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Chrissy Snow I started playing video games, and now I play them for YOU!! Tell us what games we need guides for!! View all articles | Contact author

 
Super Smash Brothers, if you weren't already aware, is Nintendo's beat 'em up. The big cuddly N doesn't usually go in for violent games like Smash unless there's a twist of fun involved, and with Smash the idea was that to take a bunch of Nintendo's favourite franchises, pillage them for the best bits and assemble into a fighting game. And by God, it worked too! After the enormous success of Super Smash Brothers on the N64 (a console which didn't exactly entice beat 'em up fans with open arms), it's hardly surprising that Nintendo and HAL Laboratory have stuck so stringently to the original formula, with a jaw-drop-inducing revisions. For starters, you have your basic set of characters, around twenty including the secret ones, taken from games as diverse as Kirby, Donkey Kong, Zelda, Mario, Starfox, Metroid and Pokemon. You have totally new multiplayer levels for each individual character, which have been enhanced with some truly audacious new power-ups. Character design and visual quality has been enhanced, and there are plenty of new gameplay modes too, including a proper single player mode. This is the most drastic addition. Instead of simply fighting one character in a fairly drab arena, players actually have to work their way through entire levels of side-scrolling but beautifully 3D rendered and lavishly detailed graphics, filled with a host of nasty bad guys appropriate to that character (such as Redeads for Link). Locations have been hand-picked for each character and judging by the screenshots they will blow you away. We're certainly looking forward to them from a purely nostalgic point of view. And that is much of Super Smash Brothers Melee's appeal. It offers so much nostalgia that no Nintendo fan will want to be without it, beat 'em up fan or no. It's similar to Paper Mario in that respect.

Just tell us already please Nintendo!!!! Ugh, Ive been waiting to see who else is on the roster....