stages are lame-o and thankfully Smash 64
has nothing but decent to great stages. None of them are annoying
to play on for me. None of them have bad layouts. They all have good fun designs
with a few stage hazards here and there that you can totally avoid if you know what you're doing Since there's only nine, might
as well go through them all. Peaches Castle. Not one of my favorites. I always found the design of
this one to be really odd. So we're above Peaches Castle and we're battling on top
of a mishmash of geometry. I guess canonically since
the characters are toys the stages are built out of random objects from the child's room. The interest shows us off, I guess I don't know. I don't want
to dive too deep into this Congo jungle. A fun one. Don't have much to add here. Hyrule Castle, definitely
prefer to the peaches variety. I actually really liked this stage. It has loads of fun
areas to duke it out in. I just think the layout looks really odd. It looks super rudimentary
even for the Nintendo 64. Planet Zebes, it's all right. The acid comes up and spells disaster to those who can't grasp
the concept of jumping. Yoshi's island, really
simple but enjoyable. Dream Land, another incredibly simple one. Wispy woods here blows
either left or right from time to time but it
rarely affects the fight. Sector Z, a really fun stage. I love that you can traverse
the entirety of the great Fox. Another ship comes down
and blast the (beep) out of you sometime though, one unfortunate. Saffron City, what a stage. You can easily just fight
on the standard platforms if you don't want any stage
interferences or you can hop over to this little doorway
and these nightmares rain on the parade. You can also unlock the
Mushroom Kingdom stage based off of the original
Super Mario Brothers. A lot of really solid stages there. Now I've talked as much about
the multiplayer of this game as I possibly could
have, which you can play alongside computer controlled opponents if that lifestyle interest you. But what if you want
to play Smash Brothers by yourself? (gasping) Well, let's mosey on over to
the single-player department. As you can see here, we
have a wide variety of mode. There's one single player mode here and it's what the series
would later call classic mode. A series of fights and mini
games testing your strength. The problem with this mode is that the fights are the
exact same, every time. The first fight is with Link,
you fight a giant Donkey Kong a team of Kirby's, the Mario
brothers, a target test board the platform's, race to the finish. It never changes. Even after unlocking characters it doesn't change things up. Future games, bringing randomization keeping this mode much
fresher each play through. The target testing board, the platforms mini games are different
for each character which that deserves a solid neat. The final few bouts are
against Metal Mario which blows The fighting polygon team
which are mysterious figures we don't know the origin of
slash that's (beep) Yoshi dude. They're just messed up models of all the characters in the game. And then Master Hand, the
one behind all of this. The main boss of the series. And then after defeat,
we get this little diddy. Thanks. That truly makes
me feel triumphant. Go credits, go and repeat. Speaking of the music it's all right. You get a lot of iconic tracks but with that Nintendo 64 tastic sound. I gotta be honest there's not much else I
can say about this one. It's more so interesting to look back on rather than play nowadays. That's not to say it's
a bad game, far from it. It's just that we have far better and more accessible Smash Brothers
games to play nowadays. And with every entry in the series expanding upon the
concept of the first game and being a better version of this game. There's not much reason
to go back to Smash Brothers on the Nintendo
64 outside of seeing where it all began or simply
to waste an afternoon. After a few hours, you
basically seen everything this one has to offer. In the end, I have so much
respect for this entry and the multiplayer is
still fun to this day. Single player wise, it
doesn't have too much going on but so did other fighting
games at the time it's passable. Play it to see where it all started but you're better off playing
the games that came after it. They just all improved upon the foundation and offered more refined gameplay. But they didn't have
this amazing commercial. Look at this thing. Magnificent. So I answered the question
on everybody's mind. Are you wrong for preferring Smash 64 to every game after it? Yeah. (upbeat music)
An under-mentioned point about the first Smash is that Nintendo saw it as an opportunity to market their other video games by having all of their characters battling each other.
When I played this for the first time, I knew about Mario, Luigi, DK, Pikachu, Link and a few others. But Fox, Samus, Kirby, and Ness were totally foreign to me. It made you want to go and play their respective games.
I like Scott. Scott is good.
link looks so content with his star rod in the back on the thumbnail lol
I will up vote anything Scott the Woz because his videos are great and his humor isn't too in your face such as his introduction in the 10 years of Super Mario Galaxy "Man I was expecting to see a gravestone"
Man this is great but I think I got scoliosis.
Smash Bros introduced me to everyone outside of the Mario characters. I remember buying Link’s awakening, ALttP, and OoT all within the year I bought the first Smash. Immediately fell in love with the Zelda franchise.
Smash 64 has soooooo much hit stun, I love it. 0 to deaths are incredibly common in competitive play in a way the other games can't quite match. It's a massive adrenaline rush to land that first up tilt and dumpster your opponent.