Smash TV / YMMV - TV Tropes

Complete Monster: In the novella, by Matt Yeo, Jasper Powell is the host of—and the brains behind—the game show, SMASH TV, the most popular television show in the world, where contestants have a chance to win untold riches...if they manage to survive, which nobody has so far. In truth, Jasper, the final obstacle faced by contestants, is an enormous mutant, the failed attempt by the military to create Super Soldiers. Jasper had the idea to start a game show to test experimental weapons on people, claiming "Who's going to miss a few gung-ho macho idiots? It's certainly cheaper than waiting for a war to happen!" In addition, besides owning the studio, Jasper also runs most of the gambling in the city, which is what caused one of the contestants to become a contestant.
Demonic Spiders: Meet laser firing orb; you really aren't going to like him. Not only can they zap you from across the room and glide at odd angles, they go flying away at high velocity when shot before they explode. And they still kill on contact before they actually explode, so the other player can shoot one into you if they aren't careful.
Fandom-Enraging Misconception: This game has no relation to Super Smash Bros. or Smash.
Game-Breaker: The grenade launcher. It fires quickly, covers a wide area of effect, and goes through enemies like a lawnmower through grass. However, it's also got the fastest ammo depletion rate of any weapon in the game.
Goddamned Bats: Meet Mr. Shrapnel; you aren't going to like him. He likes to explode, and he'll spew lethal shrapnel outward to the middle of the screen if you don't kill him first.
Good Bad Bugs: The arcade version contains an interesting error handler; if the game somehow ends up crashing or hanging during gameplay, the machine will reset and trigger a secret "Warp #3" (no other such warps exist), giving both players a bunch of prizes and warping them to the next level.
Polished Port: Of course, the game was notorious for being Nintendo Hard. The home console version wasn't exactly easier, but with unlimited continues meaning you could play it without spending a fortune in quarters, it was certainly more enjoyable. One advantage it has over the arcade original is an actual soundtrack; in a developer interview, the sound engineer for the arcade game was instructed not to put too much effort into the music^note since the game's constant gunfire and explosions would drown it out anyway. The SNES port deserves particular credit here. While it doesn't quite have the enemy density of the arcade, it has virtually zero slowdown, despite having massive quantities of stuff happening. When you turn on fast mode, you also discover that, most of the time, the game was actually limiting the processing speed. That's why it has no slowdown; the code is so fast that it has speed to spare in most cases. Some also regard the lessened difficulty of the SNES port as a point in its favor, making it much more playable while still being quite challenging.
That One Achievement: The Xbox Live port has a notable achievement: "Game Master - Finish the game without continuing on the default settings." Yeesh. Unfortunately, this achievement was bugged when the port was originally released. So even if you DID accomplish that task, the achievement would not be recorded.
That One Boss: Scarface and Die Cobros. Surprisingly, these two bosses are more difficult to survive than the Evil M.C.
Unintentional Period Piece: The game is presented as a campy and colorful game show with various prizes like toasters and massive TVs, firmly dating this game as a product of the late 80s and early 90s. Long-disused TV terms like Film at 11 show up as well.

YMMV / Smash TV

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