I had Brawl, but I experienced Melee at a cousin's house. We had an exchange I can't forget. Me: "You're totally beating the crap outta that weird cat alien!" (Mewtwo) Cousin: "That's me." Me: "Oh."
Me (to my cousin while playing the original Super Smash Bros): OMG, Super Smash Bros has a sequel called Melee, but sadly its on the Gamecube *Goes back to my cousin house the following month and they have a Gamecube and Melee*
If you'd like to check out more games with a strong y2k aesthetic just browse the Dreamcast library because there's tons of them, especially stuff developed in house by Sega themselves or by Capcom. Those two companies knew how to play to that visual's strengths.
Years ago, I made a series of SmashBoards forum posts discussing it! I was going to make a game, but unfortunately it's just fallen far down my priority list. I'd love to make it one day, though, or at least art-direct it. It's something I spent a lot of time on understanding fundamentally and wanting to expand on and see more of. A couple of things I learned that weren't mentioned in the video: 1. The art direction for Melee, Brawl, and Kirby Air Ride (a game aesthetically between Melee and Brawl I'd say) was headed by Sakurai's wife, Michiko Sakurai. I wrote a probably poorly-translated letter to HAL Laboratories years ago asking if there were any way to get her consultation for a list of inspirations. Unfortunately, it seems she was not in a position to take such requests and/or HAL was not able. 2. One of the visual themes not mentioned here is what I'd call "Elegance". There's also mystery, mysticism, beauty, serenity, isolation. Whether it's just visually with levels like Fountain of Dreams, or musically with orchestral flutes, trumpets, and pianos, there's a sort of grand, "serious" undertone to everything. There's some silliness like Kirby and Ness' taunts, but the presentation lends itself to, as mentioned, "tech demo" vibes. And what's the best way to do that? Elegance. Power, yet restraint. Beauty, yet functionality. 3. A big factor is actually a simple thing to do with the lighting, though I don't know the exact details of how it works: the shadows are almost always black. In real life and in most art, "bounce light" is a phenomenon where surrounding light/color will still cast onto the shadow of an object. There's also atmospheric color, etc. It's complicated, however, and so games in the 90s-mid 2000s had this "eerie" or "spacey" feel to them because that's how things would look in more remote parts of space. 4. The isolation plays a big role into it imo. Everything from the sound design like the hit/high damage sound, to the well-crafted-but-still-calculated remixes, to the announcer and character voices echoing lend itself to this idea. Synths are limited and not very playful. The orchestral instruments used are usually just the ones considered "acceptable" by those who were traditional, successful, well-regarded composers who wanted to elevate video games in the zeitgeist as something serious, whereas prior technological limitations relegated video games to being seen as fun, childish, not high-class. Also, most backgrounds of stages are usually empty in Melee. 5. The technological stages play a big part in it, but it's not just ANY tech. It's a very, very advanced tech. Pristine. Made with care. Powerful, but also beautiful. Intricate, detailed, but not absurdly so. Made almost... with foresight. Like they were arenas crafted by entities who knew what they'd be used for. And you don't. You can't understand them. Not as much as they did, at least. It invokes a certain vibe, especially when it comes to space objects, because even with our modern technology, that shit is hard to do. I could write more, but I didn't want to go on too long! Somebody let me know if they want to pay somebody to advise them on/help them with making a game like this! I have no programming prowess, but I can help!
I honestly ADORE the Melee background aesthetic. Battlefield/FD, Target stage, and even Race to the Finish have some of the coolest Y2K looks I've ever seen in gaming (glad you pointed these out btw). These awesome looks are one of the biggest reasons I LOVE the GameCube Era of Nintendo.
I've always loved the target stage background cause it reminds me of the FBI VHS warning you'd see in the beginning of each tape 😂 or the "COMING SOON TO VHS" screen with boxes sliding into place
11:26 most accurate description I’ve heard about melee’s art style. It’s like seeing those late 90’s/2000’s silicon graphic renders you’d see on posters and magazines come to life. That’s what made me really appreciate melee as a kid
The metal Bros was so legit though. I love how they just shut down like missiles, and they just get up ready for the next task. Like they totally have zero empathy for themselves, the player, and probably like it’s whole existence.
One interesting thing to note about the Fighting Wire Frames is that it's implicated that Master Hand did not create them, but rather some mysterious character or entity that we never see or hear about again, creating false characters, not unlike Tabuu or Galeem/Darkhon. "Who built the Fighting Wire Frames and to what purpose remains a mystery. They're a simple collection of wires which house a sparse framework of bones and organs that lends them a rather disturbing appearance." - Male Wire Frame trophy description. This description is present in both English and Japanese versions. There's a possibility that there's a greater evil at play in Melee that never really gets expanded upon.
An Interesting theory but unlikely imo. Crazy hand is never said to be able to create things like Master Hand, only destroy. I think that would undermine the hands' duality and contrast so I don't buy it.
Tabuu could be involved with their origin, but they’re certainly in Hand’s custody now. (Reminds me of the Subspace enemies in Smash Run) Perhaps Subspace Emissary wasn’t his first rodeo trying to take over the World of Trophies? He’s likely stuck in Subspace to begin with cuz Hand whooped his ass before
Given their technological nature, I like to think that was Brawl's Ancients making them with their tech, before they subsequently disappeared prior to Brawl's own events. They, along with their computers then producing the Alloys in Brawl, were most likely attempting to mimic the clone-making abilities of the supernatural forces that are Tabuu, Galeem, and Dharkon.
