Elevated: The Development Story of Super Smash Bros. Melee

日本語のスマッシュブラザーズメリーは、13月の journey and the events that followed. You will discover how create one of the most influential video games of all time. You'll also get a glimpse of the game in its earlier stages. So without further ado, I present to you the development of Super Smash Bros. Melee. It all started in May 1999 with a post on Smaabura Ken, or Smash Bros. Fist, the official website of Melee's predecessor, Super Smash Bros. on the Nintendo 64. With series creator Masahiro Sakurai's platform fighting experiment dubbed a success, he began to think about a sequel. He had gained some great experience with the '64 title, but felt the end product was only a fraction of its true potential. He decided to create a poll on the Smash Bros. Fist website asking what fans would want in a theoretical Smash 2 game. The exact count was never confirmed, and Sakurai took some liberties when more than one character was included or combined more minor characters into franchises. The poll closed on May 31st, 1999, with the following results: Bowser, Peach, Wario, King Dedede, and Ganondorf were top 5, with James Bond, Mewtwo, Banjo and Kazooie, Toad, and Mew closing out the top 10. Sakurai was adamant that the existence of the poll was not proof there was a sequel in the works, and on June 1st even stating, "No sequel was planned at that point." But in reality, his mind had already been made up. At E3 1999, Sakurai witnessed Smash 64 reception firsthand, and fans' reaction to Nintendo's upcoming Project Dolphin, which was teased during the event. Sakurai saw an opportunity to create the perfect launch title for Nintendo's next console. On July 5th, 1999, Sakurai had completed the project proposal and initial design documents for Melee without any GameCube development kit, as they had only just become available and Nintendo had a shortage of them at the time. Sakurai was determined to make the definitive Super Smash Bros. game, and this would be his most ambitious project to date. Development of Melee began in early fall of 2000, with a team of over 50 staff, the biggest team he would work with yet. With this new game, Sakurai would put his energy into what he believed fans would want and be laser-focused on making the sharpest Smash game he could. Sakurai was obsessed with the "easy to learn, difficult to master" idea, known in game development circles as Bushnell's Law, named after Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. It was the guiding philosophy of the Kirby series, which Sakurai also had created. The Kirbyism effect would be present in Melee also, as he felt most games around that time were too heavily targeted towards experienced players. He wanted to strike a healthier balance. The game should feel approachable for new players, but also contain deep gameplay elements for more experienced players. He deliberately increased the speed of Melee, deciding to make characters fall faster and allowing moves to come out more quickly than in Smash 64. [MUSIC] Another guiding gameplay philosophy Sakurai incorporated into development was the concept of "risk and return." He felt the higher the risk a player's decision in the game, the higher the reward should be for a successful execution. Furthermore, he concluded the game was at its most fun when risk and reward had a correlative relationship, but also believed other game elements contributed to the game's funness beyond mere playability. The controls, sound design, music, and visual effects all played an important role which can have a direct or indirect effect on gameplay, and all contribute to how fun the game feels to play. Sakurai was known as a bit of a "micro-manager," giving guidance to team members until he felt it was just right. As a visionary, he would come up with concepts in his head, but sometimes had difficulty articulating his vision. As a result, he would sometimes tell a developer what emotion he wanted the players to feel, or repeat a phrase to get his point across. For example, when explaining what he wanted for a hidden music menu theme in Melee, Sakurai told a musical composer and arranger on the team, Shogo Sakai, he wanted the theme to feel "familiar" and to feel "refreshing." Sakai was initially confused with this request, being unsure if the director wanted something cheery or calm. Another example is when reviewing Sheik's moveset. He would repeatedly request that the motion team make her animations "twist her body more," which initially baffled the team. Luckily, Sakurai was persistent with his feedback and could point out the smallest details in the team's work, allowing the project to progress. Sakurai felt a tremendous responsibility to faithfully represent the many characters and franchises that would appear in Melee, while also adding in as many new mechanics and features as possible. He recalled when game developers would use his creations, like Kirby, in other games. He would sometimes be unhappy with how his creations were represented by outside developers. "That's not how it would be," he would think. He wanted to avoid this at all costs in Melee, doing plenty of research and regularly consulting with the character and series creators themselves to get the okay when making decisions for animations, sounds, and other character-specific elements. An example of this is giving Pikachu a "Skull Bash" attack as a nod to Pokémon Blue and Red, despite not being able to learn the move in Gold and Silver. In fact, Nintendo, Creatures Inc., and The Pokémon Company were in the same building in Tokyo as HAL Laboratory's development studio, so in-house developers were able to more easily collaborate with outside developers. The team decided to strike a balance between realism and fantasy within Melee's world. With the power of the GameCube, it was the first time they could depict this kind of visual fidelity on screen, so they wanted to utilize that power for the game's physics, environments, and animations. Sakurai would take full advantage of being able to use "real polygonal models," as he put it. However, they also had to create an art style that allowed for an Italian plumber, anthropomorphic fox, armored bounty hunter, and electric rat monster to coexist in a cohesive world. Era representation varied, from the Mario cast being inspired by Super Mario 64 designs, and the Zelda cast from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. However, Samus would harken back to her Super Nintendo days, since Metroid Prime was not finished yet. Other characters in the series would go back even further. Many characters and environments were given a brand new interpretation, since for some game series, the only visual references were 8-bit sprites, box art, promotional materials, or any concept art the development team happened to have access to. An extension of combining new and old game references were the inclusion of trophies. These were collectible figures you could obtain featuring various game characters, locations, items, and other elements, with bits of information included for each. There were nearly 300 trophy models added to Melee. Some were made from model imports from other games, or promotional material models that were given a reduced polycount, like with the Tanooki Mario trophy, but the majority were created from scratch. They were included to celebrate the rich history of Nintendo and to allow the player to imagine scenarios where characters outside of the roster could join the fight. Sakurai