crazy taxi - GameCube Games

Just imagine a fighting game, with which you can battle it out with all your favourite Nintendo characters ranging from Mario to Samus. Theres a massive 25 characters to play as once youve unlocked all the secrets (Dont worry, I wont tell you who they are! Leave it to you to find out!) Then theres the stages which you fight on-over 20 stages! All taken from Nintendos best game worlds, like Mushroom Kingdom and Hyrule to name a few!

Ill tell you about the modes within the game now. There is loads, too many to mention. You have the standard classic mode which is just fighting until the final boss, then there is Adventure mode, All Star Mode, Training, Event Match. Oh and Multiplayer! My favourite! Get 3 of your friends round and you will have a riot!! With simple pick up and play controls youll all be beating the living hell out of each other in minutes!!

All this sounds like a big game, but it gets even BIGGER!

As you fight, you earn Coins which can be used in the Lottery. In the Lottery you put your hard earned Coins into a machine which then gives out a random trophy. But not just normal trophies which say "your the best!" Oh no! These trophies are 3D Models of characters and items from all Nintendos Games! There are 290 of these to collect in total and some of them are real gems if you are a Nintendo fan! Youll be playing for hours on end just so you can get more coins to get more trophies! As well as this, each trophie tells you stuff about it, like the first game that character stared in and when it was released etc.

Graphics 9/10

The Graphics in SSBM are unrivaled to anything Nintendo has ever released before. Vibrant colors and animations. Clean anti-aliased models, Interactive backgrounds make this game a keeper. Although with all the action taking place onscreen doesnt even take full advantage of the Gamecube Console, but that is to be expected from a 1st Generation title. The life-like characters are easy to fall in love with. I found it very troubling beating the tar out of the princess that I have spent so many hours trying to rescue in earlier Mario/Zelda games.

Gameplay 9/10

Overall the gameplay of SSBM is very solid. Although Nintendo could have done a few things to polish the game. For instance, using the L button to throw, rather than the clumsy Z trigger. The action is fast paced and it is sometimes hard to perform certain moves using UP on the analog stick. Although after a few minutes of play you begin to overcome this little setback. SSBM also lets you customize everything imaginable in the game, except for you control configuration.

Sound 10/10

A fully orchestrated soundtrack of all your favorite Nintendo games. The tunes are very pleasant to your ears, and there are a few old school sounds that have been redone that sound great! Each character has there own voice tracks that are very easy to distinguish between. The only thing that gets repetitive is the announcers voice every time you choose your character.

Replay Value 10/10

SSBM has a TON of things to unlock. 11 hidden characters, Unlockable stages, and a load of trophies that you win in game, or used your saved coins in the Lottery. Collecting everything in this game will take ages. And with the addition of Event Mode even a single Smasher will have a blast.

Conclusion:

Super Smash Bros Melee is pretty much the same game as the N64 incarnation, but with all the bells and shistles the developers might have wanted to have the first time round. The graphics this time are really, really nice (no, really), with the level of detail being particularly impressive, considering the amount that goes on on-screen at once. The are something like 22 characters to choose from (you have to unlock about 10 of them, but that you find yourself doing that without realising it most of the time), loads of stages to fight on, an extra adventure mode for single players, trophy-collecting, Event matches, Stadium competitions; this games pretty packed with things to do.

While the game is of the beat em up genre, Super Smash Bros Melee is a world away from your Tekkens and Street Fighter 2s. To begin with, the controls are simplistic, but at the same time a vast array of moves can be performed; basic attacks with one button, varied depending on the position of the control stick, special attacks with another button, throws, blocks, rolls, side-stepping, double-jumps, item-throwing, ledge-hanging, kicking off walls; so much, and yet youll find yourself pulling them off within ten minutes play. The gameplay is fast and furious, and youll find yourself using weapon items ranging from bombs to magic wands and speed and jump-increasing bunny hoods.

Where the game excels is in multiplayer mode. At first, theres so much going on on-screen screen you might feel overwhelmed, even a little like youre not in complete control of your character, but given a little time, youll be performing diving attacks and smacking your mates about the face with the best of them (not literally, of course...).

The single-player mode, while greatly improved upon since the N64 original, becomes tiresome after a few plays through. Youll want to finish the game with the different characters (mainly due to unlocking levels, characters, extra fighting modes etc), but after a while youll long to fight against a human player and not the dumb or so-hard-its-almost-cheating CPU.

Super Smash Bros Melee is a brilliant game, with the emphasis resting heavily on fun. This is a great game to play with 2-3(even 4 if youve got that many friends) people, and the hours really do fly by when youre playing. Dont be fooled by the games cutesy appearance- Mario can and will take a baseball bat to your characters head without a second thought.