One of Nintendo’s Really Good Decisions was the decision to launch the Super Smash Brothers franchise.

A fighter that doesn’t take itself seriously… pretty much at all, while still providing silly amounts of replay value and being a game that pretty much anyone can pick up and play. Yes, folks, this is a win.

I think what initially won me over was the hammer. See, I grew up playing the original Donkey Kong. The original Donkey Kong includes a hammer, which kills everything, as it plays this little ditty. I had aaaaaaaalmost forgotten about this hammer, and it itself had aaaaaaaalmost faded into obscurity, when Super Smash Bros. came out. And they had a hammer. I sort of died little bit from the sheer levels of Awesome and Win.

You know what other item was great?

The freakin’ BASEBALL BAT.

Because if you time it juuust right, it’s a one-hit KO. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing that sparkle on your bat as time seems to slow down riiiight before it happens…

…

And that noise. CRACK.

It’s the most satisfying noise in the world.

I can’t find any good vids on YouTube but YOU KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT.

So, anyway. Pikachu was my favorite character, because come on, it’s freaking Pikachu. We all know what happens when Pikachu gets serious:

I got pretty good with him. I mean, I was never one of those super-die-hard SSB players, but I could hold my own. One time for a school project I went to some other student’s house and we played SSB for a little while. The other kids (well, we were college age, but you know) tried to talk me into playing and at first I refused, cause it had been a while and I was rusty, but finally I relented and grabbed a controller and bust out Pikachu. I won. It was glorious.

Ahh, good times.

Really though, classic game right here. I never really got into the successors, though that’s mostly due to lack of time more than anything. (Oh, and not owning a Wii kind of complicates things.) But yeah. One of the better things Nintendo has ever done? Undoubtedly.