Settle it in Smash

Gaming has become one of the primary sources of entertainment in the last few years. Not only is competitive gaming on the rise, even being featured on ESPN, but video games are being played casually much more often than they were just a few years ago. New games have been released throughout the years, the most recent being Red Dead Redemption 2 and Fallout 76. There is one more highly anticipated game set to release this year, that game being a brand new installment in a fighting game series developed by Nintendo known as “Super Smash Bros.”

The Super Smash Bro. games are two-dimensional fighting games in which you can play as a variety of different Nintendo characters from multiple different games. The Smash Bros. roster consists of the most important and most well-known characters from Nintendo’s history, such as Mario from the iconic Super Mario games, Link from the Legend of Zelda franchise, Kirby from the hit platforming adventure, and many more. Every fighter has a unique set of abilities that is inspired by their abilities in their original games. Each character has a different playstyle than another, so the possibilities of how you want to fight are endless. Super Smash Bros. was first introduced to the world in 1999 on the Nintendo 64, and new installments to the series have been released on different Nintendo systems over the years. Every mainstream Nintendo system has had a Smash Bros. game on it since the Nintendo 64 days, making it somewhat of a tradition among both the developers and the players. Nintendo’s newest system, the Nintendo Switch, has been the only exception until now.

On December 7, 2018, the Nintendo community will rejoice as the highly anticipated “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate” will come to store shelves. This new title will be exclusive to the Nintendo Switch, and will be the fifth title in the series. This new game will feature a total of seventy-one characters (seventy-four depending on how you count the character Pokemon Trainer, which is counted as one character but has three different beasts to fight with) rather than the mere fifty-eight playable fighters Ultimate’s predecessor, Super Smash Bros. 4 for the Wii U and 3DS, had after all characters were released and unlocked. The fighter count for Smash Ultimate will increase over time, as there will be multiple paid D.L.C. (Downloadable Content) characters released after the game itself launches. Nintendo has confirmed it will take about a year to reveal and release all of these mysterious characters, and the fans are eager to know who these new fighters will be.

The Nintendo community was begging for a new Smash game on the Nintendo Switch since before the popular system was even released, and were practically foaming at the mouth for the reveal until March 8, 2018, when the game was finally teased during a digital presentation called a Nintendo Direct that was live-streamed on YouTube and Twitch. On that spectacular day, gamers around the world screamed and cried tears of joy when what is arguably the most beloved Nintendo series was revealed for their most advanced system yet. Nintendo knew that their fanbase would have infinite hype, so they even made sure to start off the teaser trailer for Smash Ultimate by disguising it as a different game, making the sudden reveal even more unexpected than it already was. One streamer who goes by the nickname “Etika” was doing his best to refrain himself from thinking about Smash before and during the Nintendo Direct, as he feared he would get his hopes up for nothing. Etika, his 800,000 subscribers, and millions of other loyal Nintendo fans got their hopes up on March 8, but for a good reason.

The developers of this game have worked day and night for years to perfect the game and satisfy fans, and they surely have. Many people, myself included, have been counting down the days until the games’ release. There are just days now until the launch of this creative new fighting game, and the players who intend on buying the game are filled with more excitement and anticipation on each passing day.