wanted Melee to be bigger and better than Smash 64 in every way possible. There would be new characters, stages, items, modes, features, and techniques that would also affect any returning fighter characters. For example, he gave every fighter a new move, "side special," which became the new move for some of the 64 cast's previous neutral specials. For example, Ness's PK Fire and Link's boomerang. While Sakurai acknowledged that some players who were used to Smash 64 might confuse using side specials with using neutral special, he still felt the additions made it worth it. Characters from Smash 64 were rebalanced to fit the newcomers. For example, Yoshi was given an even taller second jump and Luigi's moveset was increasingly distinct from Mario's. "Yah!" A multitude of new techniques were added beyond just side specials. Holding down smash attacks, walking while carrying items, jumping from ledges, wall jumping, dash grabbing, pummeling, up throwing, down throwing, and power shielding were just a few of them. At one point, you could use the R button for throwing, but this was eventually cut. Shielding made use of the GameCube's analog triggers, allowing the players to adjust its size depending on how shallow or deep the input. Pressing Z also let you grab or drop items in the air, use a light shield on the ground, or allowed some characters to use their grabs in the air. Those characters also received grapple recoveries, which was a new mechanic done by facing a wall in the air. Harkening back to Risk and Return, many of these mechanics required more precise timing than others, but when executed properly, felt immensely satisfying to perform. Sakurai also began to consider what hidden techniques he would include in the game, an aspect he would include to reward experienced players who spent lots of time playing. In fact, he would decide to include significantly more hidden content in general this time around. When determining which characters to include in Melee, he drew from the many requests he'd received from fans, including the poll on the Smash Bros. website. With the GameCube console release only about a year away, he had to prioritize the most requested characters first, with characters he could more easily develop second. He decided to bring back the original Smash 64 cast, although his initial concept had Ness replaced with Lucas, the protagonist of Mother 3, but with the game in development limbo, they decided to keep Ness. Originally, it was only thought possible to have 16 characters for Melee's roster in the time they had to complete it. Complete the game, but Sakurai pushed himself and the rest of the team to use the resources they had to add even more, and they managed to include 26. Of the characters introduced in Melee, the clone characters were the easiest to develop. These were characters based off of existing fighters that were able to share all, or almost all, existing animations and similar move properties. Even migrating characters from Smash 64 was less work than creating new characters completely from scratch which is another reason the previous cast was included. Of all the team members, it was Sakurai who spent the most time tweaking and adjusting character parameters, meaning with every character addition, it was more work for the director. Unlock criteria for the hidden characters varied like in Smash 64. However, the team desired to create an alternative way to unlock them through a series of versus matches, the idea being that players who only wanted to play VS matches and nothing else you can lock all the characters just by playing the game a lot. To fit Melee, every character was redesigned from scratch, with a few notable exceptions. The first character developed for Melee was Mario. He was also used as the foundation for the rest of the characters, each of whom had a dedicated designer who was in charge of them. Bowser and Peach were the most requested characters from the Super Mario series, as well as number one and number two on the poll overall. So they were both included. Bowser was particularly difficult for the team to balance, wanting to express his character but not make him too strong. Peach's move references would be from Super Mario Bros. 2 with her glide and down special. Mario Advance was considered as an inspiration as it was coming out soon on the Game Boy Advance, but Sakurai did not believe she was as princess-like in that game. Peach's appearance is inspired from her design in Super Mario 64. Sakurai was a huge fan of the music from Dr. Mario, so he considered adding him as a clone character. Since Dr. Mario was the same character as Mario, Sakurai felt the animations shouldn't be different. Rather, attacks and movement properties would slightly differ. If HAL had more time to develop Melee, Wario would have been added to the roster due to his popularity in the poll. However, Bowser and Peach were higher priority, even if it was just by one vote. Another character from the Star Fox series was of interest, and the team settled on Falco since he had a similar physique to Fox and would be the easiest to develop. Like Dr. Mario, his move properties would be adjusted from his clone counterpart, with an example being his blaster making enemies flinch like Fox's in Smash 64. Both characters would use their Star Fox 64 designs as Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet was still in production and had not yet been released. Mewtwo was a highly requested character, so he was a shoo-in. Pokémon was especially popular around that time, which is why Sakurai decided to keep Jigglypuff, although he was on the fence as Puff was initially a joke character. He sought to add an additional Pokémon character to represent Pokémon Gold and Silver, settling on Pichu, giving the Pokémon series 4 reps. Pichu took the deliberately weakest character crown from Jigglypuff with the Balloon Pokémon receiving corresponding tweaks to its moveset to compensate. All Pokémon characters were given their anime voices instead of the 8-bit cries from the Game Boy games, so they fit in more naturally. Masafumi Mima, voice director of the anime Pokémon series, was able to step in for Melee and direct the same voice actors for Melee as well. Fire Emblem was incredibly popular in Japan, with Marth being the top requested character to add from the series. Although it required working with Intelligent Systems, Sakurai was able to add in a Fire Emblem presence. Many characters from the series were requested, but ultimately Sakurai settled on Roy, a character from the to-be-released game Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade on Game Boy Advance. He wanted Roy to play like an amateur swordsman, having more glaring weaknesses compared to Marth, but a stronger neutral special, Flare Blade. Since at the time no Fire Emblem games were released in the West, the team considered cutting them from the NTSC-U versions of Melee. However, Nintendo of America encouraged the team to keep the pair in, as they felt they were too fun not to include. A Nintendo Entertainment System rep was desired by Sakurai, so he looked to some of the more prominent NES games for inspiration. He considered the playable character from Urban Champion, Bubbles from Clu Clu Land, Excitebike Racer, and Balloon Fighter, but had trouble coming up with moveset ideas. Takamaru from The Mysterious Murasame Castle was also considered, however eventually dismissed as the game had no Western release. Ultimately, Sakurai landed on the