A Super Smash Bros. Review from a First Time Player
It seemed like it was all tongues and eggs.
I was dragged into a dark, shady dorm room to play Super Smash Bros, despite my many protests that I had never played before. The room was quite crowded, in fact. There were probably more than six people in that small college single. Definitely no more than eight. There were exactly seven people in that room.
“Come on, it will be fun!” No one actually said that. That’s just an example of the type of persuasive things people were saying to get me to play. Truth is there were no needs for words. I was dying for a chance to kill my friends. In a video game.
When the moment of truth came, I chose to be Yoshi. At least as much as one can truly choose to be their Super Smash Bros character. Surely for me it was really no choice at all—it was destiny. Holding the controller in my hand, I waited for the battle to begin—left thumb caressing the joystick, right thumb hovering over A, index fingers resting lightly on L2 and R2, because L1 and R1 are just uncomfortable.
I have a flashback. It’s all black and white. It’s a Thursday night. Bowling night. I’m eight years old. I’m in a bowling alley. Smoke is swirling around my head, I have a handful of quarters. I’m playing Mortal Combat with my sister. Or maybe it was Street Fighter. I hit the red button. I hit the other red button. I hit both red buttons at the same time. Combo. Nice. I played in that arcade my whole childhood. And it all led up to this moment.
I’m rudely brought back to the present by the shouting: “Press A! Press A!”
“I am pressing A!” I shouted back. Then I looked down. I was pressing B. “Whoops.”
The arena loads. Or maybe it’s called a stage. A mysterious egg appears on the screen. I’m baffled, but also intrigued. Suddenly Yoshi emerges from the egg. He pokes his butt out to the audience and looks over his shoulder—coy and deadly. As surely as my controller was connected to the Wii, Yoshi’s soul connected to mine. I pointed out Yoshi’s amazing entrance to everyone else, they weren’t impressed.
“You should have been Kirby.” I thought about that disgusting pink blob of a monster. An almost perfect sphere. Shoes soaked with the blood of his enemies. The same blood smeared across his cheeks.
The battle was beginning. I was crouching. I was jumping. I was kicking. Incessantly, I stuck out my tongue. I turned into an egg and rolled across that stage. Everyone else was fighting.
“God,” “Nietzsche,” and “Buddha” all in a rainbow slaughter. Part of me thought that perhaps this was the true reality and my life was just a video game. Part of me thought surely this is the chaos that will destroy humanity. Part of me thought that my friends were really pretentious.
I realized that if I touched someone with my tongue, I put them in a little egg time out. I never felt so powerful in my entire life. The other players found this very annoying. I wasn’t a threat, but I had to be killed. “Jesus” particularly became outraged when he saw me lowered to the ground, watching the battle from above. I rarely came last out of the four players. Subtlety was my middle name. (Actually my middle name is Yoshisaur. My full name is T. Yoshisaur Munchakoopas. Yoshi is just a nickname.)
I only made one kill the entire time I played. I don’t know when. I don’t know how. But Yoshi tasted blood. And he liked it.
9/10 I would recommend this game to a friend.
-“Sulla” (Danielle Smith)