There’s Almost No Beating This Fighting Game – Even After 27 Years

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Looking back, Super Smash Bros. was a surprisingly ambitious concept. It took Nintendo’s beloved characters and combined them into a fast-paced, chaotic brawl. With unpredictable stages and up to four players fighting at once, it easily could have been a disaster. Instead, it became one of the most successful fighting game series of all time, and its success started with the solid gameplay of the original game.

Originally released in Japan on January 21, 1999, Super Smash Bros. quickly became a beloved game for the Nintendo 64. It was a staple at both casual sleepovers and competitive tournaments. Featuring 12 playable characters and a surprisingly complex gameplay system hidden beneath simple controls, Super Smash Bros. challenged what people thought a fighting game could be. Now, on the game’s 27th anniversary, it’s a good time to remember where the series started and what has made it so enduring, even with new competitors and evolving player preferences.

Super Smash Bros. Was Always Meant To Be A Different Type Of Fighting Game

The success of Super Smash Bros. comes down to its core gameplay, which was carefully designed from the very beginning. Developer Masahiro Sakurai initially envisioned a four-player fighting game after watching new players struggle at an arcade. He wanted to create a game that was easy for beginners to pick up. To make his game stand out, Sakurai replaced generic characters in his early demo with popular faces from Nintendo.

After refining the idea until Nintendo was satisfied, Masahiro Sakurai and Satoru Iwata collaborated with the team at HAL Laboratory to perfect the game’s multiplayer features. A key to its popularity was making a fighting game accessible to new players – easy to pick up, but with surprising depth. This resulted in a simple fighting system with just a few attacks and limited combos, focusing instead on skillful movement and reacting to opponents rather than memorizing complex patterns.

Without a traditional health bar, players are encouraged to be creative and persistent, as even powerful attacks aren’t always immediately fatal. Each character brings their own distinct personality and fighting style – some favor raw power (like Donkey Kong), others rely on quick attacks (like Pikachu), and others excel at keeping opponents at a distance (like Samus). The original Super Smash Bros. established a fantastic base for a one-of-a-kind fighting game, and subsequent installments have only improved upon it. While later games added new features and made minor adjustments, the original remains a remarkably solid title.

Why Super Smash Bros. Still Rules, Almost Three Decades Later

What makes Super Smash Bros. so great is its simple yet deep gameplay. The core mechanics are easy to pick up, but offer a lot of room for skilled players to experiment and improve – a hallmark of Nintendo games. While several games like Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, Brawlhalla, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, and MultiVersus have tried to capture the same magic, none have quite matched Nintendo’s blend of fast-paced action and diverse, memorable characters.

One of the keys to Super Smash Bros.‘ success is Nintendo’s diverse cast of characters, which somehow all fit together perfectly. Each new game has built on this idea, adding more characters and increasingly complex stages and items. However, the core gameplay, established back in 1999, was already polished enough to become something truly special. While many games have tried to copy the original Super Smash Bros., none have captured its precise controls or playful spirit, which are hallmarks of Nintendo’s presentation. It’s almost magical how HAL Laboratory combined vibrant colors and distinct characters to create some of the most simply fun fighting gameplay ever made. Even after nearly thirty years, the original Super Smash Bros. remains as impressive and enjoyable as it was when it first came out.

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2026-01-21 21:41