protagonist from Ice Climber. The Ice Climber character would be developed as a double character, Popo and Nana, and would be known as Ice Climbers in Western releases. This unique mechanic was inspired from the simultaneous 2-player mode from their NES game and was the main reason for their inclusion. Mr. Game Watch was a surprise inclusion to the roster. The decision to add in the completely 2D character was likely due to Sakurai's earliest video game memories, with the Game Watch games being among the first games he would ever play. As a result, he held a deep appreciation for early '80s video games, and felt their impact on the industry was sometimes overlooked. Mr. Game Watch was originally developed to move frame by frame like in his original appearance, but this idea was scrapped since the team felt it would be too difficult to move around as the character. His moves represent a wide variety of the games in which he appeared. Zelda, as the series' titular character, made sense to include, and she would possess a special transform mechanic allowing the player to switch between Zelda and Sheik by using down special, essentially controlling two distinct characters. Sheik would end up being a character Sakurai would enjoy playing a lot, but also a lot of work, as they had less reference material to work with as she only appeared in one game, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Sakurai decided he would keep this transform mechanic a secret from the public until later, revealing Sheik as a fighter first, and Zelda with a transforming mechanic later on. Young Link was added to fully flesh out the Zelda games' iterations of Link, as at the time, the majority of Zelda titles featured Link as a child, not an adult. Mechanically, he was also a lighter, faster version of Link, which was a response to the feedback of Link feeling too slow in Smash 64. Ganondorf's inclusion was practically a miracle. He's only present as a fighter in the game for two reasons. Firstly, they were able to use an existing model from the Zelda: Spaceworld teaser from 2000, and secondly, His physique was similar to Captain Falcon's (falken), which allowed the team to streamline his development by using existing animations. Sakurai also expressed some interest in Link's design from this teaser but ultimately decided to keep Link's appearance based on his Ocarina of Time iteration with some inspiration from Zelda II. Despite Sakurai hitting most of the highly requested characters from the poll, two stood out as particularly difficult for inclusion. Inclusion: James Bond and Banjo-Kazooie, as each were owned or partially owned by other companies. A James Bond fighter inclusion would not only have realistic weapon imagery, which may cause issues with the game's rating, but require rights to use an actor's likeness, Pierce Brosnan, which would further complicate things. While Nintendo technically owned the Banjo-Kazooie IP at the time, they were looking to sell their shares in Rare during Melee's development. At one point, trophies from Rare properties were planned for Melee, but were eventually scrapped, with the exception of the Motion Sensor Bomb trophy, featuring its Perfect Dark appearance in Japan, and its GoldenEye 007 appearance in the international releases. The intention was to use the Perfect Dark designs across the board. However, since Perfect Dark was an M-rated title, a reference from the game may have impacted Melee's ESRB rating. So they opted to use GoldenEye's design instead for the international releases, using "Top Secret" as the origin in the trophy description. "Top Secret" was also applied to the cloaking device in the international releases, despite being a more explicit connection to Perfect Dark, as it was an item from that game. Two auto missions from the Fighter Pool were King Dedede and Meta Knight from the Kirby series, who were dismissed by Sakurai since they were his own creations, and he wanted to avoid his personal bias regarding character inclusions. However, he would later admit he had underestimated their popularity. Another character considered for Melee was Ayumi Tachibana from Famicom Detective Club, but was left out due to the lack of international audience exposure. She, along with Wario, Dedede, Toad, Mew, Mr. Saturn, Gooey, Meta Knight, and Lugia all received trophies instead, making Diddy Kong and Sukapon the only Nintendo-owned fighters from the poll not to be represented as trophies in Melee. Sukapon was also considered as an item for the game, where he could be ridden and cause havoc, but was eventually cut due to financial and legal issues, despite decent progress being made and descriptive text even written for it. This was likely due to Sukapon not being owned by Nintendo at the time due to a contract fluke, and they feared legal action or issues with royalties if Sukapon was included in Melee. Assist Capsules, where a fighter from another game would assist the player in battle, were an item considered for the game also, but were scrapped due to time and development constraints. Not only did they wish to ramp up the number of characters in the game, but stages as well. Originally, they had planned to give each series one front and one backstage. Front stages would have been more straightforward, while backstages were more focused on gimmicks. Unfortunately, there was not enough time to complete a second stage for Ice Climber or Game Watch, and there were no Fire Emblem stages at all. One was planned to be based on a landmark from Arcania, a significant location in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light. It would feature catapults, a castle with dragons and a mage. However, it was cut due to time constraints. There may in fact have been a second Ice Climber stage planned, with a filename called "ice top". Also, Sprout Tower from Pokémon Gold and Silver was considered, but the team ultimately decided on Poké Floats, which reused models from Pokémon Stadium and gave them cel-shaded designs. The Pokémon Stadium stage was intended to have Pokémon battling on it, similarly to how Saffron City had Pokémon appear and attack. This stage feature was cut. However, many of the Pokémon planned for the stage ended up making an appearance through the Poké Ball item. 3 stages from Smash 64 made it into the also, but had to be meticulously reproduced, including Wispy's wind effects. For each stage, the designers went to a lot of trouble to make visual cues to easily indicate which part of the stage was walkable versus outside of the 2D area, all while maintaining as faithful of a recreation to the original location as possible. The game's story would continue from Smash 64's motif of a child and his toys. This time, the toys would be represented as trophies brought to life through imagination, where they would duke it out. Satoru Iwata, head of Nintendo's corporate division at the time, would say this later in an interview: "What's interesting about the Smash Bros. games is that they do not represent the Nintendo characters fighting against one another." they actually represent toys of Nintendo characters getting into an imaginary battle amongst themselves. In one of Melee's single-player campaigns, Classic Mode, the player can face Master Hand like in the original game, or also fight Crazy Hand under certain conditions. Upon defeat, your character returns to its trophy state. It's been speculated that this represents the moment when a child's playtime is over and the toys return to their dormant