Pinnacle of the Sticks: Super Smash Bros on GameCube

The coronavirus has taken many of us back to simpler times with board games, watching/remembering old sports & movie moments, and most importantly to kids in my generation; video games.

I have never been great at video games. I’m pretty sub par at COD, fairly average at FIFA and NHL, and sneaky good at MyPlayer in NCAA Football ’12 on Rookie mode, but after reminiscing on my video game career I realized that I peaked on the best game ever; Super Smash Bros Melee on GameCube.

I’ll die on the stand that GameCube is the best console and that’s just how it is. The controller fits the hands like a glove, not too big and not too wide. The buttons are in perfect placement and they just ooze style, but that’s not why Super Smash Bros is #1. SSB is #1 because it’s the perfect 4-player game, and has been since the Nintendo 64 version. Any Mario Party people will dispute this but they are the same kind of people who only watch re-reruns of Friends and The Office; it’s overrated and for the kids whose parents didn’t let them play “violent video games”. You could do 4-player solo battle, which is a free-for-all filled with back-ended alliances and betrayal, or you could go 2v2 which is just as thrilling.

My character was always Link. The B-Down move (skip to 2:40) when he drops his sword between his legs as he jumps down from some ledge at Hyrule Temple in an all-time move. Other good characters include Samus (kinda a cheat code and lame but to each his own), Captain Falcon, and pretty much everyone else besides the Ice Climbers, Jigglypuff, and Dr.Mario who is a waste of a character. To top it off, the weapons available were all you needed to pull off the perfect upset. One home run swing with the baseball ball, throwing a sneaky landmine to blow someone off the map, and my personal favorite, a lucky Pokemon ball toss that unleashed fury on your opponents. The game gave them all a chance.

Once you get a little bit bored of playing Call of Duty or dropping with your boys in Fortnite, dust off the old GameCube laying around in your parents basement and travel back to the mid 2000’s where video games were video games, and where Super Smash Bros Melee was the king of them all.