Branches Book

BRANCHES

Matthew Gelbart

SMASHING EXPECTATIONS

Super Smash Brothers Melee is a video game released for the Nintendo GameCube in 2001. It is a fighting-style game which pits upwards of two players against each other in a battle royal. It is unique and doesn’t follow the norms of the fighting game genre. Most of all, Super Smash Bros. Melee breaks the expectations of those who only know it as a game. The first break from expectation is in the design of the game itself. Unlike the other fighting games of the time, or any one since, Melee’s design is innovative in that it provides players with options of how to beat an opponent. In traditional fighters, two players trade blows until the life-bar of one character is depleted. Button-inputs on a controller can be chained together to form combos that were predetermined by the creators of the game. Stages are limited to two-dimensional boxes that the characters fight in. These traditional elements lead to linear gameplay where only one path lead to victory. In Melee , the goal of each round is to knock opponents off of the stage until their lives reach zero. How one player makes that happen, however, is entirely open. This new system, along with the physics given by the game engine, allows players to create their own strategies. With no guide of how to perform certain actions in the game players each develop their own unique styles while playing, and use combos that are often made up on the spot. In Melee, stages expand throughout the duration of the match to include platforms for players to move along. With these features, dimensions are literally added to the existing fighting game formula. Melee opens up infinite paths for players to take, giving it the freedom of an open-ended game while remaining a fighting-game at heart. While the creators of the game always planned to be innovative with their design, the open structure led the way for players to advance rapidly and evolve the game’s strategy well past their original understanding. New techniques appeared which pushed the boundaries of the game, and allowed players to do things that were beyond the intention of the developers. As more exploitations of the game-engine were discovered, the speed at which the game could be played increased dramatically. Tournaments began to appear shortly after these discoveries. Players all over the world wanted to try their hand at real competition now that they had a grasp of the new mechanics of the game. Through a great deal of experimentation, a competitive scene formed around a title that was originally considered a casual game for parties.

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