state. Trophies also played a role in the new single-player modes, Adventure Mode and All-Star, with a variety of difficulties. Sakurai wanted players to experience Adventure Mode as if they were traveling to various worlds of Nintendo. For instance, starting in Mushroom Kingdom, exploring the dungeons of Hyrule, or escaping Brinstar. All-Star Mode was an unlockable mode where you fought through every fighter on the roster, which was inspired from the Great Cave Offensive in Kirby Super Star. Where the player would fight through enemies with a rest area in between. In fact, this very rest area's music theme was recreated in Melee. [MUSIC] Melee would be packed with extra modes and features. New coin and bonus battles joined stock and timed matches as options, the first being for fun and the second being for fanatics. However, the latter was almost cut due to time constraints but managed to make it in. A new menu option, Special Melee, featured 10 sub-modes including a Stamina Mode. Stamina Mode changes percentage-based combat to HP-based combat like traditional fighting games and removed the result screen as a change of pace. The idea behind this and other special modes was that Sakurai wanted players to create imaginative custom rules from their own ingenuity and create something new. Event matches were included so players could experience bite-sized challenges in a more narrative format, which could go a bit more in depth in a character's story. While Board the Platforms from Smash 64 would be omitted, Break the Targets would return with a stage for each character. With a standalone Sheik version being scrapped later in development. Multi-Man Melee would be inspired from the fighting polygon team matches from the previous game, with 6 different play options. The team even implemented saved detailed records of matches, achievements, and various other stats, all which could be deleted or updated in a variety of ways. Sakurai really enjoyed adding in features like this, but often questioned if he was taking things too far. Melee was becoming more and more ambitious, but Sakurai didn't hold back. Months had passed since Melee's development had started, and he hadn't taken a single holiday or Sunday off. But as the new year set in, perhaps he'd enjoy a proper break after all. "MUSIC: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Wind Waker" With such a massive collection of beloved Nintendo franchises represented, the team at HAL set out to make the presentation for Super Smash Bros. Melee as strong as possible. Sakurai wanted Melee's presence to be big as the GameCube's flagship game. He wanted every element of it to be held to his highest standard. With his capable team of 50, he was prepared to put in the hours to make that happen. However, this came at a cost, as Sakurai's work was beginning to catch up with him. Often he would work 40 hours in a row, go back home to sleep for 4, and continue working the next day. While he considered his current lifestyle destructive, he hoped it would be worth it for a satisfying end product. Not only was he working to finish the game itself, but he began to think about how Melee would be introduced at E3 in the coming months. An idea struck Sakurai for E3 he just could not shake. What if Super Smash Bros. Melee had its own cinematic trailer? HAL Laboratory had not attempted anything like this before, but Sakurai felt both Melee and the GameCube needed a proper grand opening. He got to work on storyboards for a special full-motion video sequence in January 2001, forsaking his planned New Year's vacation, the only true break he would have had from developing Melee. HAL Laboratory contracted 4 other Tokyo-based animation studios to help create this opening cinematic. The entire opening movie was delegated across each studio, each of them taking several scenes. Its creation would be overseen by Sakurai himself. As HAL was located in Yamanashi, Editorial supervising had to be done remotely. They exchanged hundreds of emails, and Sakurai made frequent business trips to Tokyo to work with these companies. And during these commutes, he would often use the time to evaluate in-progress work on the game. He was exhausted, but he was determined that the opening movie had to be handled just so. Every visual and auditory element had to be brimming with Smashness. While the visual component would be handled outside of the company, that the music of the movie would be handled in-house at HAL. There were 4 musicians on the team: the sound and music director, Hirokazu Ando, who had also worked on the music in the previous Smash title; Tadashi Ikegami, who also handled sounds and voice coordination; Shogo Sakai; and Takato, Kitzuta. They all worked very closely to produce the scores of the Melee original soundtrack. Throughout the process, Sakurai gave constant feedback and was heavily involved, more than average for a director. For example, he had a very particular goal for the menu music. He wanted it to sound large, epic, but also possess electronic music influences, giving it both an analog and a digital sound. The menu theme went through a number of revisions, with a previous iteration being used as the trophy music theme, where it was better suited. Sakurai felt that the music in the game was crucial to get just right. He aimed to strike a balance between bringing something unique but also familiar, to ensure fans' satisfaction. In an interview, he said, "Especially the case with the music from the NES, we couldn't be complacent and just decide to use the originals. That would go against the entire point of Melee, I think. We want to elevate the characters and the music to a different level. Built off of the same core, pointed in the same direction, but we've elevated it. That's what we're going for." Sakurai concluded that the only way the score could possess the authority he envisioned was to bring in a live orchestra. In fact, he was so determined to do this, he even offered to pay for it out of his own money. After deliberating for a while, on February 14th, the team decided to move forward with an orchestral soundtrack for the game. [MUSIC] The team at HAL hadn't originally intended to use an orchestra, but Sakurai was adamant, so they moved forward. Some tracks needed to be reworked, and with the new orchestral-centric approach, Sakai took over the original pieces of Melee soundtrack from Ando, which included the opening movie music. At this point, the animation studio companies had Ando's version, so Sakai got to work on arranging a new version and scheduled time with a symphony to record the piece. During the day of the orchestra recording, Sakurai feverishly jotted down notes along with the in-progress early movie renders. In the studio, he was constantly checking how the music and visuals aligned. Blind, concentrating very hard and taking as many detailed notes as possible since that's what the animation studios would have to reference. He would watch the in-progress render in the studio while listening to the live orchestra as they were recording, looking for changes. 4 hours later, the orchestra finished recording and Sakurai collapsed. He was rushed to the hospital the next day and put on an IV. He was fatigued and overworked. But with so much done for this opening movie the day prior, he felt he had to get back to development and share his feedback with the other companies. This would be the only forced break Sakurai took off from developing Melee. The very next day, he was back at it.

