Super Smash Bros. facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Super Smash Bros. |
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Logo since 2018
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| Genres | Fighting |
| Developers |
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| Publishers | Nintendo |
| Creators | Masahiro Sakurai |
| Platforms | |
| First release | Super Smash Bros. January 21, 1999 |
| Latest release | Super Smash Bros. Ultimate December 7, 2018 |
Super Smash Bros. (often called Smash Bros. or Smash) is a popular crossover fighting game series. It is made by Nintendo. The series was created by Masahiro Sakurai, who has directed every game.
What makes Smash Bros. special is how you win. Instead of lowering an opponent's health bar, you try to hit them. This increases their "damage percentage." The higher their damage, the easier it is to knock them off the stage. The goal is to launch your opponents completely off the screen!
The first game, Super Smash Bros., came out in 1999 for the Nintendo 64. The series became even more famous with Super Smash Bros. Melee in 2001 for the GameCube. It was the best-selling game on that system.
Later games include Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008 for Wii), Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U (2014). The 3DS version was the first for a handheld system. The newest game, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, was released in 2018 for the Nintendo Switch.
The games feature characters from many different Nintendo series. These include Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, and Kirby. You can also find characters from other companies, like Sonic the Hedgehog and Street Fighter. The first game had 12 characters. Ultimate has every character from all past games, plus new ones! Critics have always liked the series, especially its multiplayer fun. This has led to a big competitive community that plays in tournaments.
Contents
How to Play Super Smash Bros.
Playing Super Smash Bros. is different from many other fighting games. You don't win by emptying a health bar. Instead, you try to launch your opponents off the stage.
Damage and Knockouts
When a character gets hit, their damage goes up. This is shown as a percentage, which can go up to 999%. The higher the percentage, the farther they fly when hit. To win, you must hit your opponent so hard they fly past the edges of the screen.
If you get knocked off, you can try to "recover." This means using jumps and special moves to get back to the stage. Some characters can recover more easily than others. Also, lighter characters are easier to launch than heavy ones.
Controls and Moves
The controls are simple compared to other fighting games. One button is for regular attacks, and another is for special attacks. You can do different moves by holding the direction stick (up, down, side, or neutral) while pressing an attack button. This means each character has many different ground, air, and special moves.
A "Smash Attack" is a powerful move. You do it by quickly pressing a direction and the attack button at the same time. When characters are hit, they pause for a moment. This lets you do "combos," which are chains of attacks.
You can also use a "shield" button to block attacks. Your shield gets weaker if you use it too much. If it breaks, you can't move for a short time. Combining the shield button with directions lets you dodge, roll, grab, and throw opponents.
The main actions—attacking, grabbing, and shielding—are like a game of rock-paper-scissors. Attacking beats grabbing, grabbing beats shielding, and shielding beats attacking. If you knock someone off the stage, you can "edge-guard" to stop them from getting back.
Items and Special Moves
The game has many items you can use in battle. You can choose how many items appear before a match.
- Battering items: These are weapons like a baseball bat or a sword that you can hit opponents with.
- Throwing items: These include things like Bob-ombs or Koopa shells that you can throw.
- Shooting items: These are guns or blasters that shoot projectiles.
- Recovery items: These help you reduce your damage percentage.
Some special items include:
- Poké Balls: These release a random Pokémon to help you fight.
- Assist Trophies: Introduced in Brawl, these summon characters from other series to help you.
- Smash Ball: Also from Brawl, breaking this lets your fighter use a powerful "Final Smash" attack. Each character has their own unique Final Smash.
Match Rules
You can set different rules for matches. The most common are "Time" and "Stock."
- Time Mode: Players earn points for knocking out opponents. They lose points for being knocked out or falling off the stage by themselves. The player with the most points when time runs out wins.
- Stock Mode: Also called Survival, players get a set number of "lives" (called stock). When you get knocked out, you lose a life. If you run out of lives, you're out of the game. The last player standing wins. If there's a time limit, the player with the most lives left wins.
