By now, everyone knows what Super Smash Bros is. Whether you are a Cube freak or strictly zoned toward Xbox, you know what the Smash Bros are all about. Take your favorite Nintendo fighters, stick them in an open field and smack the crap out of each other. Multiplayer mayhem or four player fun. But deep down under the fun exterior of taking the ol’ plumber out for a spin or driving the Hero of Time’s blade into a cute fuzzy Pikachu is there a real legend of a game or merely a retail scam?

When Super Smash Bros hit the Nintendo 64 a while back, many thought ‘awesome, I get to fight Samus as Link!.’ Of course, not everyone thought it was so cool.. ‘Cheap trick of getting money’ or ‘Not even a fighter’ were some of the remarks critics gave the game. Earning not even an 8 on GameSpot certainly seems as though the game really isn’t all that good. And most people are probably right. Sure, it probably started out as a cool idea of taking a mess of your favorite characters and making them fight, who would love that? But somewhere along the way it probably seemed pointless and turned into a shallow game with decent graphics and a hopeless single-player mode. A lot of people will disagree with this saying ‘The original Super Smash is still great!’, but to many it is just a shallow game with flashy fighters.

Though the single-player sucked, the multiplayer was great. Bring over four friends and play Super Smash, that’s exactly what I did at my parties. But eventually, the game got old, we wanted a sequel, and our thumbs were going raw from the ugly control stick of the N64 controller. But then we got Super Smash Bros. Melee.

What a sight that was. Everything bad about the first game went right out of our heads and we said ‘Look how kick-ass Link looks.’ And the graphics were great. Once we got our hands on the game it was magical. Greatest game ever. Well… not greatest game ever, but it was still great. Superb even. SSBM is probably the most addictive fighter I have ever played. Mostly because while still having just enough brawl to be a fighter it is also a strategy game along with an action one. I’ve played at least one round of this game everyday since I got it back in 2001. Almost 4 years and still playing solid.

So, what is Super Smash Bros, really? Legend or scam?

Looking at the first one, you are tempted to yell ‘SCAM,’ but you can’t, really, because it led into the sequel, which isn’t a scam by any means. Perhaps a better term for the original Super Smash would be ‘potential’ and the correct term for the sequel would be ‘exactly what we needed’ along with, in my opinion ‘legend.’ Proving that Nintendo’s mascots are more than just a mess of fuzzy adorable Italian loons, SSBM has proved to many that fighters don’t have to consist of just 3 button combos and a ring in which you can’t just turn around and high-tail it out of there.