Super Smash Bros On Nintendo 64
Cre Wallace
Sunday 21st January 2024 marks the 25th anniversary of Super Smash Bros. on N64 and the series at large. To celebrate a quarter century of Smash, we're republishing this reader-ranked list of every game in the series.
This list is governed by each game's User Rating on the site, which means it's subject to real-time change. So, if you haven't rated the games below, feel free to do so now and potentially influence the order, even after publication...
When Super Smash Bros. Ultimate arrived on Switch back in 2018 and brought with it every single fighter from the series' history, it sent us back through the older games. With the original Super Smash Bros. now well into its third decade, it's incredible to see how the series has evolved over two decades. Just how do they rank against each other? Is this 'Ultimate' iteration on Switch really the last word in Smash?
There's a strong argument for it, but just how do the other entries measure up against the Switch game? Well, simply scroll down to see where Ultimate sits compared to its predecessors according to Nintendo Life readers...
Picking up the baton from the celebrated GameCube entry, Brawl pushed the series in an all-encompassing direction as far as content was concerned, and set the precedent for the 'more is more' approach to stages, fighters, music, and more that kept Masahiro Sakurai occupied eight-days-a-week for many years after.
Bearing in mind how carefully Nintendo began managing its characters and their image after the misfire of the (first) Super Mario Bros. movie in the early '90s, it's remarkable that the original Super Smash Bros. and its inter-franchise scrapping got off the drawing board at HAL Laboratory. Fortunately, Masahiro Sakurai's crossover brawler was permitted to exist.
At the time, the idea of a 'platform' fighting game without health bars was pretty revolutionary. Instead, as you beat up your opponent, they'd become more vulnerable to knockback from your attacks, with the aim being to knock them out of the arena entirely. Catering for up to four players with a simple control scheme (especially compared to other fighting games) and the addition of weapons and power-ups to spice things up, this first Smash was a rock-solid foundation for a series that would become one of the world's biggest fighting franchises.
The number of combatants and complexity of the N64 original may pale in comparison with later rosters, which plucked from the annals of video gaming history, but we still look back fondly on the very first time we had the opportunity to open a can of whoop-ass on Pikachu.
All that fantastic fan service was still present here, and more polished than ever, but the series finally embraced its hyper-competitive side, all the while still managing to deliver one of the most enjoyable eight-player party games in years. With the inclusion of exclusive modes (Smash Tour, Special Orders, and Event Mode), support for a wealth of controllers, and the inclusion of Special Smash, this was a smarter, more focused blast of fighting mayhem, confident in its ability to appeal to any audience willing to give it a chance.
There's a reason that to this day Super Smash Bros. Melee has a dedicated hardcore following in the fighter community. Fans will say it's tighter, faster, and requires more skill than other entries. They'll point to it being far more entertaining to watch than its successors, down to this faster pace. They'll point out its better balance. All compelling arguments.
Where does your favourite Super Smash Bros. sit on the list? Do you agree that Ultimate really is the, er ultimate Smash? Are Melee's days as a tournament fave numbered? Let us know in the comments section below.
Gavin first wrote for Nintendo Life in 2018 before joining the site full-time the following year, rising through the ranks to become Editor. He can currently be found squashed beneath a Switch backlog the size of Normandy.
I came back to Nintendo consoles with Wii U and Smash was among the first games I got. It was like reuniting with a childhood friend who wanted to tell you everything that happened since you drifted away from each other. The game was like a museum/library dedicated to Nintendo and it still feels like one of the best games in history to me.
Not sure this series even warrants a list given every iteration of the game has been bigger and better than the last. Perplexed at why Smash for 3DS is propping up the bottom of the table but I guess it's a take.
Brawl is sorely overlooked considering it had the most single player content out of all the Smash games which Ultimate is sorely lacking, especially the erasure of trophies, missing modes like target test and masterpieces, and no number of characters or stages can change that fact.
I'm sorry, but Brawl should be higher. I'm not a competitive Smash player (which if you are, I totally get why it should be low on the list), but the amount of content that game had is still unmatched. I spent ages in the Stage Builder alone, the trophies were still a thing and the Subspace Emissary is still the best single player campaign the series has to offer ...in my opinion.
