Super Smash Bros. Melee - Mechanics, Dynamics, and the overall system

One of the games that I spent a considerable amount of time playing back in the day was Super Smash Bros. Melee. This was the sequel to the original Super Smash Bros. game for Nintendo 64 (made for the Nintendo Gamecube).

The game involved choosing a specific character to play as, where characters were various Nintendo gaming franchise characters such as Mario, Link, Fox, Donkey Kong and Kirby, and using them to knock other players out of the stage boundary using various moves. The game stages were 2D and characters were only allow to progress forward and backward.

Mechanics:

Each character had their own unique set of skills, as well as common moves between all of them. Every character had the same buttons for jump, block and basic attack (punch or kick). Contrary to traditional fighting games, the player inflicting the most damage does not guarantee victory. The objective of the game is to knock the opponents outside of the stage boundary. The most damage a character accumulates, the increase in likelihood that he/she will experience stronger knock back effects. Any type of attack in game causes a knock back effect where the magnitude of the effect is determined by the amount of damage the receiver has already accumulated.

Dynamics:

Throughout the course of a fight, there are many external factors which affect the tide of the battle. Two main factors, the stage where the battle is being fought and random appearances of items are dynamic events which randomly happen and can affect the result of the game. One obviously example, is when the characters fight in the Starfox stage where they are fighting on top of a gigantic battleship from the Starfox franchise. Starfox fighter ships will randomly spawn during the battle and start to shoot at the characters. If a character was caught of out position (shot by the fighter ships), he/she might end up accumulating a enormous amount of damage, allowing their opponents to have an easier time knocking them out of the stage.

The overall system:

There are many many different stages to choose from, and there are some stages where there are no dynamic affects which allow the battle to be less influenced by the stage. Each character in the game is somewhat balanced, characters that do lots of damage have a harder time landing their attacks, and ones that do less damage, are typically more swift. This allows the overall system of the game to appear fair which allows it to attract a wide audience of players. The move executions are standard across all characters, making the variety of characters that a novice player can choose to be numerous. Of course, this game also scales for hardcore players as well, since lots of moves can be strung together for combos, skills can be parried and dodged as well. The fighting is also very fast paced, which makes the gameplay more intensive and focused. I believe that the ability to create a game which is easy to pick up for new players and be able to retain them by having a high skill ceiling to reach is an ideal focus for a game, as shown by the incredible popularity of this game.