If there's a tie, a "Sudden Death" match happens. All tied players start with 300% damage, making them very easy to launch. The last one standing wins.
For competitive Super Smash Bros. tournaments, players usually use Stock mode with a timer. Items are turned off, and only certain stages without hazards are allowed.
Characters
Each Super Smash Bros. game has many playable characters, called "fighters." They come from different video game series. There are over 80 characters in total across all the games!
Starting with Super Smash Bros. Brawl, characters from non-Nintendo games began to appear. In Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, players could change their fighters' moves. You could also create your own Mii fighters with different fighting styles.
There are also characters you can't play as. These include enemies, bosses, and characters that appear from power-up items.
Music
Super Smash Bros. games feature music from many popular Nintendo games. Many songs are new versions made for Smash Bros., while others are taken directly from their original games.
For Super Smash Bros. Brawl, 38 different composers worked on the music. This included Nobuo Uematsu, who is famous for composing music for the Final Fantasy series. He wrote the main theme for Brawl.
The newer games, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, and Ultimate, also have many original and remixed songs. Ultimate alone has over 800 songs! You can listen to the music from the sound menu in the 3DS and Switch games.
Some soundtrack albums have been released for the series.
Making the Games
| 1999 | Super Smash Bros. |
|---|---|
| 2000 | |
| 2001 | Melee |
| 2002 | |
| 2003 | |
| 2004 | |
| 2005 | |
| 2006 | |
| 2007 | |
| 2008 | Brawl |
| 2009 | |
| 2010 | |
| 2011 | |
| 2012 | |
| 2013 | |
| 2014 | for 3DS and Wii U |
| 2015 | |
| 2016 | |
| 2017 | |
| 2018 | Ultimate |
The First Game: Super Smash Bros. (1999)
The first Super Smash Bros. game was made by HAL Laboratory in 1998. It started as a small project by Masahiro Sakurai and Satoru Iwata. It was originally called Dragon King: The Fighting Game and didn't have Nintendo characters.
Sakurai then had the idea to include characters from different Nintendo games. He thought this would make the game more exciting. Nintendo liked his idea. The game had a small budget and was first released only in Japan. But it was so popular that it was released worldwide.
Super Smash Bros. came out in 1999 for the Nintendo 64. It sold over a million copies in Japan. It started with eight characters: Mario, Donkey Kong, Link, Samus, Yoshi, Kirby, Fox, and Pikachu. Four more characters could be unlocked: Luigi, Captain Falcon, Ness, and Jigglypuff. All these characters were from Nintendo or its partner companies.
The game had a multiplayer "Versus" mode where up to four players could fight. Players could choose between Time mode or Stock mode. It also had a "Classic Mode" for single players, where you fought a series of opponents. Other single-player modes included Training and mini-games like "Break the Targets."
There were nine stages in Versus mode. Eight were based on the starting characters, like Princess Peach's Castle for Mario. One unlockable stage, Mushroom Kingdom, was based on the original Super Mario Bros..
Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001)
Super Smash Bros. Melee was made for the GameCube. It was released in Japan and North America in late 2001. It came out in Europe and Australia in May 2002. This game had a bigger budget and team than the first one. It was very well-received by players and critics.
Melee sold over 7 million copies and was the best-selling game on the GameCube. It had 26 characters (15 available at first) and 29 stages. This was much more than the first game.
New single-player modes were added: "Adventure mode" and "All-Star mode." Adventure mode had platforming parts. All-Star mode made you fight every character with only one life. A new mini-game called "Home-Run Contest" was also added. Here, you hit a Sandbag with a baseball bat to see how far it flies.
Melee also had more multiplayer options and a tournament mode for up to 64 players. You could also change battle rules in "Special Melee." The game introduced "trophies" (called "figures" in Japan). These were digital collectibles of characters, items, and stages.
