Smash Bros Melee History SBC Ep.3

By Josh Schmidt

March 27, 2018

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Smash Bros Melee History SBC Ep.3

Smash Bros Cast

Episode 3

Smash Bros Melee History

Developer: HAL Laboratories
Release Date: Japan November 21, 2001. North America December 3rd, 2001 shortly after the GameCube launched. Europe and Australia were the following year on May 24th, 2002 and 31st, 2002.

Development

Masahiro Sakurai was back in the driver seat for the sequel to Smash 64 and it would push him to a point that he referred to as destructive. It was the biggest project that he had ever led and because of that he took zero holiday’s off and had little to no weekends. He referred to Melee as “the sharpest game” in the series. With this game releasing so close to the launch of the GameCube the team really wanted to show the power of the system, so they worked with three different animation studios to complete the opening sequence.
Character list
- Mario
- Luigi
- Yoshi
- Donkey Kong
- Link
- Samus
- Kirby
- Fox
- Pikachu
- Jigglypuff
- Captain Falcon
- Ness
- Peach
- Bowser
- Dr. Mario
- Zelda/Sheik
- Ganondorf
- Young Link
- Falco
- Mewtwo
- Pichu
- Ice Climbers
- Marth
- Roy
- Mr.Game & Watch

Reception

Melee was the top-selling GameCube game at 7.09 million, it became the fastest selling GameCube title in Japan selling almost 360,000 copies in four days. Most critics and news outlets praised the game. Melee sits at 92/100 on Metacritic
- IGN 9.6/10
- Eurogamer 10/10
- Nintendo Power 5/5
- Edge Magazine 6/10

Competitive Melee

The term I hear most often with Melee and the competitive scene is “happy accident.” Here’s this casual party game being played at a level I never thought was possible. The community discovered techniques like wavedashing, dashdancing, directional influence and L-canceling. Soon after small tournaments were being held in homes or game shops. Matt Deezie began hosting the Tournament Go series in Northern California and came up with a ruleset of legal stages and tournament procedures. More tournaments began to spring up and the community was growing. In 2004 Melee was added to MLG’s largest tournaments.
This Last weekend I watched the entire documentary on the Melee competitive scene. It’s over four hours long, but it was amazing to see the history of the scene and how it all started. Click here to watch the Melee Documentary

My History with Smash Melee

Christmas morning 2001 my wife surprised me with a Gamecube and had all of our family members and friends buy me games and controllers. We very little money at that time, so I was very surprised. Smash was one of the three games I got that year and the moment I fired it up I was blown away by what I was seeing. I was still playing Perfect Dark and Mario Kart 64 at that time, so it was a massive improvement. The opening cinematic was magic. I unlocked all the characters and I love checking out the trophies, especially the proximity mine from Perfect Dark. Sadly Microsoft crushed those dreams. Unfortunately, I didn’t have many friends to play Melee with so after I unlocked all the characters it didn’t get nearly as much play time as I would have liked. In 2002 EGM posted that Sonic could be unlocked in Melee and I spent forever trying to KO 20 wireframes on the cruel difficulty when I finally did there was no Sonic. Nintendo Power eventually put out an article clearing up the cruel April fools joke from EGM.

Sources

Smash Bros Wiki https://www.ssbwiki.com/Super_Smash_Bros.

Gaming Historian https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myhBphil-Uw

Smash Practice

- Practicing with level 9 CPU
- My focus has been on defense right now
  - Shield: L Button
  - Spot Dodge: Shield + Down on Left Stick (momentary invincibility with zero knockbacks)
  - Dodge: Shield + Left or Right on Left Stick (quickly roll to avoid attacks or get a to position quicker than normal movement)
  - Air Dodge: Shield While in the Air
  - Fast Fall: Flick the Left Stick to quickly reach the ground or nearest platform

As I am playing with Mario I am seeing his weakness is reach. I have to be able to get in close. Pulling off a Spot Dodge followed by a simple combo feels like progress for me.

Smash Resources

Checkout RichaadEB’s Metal Melee

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