Format: Wii Virtual Console
Price: 1000 points (£10)
Wi-Fi: No
Players: 1-4
Age: 7+
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo

The epic game that was Super Smash Bros., returns to the Nintendo console on Virtual Console. The game consists of the best main characters from Nintendo’s developed games going into battle on floating stages; you can’t say that isn’t fun. Being the first of its kind, of course it’s not as brilliant as the late Super Smash Bros. Brawl, with its slight lack of characters and levels, but who cares? It’s a nice game to remind you old folks of the good school days of playing your N64 in the summer hols.

Let’s start with the single player mode. There’s just the one mode here, which consists of various stages playing one character, a team, or a whole bunch of characters at one time. Thousands of points are achieved for just passing the stage, and there are many more bonus points on offer for not losing a life, no damage, not using a weapon, finishing an opponent off with a pokeball, and many other various things like that. There’s an option prior to starting as to how many lives you want, and what difficulty you want it on. Of course, it’s more rewarding if you have it on a higher difficulty, with less lives, it also means you achieve more points in the separate matches as well. As I mentioned earlier, each individual match offers a different enemy or enemies. You are always bound to play all characters at least once whether it’s just them on their own, them with a partner, a giant version of them, or a whole team of about 30. Among the stages are bonus levels, which include ‘Break the Targets’ and ‘Board the Platforms’. They’re pretty self-explanatory, but the idea of both of them if to use your characters unique moves to board platforms or break targets in different locations or a large map. You’ll probably also need a specific route around the map to make sure you’ve covered all platforms, you can do this by getting an overall view of the level by pausing the game (it doesn’t really pause it, cause the time carries on!) The more targets and platforms, the more points, of course. The last three stages are all the same. First up is ‘Race to the finish’ where you have to run as fast as you can to the finish (you wouldn’t have guessed), whilst avoiding enemies, bombs, and barriers. Then penultimate stage sees you battling against all the enemies on the game, but in porygon version. This sounds a lot, but if you just give them one smash move, they’ll go flying off the stage in no time. The very last stage sees you compete against Master Hand. A giant white hand with 300HP. He doesn’t take long to defeat as you can just shield from his moves them attack him whilst he is defenceless.
     All in all, the single player is a nice little entertainer for 15 minutes, but 15minutes is all is lasts, and that’s more or less the only thing you can do apart from the boring challenges, that last about 2 seconds. The bonus stages are a great addition, as it makes you explore you characters abilities to the full, and lets you learn more about them, and the idea of playing all characters is a great way to know the enemies, in the same way you know how to explore your own characters abilities.

The multiplayer mode is a frantic, chaotic war between 4 characters on a floating stage with flying weapons, and silly hats. The options for the multiplayer mode are the same as any other Smash Bros. game. Before you play you select if you want a Time or Stock match (Time being get the most KOs in a set amount of time – Stock being you have a set amount of lives, and you need to be the last one standing to win) and there are team versions of these, if you want buddy up with your brother, your dad, your friend, the computer, or your mother-in-law if everyone’s gone out for the day. Once you’ve selected your match rules, you select your character, and any other match rules in more detail, then you select your level, then wa-hey you’re away. The victor(s) is decided by his/her difference between their kills and deaths, the higher the difference, the better. You are more likely to get a kill if your opponents damage is high (100%+) the more damage they have, the more prone they are to flying off hurtling into the abyss. Of course, the rolls can be reversed, and the same can happen to you. If 2, 3 or maybe even 4 people’s score happens to be the same, there is a sudden death play-off between the characters where everyone has 300% damage, and one hit will make them fly off the stage.

     To start with, you have 8 characters available for fighting, and there are 4 unlockables, so with the help of a calculator, that takes the total to 12. No very many, really, but those characters really are the best of Nintendo, characters that dignify Nintendo, and characters worthy of being in the game (except for the Pokemon). All 12 characters (Mario, Luigi, Link, Fox, Samus, DK, Captain Falcon, Jigglypuff, Pickachu, Ness, Yoshi and Kirby) have their own unique moves, and stages. So Fox has his airship, Mario has the Mushroom Kingdom, Link has Hyrule Temple etc.
     The multiplayer is really the best bit about this game; it’s fun, exciting, and frantic. You can get hours of enjoying battle with your friends and family, and it’ll take a long time to get old. The characters and levels are great, as they’re really the basic characters, maybe it’d be a better if 2 characters from each game were introduced though. The stages also link nicely with the different characters on offer, but they are very basic these stages, and need a bit more imagination into them than just a couple of rectangles.

In summary then, the game is a very enjoyable action game with enough characters and stages. However, the levels of play are not detailed enough and too basic, and there isn’t enough to do for the single player. 88%