"Super Smash Bros. Ultimate"/Nintendo
Still images from "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate" look like classic works of Roman art, but with modern video game characters.
- Nintendo's biggest game of the year, "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate," is now available.
- Good news: It's an incredibly impressive game that's ridiculously fun to play, alone and with friends.
- I've been playing the "Smash Bros." franchise since the first one. "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate" is the best game in the series.
There are hundreds of Super Mario games. Even "Mario Kart" is getting up there in sequels - the latest entry is "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe," which is actually more like the fifteenth Mario Kart game.
But the "Smash Bros." series is an outlier.
Despite the franchise originally launching way back in 1999 on the Nintendo 64, Nintendo has only made five games in the series. The fifth game, "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate," just launched on the Nintendo Switch - and it's truly excellent.
Beyond just being a fun game to play, "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate" is an exhaustive, interactive encyclopedia of gaming. In what other game can Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario, Solid Snake, and Cloud Strife fight to the death at Hyrule Castle? In what other game can you listen to literally hundreds of songs from the last 30 years of gaming?
Like so many other aspects of "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate," the answer is simple: There's nothing else like it.
Having spent the last week playing it non-stop, and the last 20 years playing "Smash Bros." games, I've got a lot to say about what makes "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate" so incredibly good.