HAL Laboratory developed Melee, with Masahiro Sakurai leading the project. The developers wanted to show off the GameCube's improved graphics. They made a special opening video to highlight this. The Smash Bros. logo, with its crossing lines, represents the idea of different game series coming together.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008)
Nintendo announced a new Super Smash Bros. game for the Wii in 2005. This was a surprise to Masahiro Sakurai, the series creator. He had left HAL Laboratory, the company that made the first two games. Nintendo's president, Satoru Iwata, asked Sakurai to direct the new game.
Development for Brawl officially started in October 2005. Nintendo opened a new office just for this game. They also got help from other game studios, like Game Arts. Many staff members who worked on Melee joined the new project.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl was released worldwide in 2008. It was the first game to include characters from other companies. These included Solid Snake from Metal Gear and Sonic the Hedgehog from Sega's series. Brawl was also the first game to support online play. Players could also create their own stages. The game had 39 playable characters and 41 stages.
Brawl allowed players to use four different types of controllers. This was a big change, as previous games only used one controller type. Players could also change the controls.
Brawl featured a big single-player story mode called The Subspace Emissary. This mode had unique character stories, side-scrolling levels, and many bosses. It also had cool computer-animated scenes that told the story. The story featured a new group of bad guys called the Subspace Army. This mode could also be played with two players. You could make your characters stronger by attaching "stickers" to their trophies.
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U (2014)
Director Masahiro Sakurai announced new Super Smash Bros. games for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U in 2011. The games were a joint project between Sakurai's Sora Ltd. and Bandai Namco Games. Developers from games like Soulcalibur and Tekken helped out.
Sakurai decided not to include a story mode like Brawl's Subspace Emissary. He felt that people watching the story scenes online spoiled the fun for others.
The games were officially shown at E3 2013. Sakurai said the gameplay would be a mix between the fast style of Melee and the slower style of Brawl. The "tripping" mechanic from Brawl was removed.
While the Wii U and 3DS versions couldn't play against each other online, you could transfer customized characters between them. More characters from other companies joined the fight. These included Capcom's Mega Man and Bandai Namco's Pac-Man. Mii characters were also added, letting players create their own fighters.
The game had 58 characters, with 19 new ones. Seven more characters were available as downloadable content. The 3DS version was released in Japan in September 2014, and worldwide the next month. The Wii U version came out in North America in November 2014, and in Japan the following month.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018)
A new Super Smash Bros. game was teased in March 2018. Sakurai confirmed he had been working on it quietly. The game was officially named Super Smash Bros. Ultimate at E3 2018. It was announced that Ultimate would include every single playable character from all past Smash Bros. games!
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was released worldwide on December 7, 2018. It received very high praise from critics. Besides all the returning characters, the game added 11 new ones at launch. Thirteen more new characters were later added through downloadable content.
Like Brawl, Ultimate has a story mode called World of Light. The story is about a villain named Galeem destroying the Smash Bros. world. You start by playing as Kirby, who survived the attack. You travel across the ruined world to rescue other fighters. Along the way, you collect "Spirits," which are remnants of non-playable characters that help you in battle.
The Future of Smash Bros.
In November 2021, Sakurai said that the future of Super Smash Bros. is not certain. There are no current plans for a new game after Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Smash Bros. in Esports
The Super Smash Bros. series is very popular as a competitive video game. Many games in the series have been played in big tournaments. These include events like Major League Gaming (MLG) and Evolution Championship Series (EVO).
The first professional Smash Bros. tournaments were held for Super Smash Bros. Melee in early 2002. Today, major yearly tournaments include GENESIS, EVO, Super Smash Con, and The Big House. The competitive Smash Bros. community is known for being very community-driven. This is partly because Nintendo has not always directly promoted the competitive scene.
Images for kids
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Super Smash Bros. (video game) - Classic Mode.png
Classic Mode in the first Super Smash Bros. game.
See also
In Spanish: Super Smash Bros. (serie) para niños
