As many of you may know Super Smash Brothers Melee is one of
the most popularly played competitive fighting games of all time, for those of
you who do not know about melee continue reading as we give you a basic
overview. Ok so first things first, Super Smash brothers melee was a game
released for the Nintendo GameCube back in 2001 (yes this game is that old),
since then Nintendo has already released two sequels to Melee, which are named
Super Smash Brothers Brawl (SSBB) for the Nintendo Wii, and Super Smash
Brothers 4 (SSB4) for the Wii U respectively. However even with this game
already having not just one but two games to succeed it, melee remains the most
popular of the four titles (first ever smash game was released on the Nintendo
64 console in 1999) in terms of a competitive standpoint. Why is this though? That
a game played on an outdated console is still the most popular? Well to
understand this we have to look at melee's game mechanics. So the one thing I
have to emphasize is that melee was never meant to be played at a competitive
level, nor was it designed to be competitive. Masahiro Sakurai (the series
creator) has always had a vision for smash that it should be a party game.
Melee however is considered to be, as quoted by many smashers (the term for people who play the game on a
competitive level) to be a "beautiful accident" we say this because
even though melee wasn't designed with competitive play in mind the game
mechanics or physics engine of the game allow for very fast paced, exciting and
technical game play. I think the best way to show everyone what I mean is by
showing you a video, if you look below there is a URL to a YouTube video
This video show cases the technical aspects of both melee,
and its sequel brawl. While watching this video I think it’s clear to see that
melee is a much faster paced game than brawl was. For example, in the video it
showed you many different clips, but there was two in particular I want to
point out, both used the character Fox McCloud but one was brawl and one was
melee, it was quite clear to see that the fox in melee was able to move around
the stage much easier and quicker than the fox that was playing in brawl. This
is because of the "advanced techniques" that one was able to perform
in melee that were ultimately cut out of the game entirely in brawl. While I’m
not going to explain all the differences between melee and brawl (because
believe me there are A LOT of them and it would take far too long and be far too
confusing through writing) some of the names (as dubbed by the melee community)
of the advanced techniques that were taken out were techniques known as
wavedashing, L-Canceling (Lag Canceling) and jump cancelled grabs. Those are
just some of the most used techniques in competitive play however there is
quite an expansive list of techniques or "technical aspects" of
melee. Brawl is slower not just because of the removal of such techniques but
the game engine itself is much slower paced than melee's was.
Back to the original question of "What makes Melee the
most popular smash game at the competitive level?" I believe it’s a
combination of its speed and those advanced techniques mentioned earlier. Those
two things put together allow for a certain level of control that frankly just
isn't present in SSBB or SSB4. Melee lets a player be so in control while
playing the game and as a result, players can be so precise with every little
movement they make. This is ultimately what I feel separates melee from the other
games, precision.
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