This one really takes me back, but I'll do my best to remember it as much as I can!

I remember reading the title on the rectangular box. Due to some naming conventions, sometimes the biggest word is read out so me and others would joke it was either "Super Smash Bros." or "Smash Super Bros." but this was a game that had the great idea, as demonstrated in the opening with the master hand, mixing up combat with multiple franchises from Nintendo's library that they had full rights over!

Again, as illustrated from the beginning, it's like those moments where as a little kids you could play with action figures and have people from totally different genres fighting each other because you didn't give a shit about copyright as a kid and exactly who was going to stop you from enacting the Enterprise encountering the Death Star or Luke Skywalker and He Man having a dual before taking on the staypuft marshmellow man!

The game was a fairly interesting fighting game, allowing movement up and down onto multiple platforms and with no actual health bar to speak of, you have to rack up damage on the other opponent until your hits are able to knock them so far away off the arena that they can't get back. It has many fun levels based on all the different universes that are interracting here with Hyrule, The Starfox, Pokemon centre and many more that I can't quite remember.

All the characters have their own abilities that feel unique to them and are, I feel, balanced in a way that it works really well. Not to mention all the items you can pick up and use to give yourself an edge and to reference the classic games they come from with the hammer from the classic Donkey Kong games, a pokeball holding a random pokemon, a fire flower and many others. Including a large crate that these items can arrive in.

Like any good fighter, there's multiple secret characters that can be unlocked and have later now just appeared in the sequels as starting characters.

The main campaign has you fight all the different fighters, plus a few unique ones like an army of Yoshis, army of polygon people (basic poly versions of in-game characters), a metal mario (Mario, but as he's metal he's much heavier and harder to knock out) and the Master Hand which, as a flying hand, doesn't have a % to be knocked out but instead, hit points.

Playing this game was a massive blast and it's very obvious to see why they made sequels of it years later for the follow up consoles that came after the N64 and I can't say I blame them.

So it's come to this...yes I did play this and decided to add it, retroactivly, to the Cringetober 2022 listing for fun to wind up Yuudachi and others who unconditionally love the series for some reason.

Much of this game reminds me of Team Fortress 2 with the colourful characters, variety of classes and the objectives too such as capturing points, escort missions and in regards to classes, having healers, tanks and damage dealers, but they did expand outwards with having the characters function very differently from each other. The characters have their own functions and abilities such as Tracer's ability to reverse time, a character's ability to heal others and another who goes between healing and harming and the same games for pretty much all of them. All having some fun and different ways they play and certainly leading to some fun gameplay engagement.

Now, I never played the first one. I had no interest as my opinion as "I have TF2, why do I need this?" and that only went on in regards to the excessive microtransactions that the pushing of inspired Star Wars Battlefront 2, to go even further and incur the wrath of governments wanting to protect kids and the vulnerable from the abusive practice.

Despite being a sequel, not all the characters are released from the beginning. They locked many behind in-game progression such as x number of kills, matches, wins and so on which makes sense if you have nothing to actually add to the game, however, as a new player this is a pain in the ass because certain characters are more likely to gel with your gameplay style and who knows what your main might be? Hopefully you find out before you get too frustrated and dying all the time.

I don't see myself as too good at the game, buy my friend, Yuudachi says I could get to high Bronze or low Silver, whatever that means, so I don't know. He claims that's good, but feels kinda mediocre to me. Nothing special you know.

I do love that there's a training course so you can try out characters and see what one you have a feel for and don't have to go through what you do in most games, with a trial by fire before you know if you're any good with it or not. It's a similar experience I have in War Thunder with new tanks, aircraft, ammo and so on. It also doesn't help that I'm not too patient either.

I also don't want to support this game because of all the stuff Activision Blizzard has done over the years. Including the thing J. Allen Brack, and his hair, said about that "Tough E-sports moment" as he cowardly tries not to address it immediately or even apologise for essentially bowing and obeying their paymasters in China.

So my review will be covered by this, but also how they've handled micro-tractions certainly doesn't help and I am trying my best not to exposed to these predatory systems designed to torment me and others who are vulnerable to them.

Stream/Gameplay

So as I'm writing this, I played this with my friends last night and felt like I can give a review of it as we did play three games and explored many of the mechanics.

First off, the game essentially plays like Mario Party and similar kinds of games with a board and having to roll dice to complete your objective, being to collect coins and earn stars. First one to three stars wins the game and ends it at the same time.

You also have access to cards that you can buy with the same coins to give yourself a boost in combat, which happens when you land on the same space as someone else, but you can opt out of combat if you either want to be nice or you don't have the attack cards that you think you'd win. Whenever you win a combat, as long as you're attacking, the enemy loses hit points equal to your attack - their defence score and as they all have limited health points, you can knock someone out, but they're still in the game. They just lose a turn as their character recovers, but the winner who knocked them out gets half of their coins too so combat can be an advantage.

You also have many different cards that can cause damage via either directly attacking a player or laying a trap for anyone who lands on that certain spot, along with others that manipulate your movement. Including forcing the dice to roll any number in case you want to only take 1 step instead of 6 or any other number.

Now the art style, is clearly aimed to draw the male gaze. Especially with certain character's outfits and is intended to entice people in with the selection of characters being cute girls that you can play as and even unlock an alternative costume that, in most cases, strips them down to a bikini, but not always. You also have the other kinds to fill in other interests. Including some guy named "uncle" who seems to have a smart phone for a face...

You unlock these costumes and additional emotes by, you guessed it, microtransactions. I find that they don't appear to be TOO aggressive here, but I've only just started and for completing the tutorial you get a free character!

They even have a season thing and a achievement system that rewards you with in-game currencies and yes, they have multiple currencies and attempt to exploit, what is known as a "Confusopoloy" by trying to convince you that you are making more progress than you think. Especially as all these awards come in the form of things to buy in the in-game store (which are timed) and also the cassette tapes which are used in a Gatcha system. You get a lot starting out and after those three games and claiming the rewards I had enough that I actually unlocked multiple characters, but you always unlock them at the base level and you need the items to gift them to make them happier and build up your bond. Some even have preferences, which is highlighted by a excited smiley face on the item before you get to select it, so you aren't wasting items upsetting people, as I've seen in games with similar mechanics like Danganronpa and Dragon Age Origins. In fact, I didn't see any items that caused negatives on any of the characters, but maybe I just having found those items yet as they have SOOO many items you can get in the Gatcha style game.

Ultimately it was a lot of fun to have with friends as you can stab each other in the back and beat on each other, but with the focus on microtransactions and such I'm going to personally step away and focus on the games I want to currently finish as I've been on the bad ending of microtransactions and I don't want to end up emptying my account every month like I used to.

For those who want a good look at the gameplay, it's my friend's stream of the game where we're playing together: Gameplay with SillySandyAJ