[Japanese] Super Smash Bros. Melee!

Throughout Melee's development, the stage music would go through many revisions. The temple theme gave the team particular trouble, as it was a piece Sakurai held close to his heart. The mood of the piece was inspired by Yatsuwa Kaiden, a famous ghost story in Japan. Sakurai wanted to instill a feeling of eeriness in this piece, similarly to how he felt while playing the original Zelda's Dungeons. This track alone had about 6 revisions, with Sakurai returning to Sakai as soon as 15 minutes after presenting a version of the song, saying, "Sorry, the fans will not accept this." Here is an early version of the Temple theme. Onett's main theme was based on a rendition of "The Bee and Friends Song" from EarthBound, which would originally have been accompanied by a saxophone, although it was never recorded. You can hear the early version here.

3, 2, 1, go!

Oftentimes they would take music themes in unexpected directions, like in the case of Fourside. Since the stage was set during the night, that changed the atmosphere, so Anno went for a more sci-fi sound. Had it remained a daytime stage, like in the original SNES location, it's possible the team would have created a more upbeat salsa theme for the stage. [FOREIGN] Sakurai also implored Sakai to include a detail in the Brinstar stage, which is the music that plays in the elevator in Metroid, so he wove it into the theme. [MUSIC] For the DK rap, Ando had initially planned on recording it but had technical issues, so Sakai took over. Due to this shuffle, they had to speed up and slow down the recording of the DJ, James W. Norwood Jr.'s vocals. This was because he recorded his voice over the Donkey Kong 64 version, which was at a set tempo, whereas the background music recorded for Melee's rendition had variable speeds for each DK crew member. The recording took 2 days to complete.

As we take you through this monkey rap! Ho! DJ! Donkey Kong!

Even tracks that were composed electronically were held to the same level as live recordings. Would you believe that this track, Green Greens, is in fact not recorded live, but actually a MIDI track? [FOREIGN] Would be responsible for over half of Melee's soundtrack. In April, Ikegami began recording what amounted to over 4,000 original sound effects. Although he had also created the sound effects for Smash 64, almost nothing was reused. Sakurai, despite his usual habit of being heavily involved, gave Ikegami minimal direction for the sound design. Sakurai wanted every sound to make the player think "that was fun" or "this feels great" and felt Ikegami really nailed it. He liked that he took liberties and was creative with his approach. When it came to voice lines, Bowser's voice was beast-like, as Sakurai leaned into the character's more monster monstrous side and away from the cutesier approach Nintendo was starting to give Mario's nemesis. This was fully realized with the terrifying Giga Bowser, a hidden final boss in Melee's adventure mode. Similarly, Donkey Kong had animal-like utterances rather than a speaking voice, despite Donkey Kong being voiced in most of the games at that time by Grant Kirkhope. "Okay!" In Japan, the Star Fox 64 voice actors reprised their roles for the Star Fox fighters and cameos, However, in English, the cameos would be voiced by the Star Fox Adventures English-speaking cast, including Chris Seavor, creator of Conker the Squirrel. At some point, Leslie Swan's voice samples were used for Peach instead of Jen Taylor. "Yippee!" "Woohoo!" "Yeah!" Luigi's voice clips were simply higher-pitched versions of Mario's lines from Super Mario 64, and in some cases weren't even pitch-shifted at all. "Yahoo!" Dean Harrington was brought in to voice the announcer, as well as both Master Hand and Crazy Hand. An American voice actor and martial artist, he spent many years acting and shooting movies in Hong Kong and Tokyo. When he came in to record his lines, he didn't even realize it was for a video game, and after 2-3 hours of solo recording with multiple takes for the same lines, it was over. He wasn't given much instruction except that Master Hand was evil and Crazy Hand was just supposed to be insane. For the title call sign yell featured in the final version of the opening movie, he was requested to take a dynamic approach to saying the title of the game. For this, he embodied a circus ringmaster as his primary inspiration, which gave it just the right over-the-top vibe Melee needed after its opening. Here are a few unused title shout takes as well as some other unused clips.

Nintendo All-Star! Daihanto! Smash Brothers! Smash Bros.! Mini! Giga Bowser!

Harrington had worked with Geoff Manning, voice announcer from Smash 64, on other projects in the past, but didn't know he was involved in Smash at that point. To this day, Harrington considers his role in Melee his claim to fame and is very impressed with the legacy of the title. The game's menus were designed by Michiko Takahashi, who created them to feel futuristic, technical, and slick. They were created to give the player a sense of awe and excitement and were deliberately set apart from other game menus. Especially when combined with the main menu music, the experience intended to get the player hyped and ready for battle. Here's an early concept of the character selection screen, which originally was going to have animated characters on screen when selected like in Smash 64. While the majority of these animations would go unused, part of them can still be seen in the victory animations for some of the characters. If you were looking closely, Lastly, you will have noticed that the clone characters slide out from underneath their base character counterparts. This was planned to be in the final menu but was scrapped last second, but the clone characters are still offset from the rest of the CSS icons. Originally, each character would have an all-star intro scene. While they wouldn't be used in the final version of the game, they were all completed and you can see them here.

Ganondorf.

Young Link.

Link. Zelda. Sheikah. Somos. Kirby! Ice Climbers! Ness! Fox! Funko!

Peach! Speaking of unused animations, Master Hand and Crazy Hand had 4 animations that were cut from the final game. Here's what they would have looked like.

"You too!" "Mr.

Game Watch!" "Marth!" "Roy!" In the end, the character selection screen would forgo animations altogether. Using portraits of characters instead. Here is an extremely early version of this menu. Some other scrapped features included an 8-player mode, which could barely run on GameCube hardware, a trophy battle mode, where you could exchange trophies with friends, and a Melee News Flash portal, which would allow players to obtain tips and tricks on how to improve their skills from the website. None of these modes got too far along, though, before they were cut. At least 2 partially complete items were scrapped during development. A timed mine item, which used the following texture and sound effect, would have been the second GoldenEye 007 reference in the game. A blindfold item was planned, with affected characters being temporarily blinded for a while. While characters were animated for it, the item itself would not be included in the final game. Like in Smash 64, Final Smash moves were planned also, but ended up being scrapped due to hardware limitations. Here are some of the sounds recorded for this feature. "Let's-a go!" "Ooyaa!" "Let's dance!" Several in-game fanfares for single-player modes were made that were actually left out in the final game. Here's some of them.