Smash 4 Wii U arguably felt more like a party game than Smash Brawl, with the inclusion of Smash Tour as well as the introduction of 8-player Smash and amiibo. Everything in the game felt extremely casual, and it suffered from the obligated drawbacks of the 3DS version.
Smash Melee is incredibly overrated, and I think it's rather important to note that players are still largely supportive of a non-final release of the game that actually has more bugs and glitches with some characters rendered useless or broken. Everything that sets up the competitive field is based entirely on nostalgia of certain characters and the larger population of players being from North America.
The switch version just doesn't have the same feel as melee which is the best smash of all time, i do appreciate the amount of stuff in ultimate but i can't seem to spend any time actually playing...not like the few hundred hours put into melee back in the day, also brawl belongs where it does as the worst smash
@ModdedInkling On the topic of Melee, since you brought up versions, only PAL (Europe and Australia) received copies of 1.03. Japan (November 2001) and North America (December 2001) got copies of NTSC 1.00, 1.01, and 1.02, with 1.02 being the final copy printed and distributed in Japan and North America over the run of the GameCube's lifespan. Melee launched in Europe and Australia in May 2002, and until the last few years (struggling to find when the European Melee scene changed) they ran on PAL, 1.03, the only copy ever released to them, so of course they used it for Tournament Play.
Part of why the scene uses 1.02 is because of the availability. The majority of Melee's tournaments take place in North America, and it would be a nightmare for both players and tournament organizers to import copies of 1.03 compared to just using the mostly 1.02 discs they already have available. Some 1.00 and 1.01 discs are at tournaments because the community provides set ups, (TVs, Consoles, and Discs), but these were all made before May of 2002, since that is when PAL was released and 1.02 had to be put into the wild before that.
Europe chose to change to 1.02 partially because of international players, those who would travel to North America for events, and play on a different version of Melee. Then some players really just want to do the stuff Melee is famous for, like Falco Pillar Combos (Down Special Attack into Down Aerial Attack) and Marth's Ken Combo (Forward Aerial Attack into Down Aerial Attack).
For logistical reasons, it is impossible to make North America use 1.03 legitimately, and the standardization of Melee's version to 1.02 has been healthier for the competitive scene since videos now are clearly from one version instead of having to ask if it is NTSC or PAL.
If Melee was to be re-released on NSO or some sort of Virtual Console, we would get 1.02 for Japan and North America, and Europe would get 1.03. If Melee was ever to be remastered, Nintendo would 100% break out 1.03 as the base of the game, not 1.00, 1.01, or 1.02
I would put the Wii U version far above the switch simply because of how tedious it is to unlock all the characters on the switch version and how they're not automatically unlocked. I mean I would understand if it was DLC activated or update activated but it takes longer than any other previous installment to unlock the characters. Ridiculous. Minded the additional characters and insane amount of backdrops are nice but one thing that makes me just want to shelve this game and stick with the Wii U version is the amount of effort required to unlock everybody
1. Brawl - Has Nintendo Chronicle and Subspace Emissary
2. Ultimate - Doesn't have either, but does have Banjo-Kazooie
3. Smash 4 3DS - Doesn't have any of above, but also doesn't have Smash Tour
4. Smash 4 Wii U - Has Smash Tour, but does have the best trophies
5. Melee - Has trophies you can't get unless you buy other games
6. 64 - outclassed by every other game in every way, but it does still have Board the Platforms....
I still miss the museum feature lacking in Ultimate featured in previous Smash games. Honestly, pay a couple of interns to type up a couple of paragraphs of useful tidbits on each of the Spirits. Even with the current number of spirits, that's like one or two weeks' work for a couple of people, including proof-reading.
Personally, I would swap Brawl with Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. Brawl was the entry that gave us many features that we take for granted in the series now, like Final Smashes, Assist Trophies, Stage Builder, and collectible items that boost abilities for the fighters.
In comparison, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U felt more like an iterative approach to the series rather than anything transformative or revolutionary like Brawl or Ultimate were. In that sense, it felt like Melee to me, albeit with a fresher coat of paint.
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