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aka: Super Smash Brothers

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"Something's gone wrong in the happy-go-lucky world of Nintendo!"
Don LaFontaine in the first ever Super Smash Bros. commercial

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Super Smash Bros., known in Japanese as Dairantō Smash Brothers (literally Great Fray Smash Brothers), is Nintendo's and Masahiro Sakurai's very own Massive Multiplayer Crossover Platform Fighter focused entirely on Video Games, both inside and outside of Nintendo's library.

The first game on the Nintendo 64 began with a small selection of characters from Nintendo's large stable of games, ranging from Mario and Pikachu, to Link and Samus Aran, to Kirby and Donkey Kong, to Fox and Captain Falcon. Since then, the roster has expanded to over dozens of major Nintendo characters, such as Bowser, Marth, Pit, Wario, Villager, Shulk, and Inkling, as well as some not-so-major Nintendo characters, like Mr. Game & Watch, the Duck Hunt duo, the Wii Fit Trainer, and even Piranha Plant. Additionally, starting with Brawl, the series began featuring characters from various third-party companies among the likes of Solid Snake, Sonic the Hedgehog, Mega Man, Pac-Man, Ryu and Ken, Cloud Strife and Sephiroth, Bayonetta, Simon Belmont and Richter Belmont, Joker, Hero, Banjo and Kazooie, Terry Bogard, Kazuya Mishima, Sora, and even Steve.

Though ostensibly a fighting game, Super Smash Bros. takes a very different approach to combat goals. The main objective of the game is not to reduce your opponents' Hit Points to zero, but rather to punch them right out of the arena; hence the "Smash" in the title. Dealing damage to them will help you accomplish this — the higher your damage level, the farther you get pushed by any given attack, and past a certain point even the cherriest of taps will send you flying. In support of this goal, almost every stage is depicted as some sort of floating environment with specifically delineated boundaries (not dissimilar to Soulcalibur).

To add to the chaos, several stages have platforms, bringing the carnage to multiple levels, whereas others have native dangers, such as rising acid and random airstrikes. In addition, various weapons may appear randomly on the field, from barrels and hammers from Donkey Kong, to beam swords, Super Stars, the old SNES Super Scope, and even Pokémon and characters from other games to help you out.

Finally, some attention must be drawn to the play controls. Whereas fighting games are notorious for their complicated controls, Smash Bros. simplifies things down. Most commands in the game require no more than one button press and one joystick input to execute, from basic attacks (hit the A button) to "strong" attacks (hit the A button whilst holding the joystick up, down, or forward) to "smash" attacks (flick the joystick in the desired direction whilst hitting A) to the special moves (B, or B + a direction). Additionally, these commands work for all characters, preempting the need to memorize complicated commands that only work on one particular fighter (and/or their Moveset Clones). The end result is a game that is very accessible to people of all levels of experience and dexterity.

Yet, despite the simple controls, the various interactions between the fighters and the playing field combine to make a fighter that is just as complex as its Fighting Game brethren. As a result, it boasts a major competitive scene, and various installments have been featured in fighting game tournaments like EVO; Melee's popularity in the fighting game community in particular led to it being a featured game at EVO up until 2018, nearly 17 years after its initial release.note 

The series is credited for popularizing Platform Fighter and condifying many tropes in it. In particular, Super Smash Bros. is why the sub-genre is strongly associated with Mascot Fighter and Massive Multiplayer Crossover.


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Unmarked spoilers for the unlockable content of all games will be included in the following general trope subpages.



 
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Subspace Bombs

Subspace Bombs are the Subspace Army's coup de grace, activated by two R.O.B.s locking their hands into the side compartments and pulling them open. Upon detonation, they explode in a sphere of Subspace, swallowing any matter in their vicinity. Kirby and Zelda only barely manage to escape the blast radius of a Subspace Bomb via a Warp Star, while Pit views from Skyworld the floating colosseum the former two were in get swallowed up by Subspace.

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