"Super Smash Bros. Melee" is taking shape.

Despite some minor cuts, Super Smash Bros. Melee was taking shape. The team at HAL had jumped into high gear since day one, and good thing they did too. E3 was right around the corner, and luckily the pieces were falling into place. A playable demo of the build was created for event kiosks, so players would get an early glimpse before release. And even more impressively, Melee would be the first game revealed for the GameCube and would feature the opening movie Sakurai and team had been working on for the past 4 months. This was just the reveal Sakurai wanted. [MUSIC] On May 17th, the Electronics Expo 2001 event had began. Nintendo's presence this year was all about the GameCube's upcoming release, as they had shown off early prototypes of the console the previous year. This was the moment Sakurai had been waiting for, the grand reveal of Super Smash Bros. Melee, the world's first taste of what the GameCube could offer. Understandably, Sakurai was nervous. He hoped fans would react positively to the reveal. Satoru Iwata gave a brief introduction to Nintendo's plans for the the console and what consumers could expect. He then handed it over to Shigeru Miyamoto to properly introduce the console.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Oh my God! Oh my God! Yeah!

The opening movie was a hit. On the same day, the team launched the Super Smash Bros. Melee version of the Smash Bros. Fist called "News Flash: Smash Bros. Fist," which began detailing public information about the game. It had a recap of the information presented at E3, and regular updates directly from Sakurai and team. Melee's opening movie caught the attention of the then-CEO of Sonic Team, Yuji Naka, where he approached Sakurai and asked if Sonic could be included in the game's roster. Since the game was already too far along, Sakurai had to decline, but was flattered. Similarly, Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear franchise, phoned Sakurai and asked if Solid Snake could be added to the game's roster. The request originated from his son, who was a huge fan of the Super Smash Bros. game on Nintendo 64 and wanted to see one of his father's creations on it. For similar reasons, Sakurai had to decline. The next day, a playable demo of Melee was featured on the E3 show floor. It featured a partially complete build of the game with characters removed from the character selection screen, including Zelda, as she was not yet revealed. The only playable characters were Bowser, Fox, Captain Falcon, Ness, Mario, Link, Samus, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Pikachu. Games were 1-4 player matches with 3 minutes each. Here is some footage of this early build of the game. "Mario!" First, let's go over the stages shown at the event. At playable kiosks, a promotional video would loop showing off Melee's content, including the stages. What you're seeing now are some of the least changed from the final version, but as we continue you'll begin to see more significant differences. The seals you're seeing here are actually Topi from the Japanese version of the game, which is actually not a beta difference but a regional difference present in the final game. Pokémon Stadium was only shown with a completely blank screen in the background, however other material created around this this time, shows a fire energy symbol from the Pokémon Trading Card Game as a placeholder. Rainbow Cruise looks significantly different. Unfortunately, no gameplay footage exists of this version of the stage. Incredibly brief footage of early Battlefield and Final Destination designs are also shown. An early version of Mushroom Kingdom would have had pipes like in Smash 64's version. Big Blue's cars were initially larger. An early version of Green Greens had a darker, wider design and wispy, continually blowing wind. Fourside was simpler, lacking the multicolored lights featured in the final version. Brinstar had no Chozo in the background at this point. Yoshi's Island was much larger, with more rotating blocks and moving note blocks. [FOREIGN] Fountain of Dreams had a darker color palette and only had 2 platforms instead of 3 in the final version. Yoshi's Story was a much larger stage initially, with a curved path, a walk-off section, and blue offstage platforms. It also had levers connected to these platforms, which may have been used to move them. Temple had additional brown platforms and an elevator on the right part of the stage. [FOREIGN] You can still see this part of the stage in the final game by viewing the special movie. Great Bay's laboratory was in the foreground rather than the background, and players could actually enter into it. There were originally 3 steel beams instead of 5, which actually more closely resembled the area from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Here's some gameplay footage of the stage. [Japanese] Adventure Mode's Mushroom Kingdom stage had an orange block not used in the final version, along with some more subtle background differences.

"Mushroom Kingdom" in Japanese: "Mushroom Kingdom" in English.

There was no checkered flag at the end of the stage. Adventure Mode also played a fanfare upon level completion that would go unused in the final game, except for a brief period during the special movie. "Game set." "Do one more single player. Is there another level?" "Yeah, there's another level.

Right now. Right now.

