Mike's Mondays with Mike McGee: Shlocky Smash Bros.

      Well, it’s Labor Day and you know what that means: I’m required by law to put as little effort into this as possible. Luckily, I won’t have to adjust my writing style too much, if at all. My Labor Day is going to be spent doing mostly Shlockness related activities. I have a lot of editing to get through, but I did actually play some games during the week so I don’t have to scramble, which is always nice. I kinda ran out of steam on this paragraph so I’m going to skip right to the games.

Fox used BIFF! It's effective in its own way.

      Super Smash Bros. is a classic. The graphics are very nostalgic and the gameplay is just loads of fun. The music, sound effects, visual effects, and atmosphere are just awesome. It’s arguably the best multiplayer game on the N64 and since I’ve never played Golden Eye, I’m allowed to say that it’s the best one on the N64. I’ve been playing a lot of SSB lately, but mostly the later installments, Melee and a mod for Brawl called Project M. Both of these games are head and shoulders above the original in terms of features and moves and graphics. I do find, however, that when I play the more recent games that it feels way more competitive and intense, which is fun in its own way, but you’ll find a more relaxed and carefree type of fun in the original game. I mean I played with items on! You’d never do that with the newer games. And I’m not saying that you can’t play the original competitively because you can; I’ve seen it done. I don’t understand why one would want to play it extremely competitively when the other games are more fun for that sort of thing.

"La, la, la, I can't hear you!" - Famous Last Words

      If you read the above paragraph and got completely lost, I’m sorry in a way that should be taken as a double meaning to be both sincere and sarcastic. Super Smash Bros. is a fighting game that features Nintendo characters, which I will list now in sequential order starting from top left and also stating the franchise they’re from all from memory: Luigi (Mario), Mario (Mario), Donkey Kong (Donkey Kong), Link (The Legend of Zelda), Samus (Metroid), Captain Falcon (F-Zero), Ness (EarthBound), Yoshi (Mario/Yoshi), Kirby (Kirby), Fox (Star Fox), Pikachu (Pokémon), and Jigglypuff (Pokémon). This game can support up to 4 players at one time, each of the players selecting one of the characters to compete as. The goal is to knock your opponent off the battle arena; the player dies if they are travel (intentionally or otherwise) to far up, down, or to either side of the battle arena. The player can perform different attacks by pressing any combination of the A or B buttons with a direction on the control stick (including neutral position). Getting hit means that your damage percent increasing, which translates to flying farther after getting hit and thusly, being easier to kill. The two modes available are Time and Stock. The goal in Time is to get the most kills in the allotted time with each kill you get yield a point and losing a point when you get killed. Stock gives each player a certain amount of lives or “stock” and the goal is to be the last one standing. A player could win Stock mode without having the most kills. For a summary of this whole paragraph refer to this VIDEO.

Boom, I was right!

      Phew, that was almost work. The next game that I want to talk about is very similar. In fact, it practically shares the same name: Super Smash Flash 2. The game has been in development for over 4 years now and I’ve been tagging along since the beginning. This guy Cleod9 over at Mcleodgaming.com is trying to convert the Super Smash experience into a flash game. It’s coming along very nicely at this point. The latest version available is v0.8b, which you can check out HERE!! I’m having a lot of fun with this game and it’s good to know that a lot of the problems it has (like the AI, literally just standing still at some points) will be fixed when the game is finally done. I can’t really give my opinion on it beyond that because the game’s not finished and that wouldn’t be fair. I do know that, by its completion, the game will have a decent amount of additional characters, a full story mode complete with voice acting (I’d try out if I wasn’t so busy…and had a “why not?” type of attitude), and online capability, which has been said to be a “good possibility by final release.” And if you dare doubt my support of this game then listen to this! Apparently, it’s been catching the eye of some of the competitive players in the smash community and THIS and THAT are some examples of “competitive” play.

H-hey, you guys? You ok? Hello?

      This was a smashing week if I do say so myself. Like John said in his post, we do have a new series planned, which I’ll keep under wraps to build up the hype machine so the disappointment that’s sure to come will be that much more substantial. I’ve been doing a lot of editing with that so that hopefully it can be release in tandem with our next Let’s Play, which is to be randomly selected from a list that we’re encouraging viewers to add to. Let us know if you’ve got a suggestion. Until next week, this has been an MMwMM Labor Day special, I’m Mike sayin’ “Stay Shlocky!”