Super Smash Bros. is a 1999 crossover fighting game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. As the very first entry in what would become one of Nintendo’s most beloved franchises, it brought together iconic characters from Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Metroid, Kirby, Pokémon, and more into a single, chaotic battle arena. In this article, we’ll explore its origins, gameplay innovations, character roster, and lasting legacy as the title that started an entirely new genre of fighting games.
An Unlikely Origin Story
Super Smash Bros. wasn’t originally conceived as a Nintendo crossover at all. Its creator, Masahiro Sakurai, was a developer at HAL Laboratory best known for directing the Kirby series. After working on Kirby Super Star, Sakurai wanted to experiment with the 3D capabilities of the newly released Nintendo 64, eventually prototyping a four-player fighting game under the working title “Dragon King.” This early version shared much of the gameplay that would define Smash Bros., but featured entirely original characters instead of any recognizable Nintendo icons.
Sakurai had genuine reservations about using existing Nintendo characters, worried that too many established “main characters” competing for attention would make it harder for players to connect with any of them. As fate would have it, Nintendo was actively looking for ways to showcase the Nintendo 64’s hardware capabilities at the time, and once the company saw Sakurai’s prototype, the idea of transforming it into a full Nintendo crossover quickly took shape. Dragon King was set aside, and Super Smash Bros. was born.
The name itself came from a suggestion by Satoru Iwata, who proposed including the word “Brothers” to convey that the characters weren’t simply fighting out of hostility, but were more like friends settling a small disagreement.
A Cautious Launch That Exceeded Expectations
Despite the game’s eventual success, Nintendo initially treated it as a smaller, lower-budget project compared to its other major releases. Super Smash Bros. launched in Japan on January 21, 1999, followed by a North American release on April 26, 1999, and a European release later that year on November 19, 1999.
To promote the game’s North American launch, Nintendo staged an unusual marketing event called Slamfest ’99 at the MGM Grand Adventures Theme Park in Las Vegas, featuring a live wrestling match between costumed performers dressed as Mario, Yoshi, Pikachu, and Donkey Kong. The event was streamed online at the time, though no footage is known to have survived, making it one of gaming history’s notable pieces of lost media.
Reinventing the Fighting Game Formula
What made Super Smash Bros. so revolutionary wasn’t just its crossover concept, but its fundamentally different approach to fighting game mechanics. Rather than depleting an opponent’s health bar like traditional fighters such as Street Fighter or Tekken, Smash Bros. introduced a damage percentage system. As a character takes more damage, their percentage rises, and the higher that percentage climbs, the farther they get launched by subsequent attacks.
The objective isn’t to reduce a health bar to zero, but to knock opponents completely off the stage and out of bounds. This single change reshaped everything about how the game played:
- Simplified controls — every character uses the same basic input combinations to access their full moveset, removing the need to memorize complex combos
- Open stages — battles take place on dynamic, often multi-tiered platforms rather than enclosed arenas with flat ground
- Aerial focus — players are free to move in any direction, with platforming and recovery skills playing a much bigger role than in traditional fighters
- Item-based chaos — weapons and power-ups like Poké Balls, hammers, and Koopa shells randomly appear on stage, adding unpredictability to every match
This accessible, party-friendly approach made the game far easier to pick up for newcomers, while still offering enough depth for players to develop real skill and strategy over time.
Twelve Characters, Four Franchises Tied With Two Slots Each
The original Super Smash Bros. featured twelve playable characters in total, eight available from the start and four unlockable through gameplay. Mario and Pokémon were the only franchises to receive two character slots each:
- Mario universe — Mario as a starter, with Luigi unlockable
- Pokémon universe — Pikachu as a starter, with Jigglypuff unlockable
- Other starters — Donkey Kong, Yoshi, Link, Samus, Kirby, and Fox
- Other unlockables — Ness from EarthBound and Captain Falcon from F-Zero
Despite its modest size compared to later entries in the series, this roster managed to represent an impressive cross-section of Nintendo’s most beloved franchises at the time, setting the template that every future Smash Bros. game would build upon.
Multiplayer Mayhem at the Core
While Super Smash Bros. did include a single-player mode, it was multiplayer that truly defined the experience. Up to four players could compete simultaneously, choosing between stock-based matches with a set number of lives or timed matches with a points-based winner. Free-for-all and team-based battles added further variety, and matches that ended in a tie triggered a dramatic “Sudden Death” round, where all remaining fighters were set to 300% damage for an explosive tiebreaker.
Critical and Commercial Success
Super Smash Bros. received largely positive reviews upon release, with particular praise directed at its multiplayer mode. It earned an Editors’ Choice award from IGN for Best Fighting Game and became a Nintendo 64 Player’s Choice title. Commercially, it sold over five million copies worldwide, including 2.93 million units in the United States and 1.97 million in Japan, making it the fifth best-selling game on the entire Nintendo 64 console — and remarkably, the highest-selling N64 game that was never bundled with the console itself.
A Legacy That Created an Entire Genre
The success of Super Smash Bros. immediately put Sakurai back in the director’s chair for a sequel, this time for Nintendo’s upcoming GameCube console. That game, Super Smash Bros. Melee, released in 2001 and expanded dramatically on everything the original had introduced. From there, the series continued to grow with Brawl on Wii, a dual release for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, and ultimately Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on Nintendo Switch in 2018, which brought together every fighter in the series’ history.
Today, the Super Smash Bros. franchise has sold over 77 million units combined and is widely credited with creating the platform fighter genre outright, inspiring countless other games that have tried to replicate its accessible, chaotic, and endlessly replayable formula.
Final Thoughts
Super Smash Bros. began as a side project Sakurai built largely for fun, never expecting it to become one of Nintendo’s flagship franchises. Its damage-percentage system, open stage design, and emphasis on accessible multiplayer chaos didn’t just succeed — they created an entirely new way of thinking about fighting games. More than two decades later, its influence can still be felt across the genre it singlehandedly invented.