Mario, and then you go on to the next level." "Actually—" Adventure Mode's Escape Brinstar stages text originally said "Go Ahead" instead of "Code Red." Another unused fanfare can be heard here. As the coming soon screen appears. "I'm home!" "Oh no!" "That's it!" Lastly, we can see some early and unfinished animations, decreased knockback from moves, and sound effects. Sakurai noticed E3 attendees acclimating well to the GameCube controller despite never having held one before, which encouraged him. In just a couple of days, Sakurai witnessed players mastering the game's controls, which renewed his determination to do his best for Smash Bros. fans. The opening movie shown at E3 would be featured in commercials and promotional materials for the GameCube, even showing before the film Pokémon Forever in theaters on July 7th. As its popularity spread to promote the game, Sakurai discovered fans were reading into the cinematic a bit more than he had intended. Fans speculated that characters seen in the opening movie, including Ridley from Metroid, Wolf from Star Fox, and Mr. Saturn from the MOTHER series, would be hidden fighters in Melee's roster. So in early August, Sakurai made a post about it on the news FlashSite, stating that not all characters that appeared in the opening movie would be playable characters in Smash. On August 24th, an early build of Melee was used in a tournament called Premium Fight featured at Spaceworld 2001. Any convention center attendees were free to participate. The version of the game had a question mark in Zelda's spot as she was not yet revealed as a fighter. Sakurai misleadingly called it Sheik's spot, claiming she was not yet in a playable state. The quarterfinals were comprised of 32 players split into 8 groups of 4 each. After fighting single 4-player 2-minute time matches each, eventually 8 players were left for the semifinals with the same rules. The final 2 players faced off in a stock match to determine the winner, with Yasuhito Murufushi placing first as Mario over Yuta Suzuki, who played Kirby, achieving second place. Muru Fushi won a copy of Melee and a Nintendo GameCube upon launch for his tournament win. It was crunch time for development, and the game would undergo some last-minute changes, including removing a Pokémon from the Poké Ball item, Ditto. Ditto was intended to take the form of the summoner and assist the player during the fight. Ditto was scrapped since it was far too late in development to keep the Pokémon. However, the item descriptions were already sent off to Nintendo Power for the official Melee guide, and As a result, Ditto's information was printed. Its entry says, "Ditto will transform into the player who threw the Poké Ball, then join up with him or her for a short time." A small Ditto cameo remains in the game, however, in Tournament Mode. Sakurai and team were unsure if they would be able to release on time. With a date slated for November, they'd be cutting it close. There was a fairly long bug report, and the team at HAL needed some extra help. Thankfully, none other than Satoru Iwata would save the day, taking a break from his executive leadership responsibilities at Nintendo for 3 weeks and became the acting head of debugging at HAL. He did a complete code review of the game, fixing bugs as he saw them, and also pulled in the entire team to help. Due to this boost in productivity, the Japanese NTSC build was ready on October 31st, 2001, just in time for production. Sakurai and HAL's hard work was about to pay off. At this point, nearly 200 people were involved in Super Smash Bros. Melee's development, and many eager fans were looking to add the game to their fledgling GameCube collection. "MAYDAY!" Super Smash Bros. Melee released on November 21st, 2001 in Japan, with a December 23rd North American release the same year. Each region had two revisions, with builds finished on November 22nd and February 13th, 2002, respectively. They were released soon thereafter, with Revision 2 also being released in Korea. A third revision, which was unique to the PAL region, was finished on March 13th, 2002, releasing in Europe on May 24th and in Australia on May 31st that same year. year. Some minor differences existed between them, including some balance updates to characters' movesets as well as fixing some bugs and improving load times. 3 of the fixes were removing a mysterious third eye from the Daisy trophy, a second jab from Ganondorf while possessing the bunny hood, and a Link boomerang glitch. Regional differences included an enemy swap on Adventure Mode's Icicle Mountain to reflect the NES's regional differences, the Perfect Dark GoldenEye item and trophy mentioned earlier, and some trophy room differences.

Nintendo Oro Star GameCube de dai ranto! Atarashi wa sa! Atarashi character! Atarashi item! Gakuten mitsu gu dai jakuten!

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] The game sold over 350,000 units in just the first week in Japan and sold an additional 250,000 copies in the United States. In the first 9 days. Despite being released in the final months of the year, Melee would still manage to be the 19th best-selling game of 2001. Over 7 million total units were sold in its lifetime, making Melee the most sold GameCube game ever, with about 3 in 4 GameCube owners possessing the title. It initially retailed for $49.99 and would become part of the GameCube's Player Choice series and even become part of its own GameCube Wii U bundle on August 24th, 2005 for $99.99. The game received consistently high praise from critics and fans alike, receiving scores of 9.6 out of 10 from IGN, 8.9 out of 10 from GameSpot, and 10 out of 10 from Eurogamer. After release, Sakurai continued to answer fans in a special Q&A section of the Melee News Flash website. He talked a bit about development, responding directly to fan questions, and hinted at hidden game secrets. The final post by Sakurai on the site was on February 8th, 2002. It stated: The final announcement. In May 2001, we started the News Flash Smash Bros. website. This entry marks the conclusion of that series. Since this game's on a new system, we decided to keep a constant flow of information about its characters and contents before it went on sale. I should mention, I planned for what I heard about and for any snags, so I'm so glad we were able to reach this point without any issues. As for whether the time spent on this felt like it was drawn out or it went by quickly, I'd say it felt like an eternity. But that might just be how making a sequel seems to be. I think the reason I was able to keep these posts going for so long was that Smash had a lot of content to post about, and because of the help managing these posts by my staff. Thank you all so much. It might not seem like much, but this website provides an explanation for just one game without any fluff like fiction or side stories. Compared to the actual development of the game, this is only a handful of all of our information. I have a hunch that you'll be able to play it in all sorts of ways. This hunch that I'm writing about is not just my preconceived notions of the game. I often think about players who are completely new to gaming playing Melee. Of course, they'll be reading the contents of this site while playing the game. Anyways, thank you very much for checking out this website. Super Smash Bros. Director Masahiro Sakurai, February 8th, 2002. Due to the existence of hidden characters in the game, with unique and sometimes unusual unlock criteria, a widespread hoax spread that Sonic the Hedgehog was an unlockable fighter in the game. An obviously edited photo by today's standards circulated the internet, convincing some fans. At one point, to respond to this, Nintendo updated the FAQ section of the Melee product page on Nintendo.com to include a question about whether or not Sonic or Knuckles were in the game, which included the response, "No, they are not." Almost immediately after the game's release, special event in Japan called Jump Festa 2002 would host the first Melee tournament featuring the final version of the game. The event was held at Makuhari Messe International Exhibition Hall on December 22nd and 23rd, 2001. First place teams each got a trophy and a copy of Melee, with the second place teams getting two Game Boy Advance games, and third place teams getting two Melee-themed bandanas and Melee-themed stickers. While the main event was a doubles bracket, a singles free-for-all side event called "Winning Brawl" was free to enter by anyone, with prizes being a Melee bandana or t-shirt to anyone who won at least 2 matches. The 4 finals matches were fully recorded with commentary and released on gold-colored GameCube discs at Toys "R" Us tournaments the next year. Shortly after Jump Festa, Nintendo partnered with Japan Railways to hold a stamp collecting contest for Melee. Passengers had to collect stamps from various stations. Participants were also given a chance to win a Melee lunchbox or Nintendo GameCube. There were only 30 GameCube winners. Mario, Yoshi, Bowser, and Peach were the stamps passengers would get, with Pikachu, Kirby, Link, and Mario being the pins you could receive as a reward. A few more Melee products would become available to fans through magazine subscriptions. On August 27th, 2002, The New Japan Philharmonic performed an arrangement of Melee's music in Tokyo Bunka Kaikan Hall in Yuno, Tokyo. Tickets cost ¥3,000, which is about $25 USD, and had gone on sale June 17th. A CD was released in Japan of the recording, with the December 2002 issue of Famitsu Cube Advance and the United States in January 2003 as a gift to subscribers of Nintendo Power, an official Nintendo magazine. It served as the official soundtrack of Melee with 15 arranged tracks, some of which being medleys of multiple in-game songs. EarthBound was the only franchise with a character not to have music featured in the performance. In a 2005 Official Nintendo Magazine issue, a set of 52 Melee battle cards were included. Half of them were character cards and the other half were stage cards, which could be used as an actual game with rules you could play. Another early tournament, Toy Festa, was a Toys "R" Us national tournament in Japan with 15,000 participants across all store locations. Store-by-store qualifying matches began on August 17th, 2002, with finals on August 31st. National tournament qualifiers began that same day, with finals on October 13th. Store-by-store qualifiers were limited to 16 people per tournament and had 8 finalists. Each participant who entered received a random Melee-themed postcard set, with the Smash Bros. bandana offered as a special prize as they were available. First place winners received a special Melee pin badge and special Smash Bros. movie disc, with second place also receiving the movie disc. There were 124 Toys "R" Us locations in Japan, which meant that there were 124 participants in the broader national tournament. Anyone who qualified for the national tournament by winning the store-by-store matches got 2 expense-paid invitations to the tournament, one for them and one for a family member, and got to stay at Shin-Takanawa Grand Prince Hotel with all travel expenses paid for by Nintendo and Toys "R" Us. The winner received a trophy and a Toys "R" Us gift certificate worth roughly $1,000. All participants were able to obtain a Melee save file which gave them Captain Olimar, Mario and Yoshi, and Samus and Mask trophies, the latter two of which were impossible to obtain otherwise. Around this time, players began to uncover Melee's many hidden techniques. As a consequence of Melee's tighter, faster gameplay framework, the team at HAL Laboratory had discovered some physics quirks during late development. However, by this time, release was rapidly approaching and had arrived, so they were left in. One of these quirks was a specific manipulation of directional air dodging in which a character could come into contact with a the ground and continue their momentum in a kind of sliding movement. Although the team didn't think much of this exploit, it would later become a cornerstone of the competitive playstyle of the game, dubbed "wavedashing" by its community. In one of the website Q&A posts, Sakurai even acknowledged its utility when a fan brought it up, saying, "It can be used as a kind of backdash." Similarly, smooth landing or L-canceling was deliberately included, as Sakurai acknowledged in a 2015 interview. In fact, Sakurai had intentionally hidden a number of techniques in the game that were either only hinted at or completely left out of the game's guides that had come out. He made his comments regarding them as ambiguous as possible so players could experiment on their own and figure out their own applications. However, he wasn't able to anticipate the degree to which fans grew the game to be as competitive as it did become. Using a combination of these deliberately hidden techniques and a host of physics oversights. Witnessing the results of this, Sakurai was regretful that the advanced techniques had reached these heights. As he reflected, he realized he'd wanted to deepen the game past Smash 64, but this ambition was carried farther than he had planned, as he felt the accessibility of the game suffered as a result. Nevertheless, he still considers the game the sharpest in the series and acknowledges how great it feels to play. At this point, Sakurai believed he was done with Smash, and was very pleased with where Melee left things. He and HAL Labs had achieved the unthinkable: a fun platform fighting game that also maintained the integrity of dozens of Nintendo's most cherished franchises, all in just over a year. After the release of Kirby Air Ride in 2003, Sakurai left HAL to pursue his own interests. By 2005, Iwata, who had become the president of Nintendo, had an idea to re-release Melee for the upcoming Nintendo Revolution console with online support, but decided to reach out to Sakurai just in case he was interested in returning to the Smash Bros. franchise for a sequel. Within the landscape of video games, Super Smash Bros. Melee holds a special place in history. Due to the love and dedication of Sakurai and the whole HAL Laboratory team, this ambitious sequel is considered to be one of the best video games of all time and enjoys a vibrant scene to this day. If you're interested in continuing the story of Melee after release, where a grassroots competitive community would emerge and take the game to heights not thought possible by the developers, I encourage you to watch The Smash Bros. Documentary and its follow-up, Metagame, both of which I'll link in the description. In fact, I recommend checking out the video description to see all the sources and the credits that made this video possible. Special shoutout to Source Gaming for translating the many online articles and interviews I was able to share with you today. If you've made it this far into the video, I wanna say thank you. And if by chance, anybody who worked on Super Smash Bros. Melee is watching this video, I especially wanna thank you. I hope I told a somewhat accurate account of what happened, and at least captured part of what you may have experienced. If nothing else, I hope I at least rekindled some fond memories for you. Please know that even 20 years after the game's release, Super Smash Bros. Melee is my favorite game of all time. For anyone who got value out of this video or learned something new, I would appreciate any actions you could take that help more people see this video. If you'd like to support me and my work further, I've linked my Patreon in the video description. Working on this video was a labor of love, and I hope you found the end product enjoyable. So with all that being said, thank you and farewell.

Congratulations!