I always called Melee "the season finale of Nintendo." It felt like a culmination of the N64 era, with everything on the line for middle school-aged me. It really inspired me as the fanfic writer I am today, and how I think about games.
It felt and was so new at the time. This and Metroid Prime was crazy alien to my younger self at the time. 3D gaming was still in its infancy and the graphical leaps we were seeing at the time were insane. Definitley a sense of magic we don't have today and haven't had in a long time
Indeed, this is built into the way Mr. Sakurai looked at the game. Smash 64 is kids toys being played with as shown in the intro. Melee is about more realism and mayhem. More dramatic. Crazy hand is there. Intense but serious.
the Gamecube in general had a vibe no other console could replicate. it truly felt like years of gaming had all led up to Melee, a celebration of everything Nintendo up to that point. while Brawl was my first Smash game and will always hold a special place in my heart, much of its content owes a debt of gratitude to Melee.
I love the way that CONEY described it in one of his videos where it doesn't feel like you're playing as Fox or Ness, but like fox.exe and ness.exe being loaded into a stage for battle, as the characters spawn in with a loading animation that all characters use instead of unique intros, which they never do in any other Smash game.
Melee is like one big creepypasta. For those that didn't have Internet (and even if you did you'd have unreliable information), all of these unlocks and strange changes would feel like you were going nuts. "And this one time out of nowhere, Luigi killed Mario!" "Then Bowser came back onto the stage and turned into a monster! Did I mention the SECOND Master Hand??" Even the seemingly random nature of character unlocks would feel bizarre. (I can only attest to the characters, I was never good enough as a kid for the wacky stuff)
Plenty of reliable info to be had in the early days of this game. Melee has 3 guides from 02 and 1 from 01 on gamefaqs. Not to mention the forums, and the abandonware forums hijacked as sub-forums.
This video is so validating to my younger self, who simultaneously loved and feared this game with no explanation as to why. The continue and game over screens made me run upstairs and hide for a few minutes just to make sure it was over, but I always looked forward to playing the game, despite my fears of it
Okay ! Because I had a love/hate relationship with this game growing up that I still have playing this game as an adult. I was re-playing this game very recently and still had that feeling.
I love hearing off moments when kids saw something adults made as entertainment without intending to make it an unsettling thing but they can't help but get creeped out by thinking about it too hard and taking it more seriously or not being as accustomed to the world as adults are. And this has a good mix of that and adjacent interesting concepts with the deep dives into the settings
I'm so freaking happy SOMEONE ELSE finally noticed and could put into words my exact feelings on Melee, its aesthetics, and its underlying themes of eeriness and mysteriousness that really make it stand out from every other smash game. No other game has ever evoked such wonder and intrigue in me while simultaneously feeling so unsettling. There truly is no other game like it, that's the reason it's my favorite smash game and my 2nd favorite game of all time.
Honestly, Melee has a sense of finality because it's the end of Classic Nintendo. After Melee, all of Nintendo changed. The Mario series received a dramatic redesign. Zelda went toon with even more dramatic stories, Metroid bloomed, Fire Emblem became a thing in the west. Melee feels like the end of 80s & 90s Nintendo.
@@Abner-gu3ve Brawl will never be superior to Melee in gameplay, the brawl feels slow, prepared for boring casual gameplays of 8 years old who cannot really compete. And I like Brawl a lot its superior in textures, size, yes, but never in gameplay, make you think of how much they screwed that aspect that they tried to make ALL the smash games after brawl more competitive, like Melee. That speaks volumes.
@@Abner-gu3ve I mean, I like Brawl a lot it's arguably my most nostalgic smash, but that literally has nothing to do with my comment on my love for Melee. Melee was an end of an era, Brawl was a relatively creative step in the "modernisation" of Nintendo
@mariodelgadogt if you're not all that into competitive smash, then melee is kinda eh. Brawl is better for casual play, which is actually most people who play smash.
When I was younger I used to be deathly afraid of glitching games and stuff like that. No-clipping into the dark void in a source game for the first time comes to mind. What always got me the most was wireframes cause they always freaked me out for the very reason you said in this video and I never even realised it. It's honestly ironic looking back cause now I really enjoy working with and making 3D models which requires paying attention to the wireframes and topology massively. Suppose it's an instance where fear can turn to admiration! Awesome video by the way, really well made :D
Reminds me of when I saw Debug footage of Melee, seeing that the space behind the camera in a stage was usually a black void, was really creepy to me. That, and seeing weird things that weren't supposed to be possible, like playing as Master Hand, and how prone to crashing the game was in Debug. It was like accessing something not meant to be handled by a normal kid (which it wasn't).
People can debate which Smash Game is the best, but to me aesthetically, Melee has the best style out of any Smash game. It's hopeful Y2K techno feel always stood out compared to the other games, great video.
As someone who grew up with Brawl and never played Melee, its so surreal seeing and hearing about all the little things people never seem to talk about. The discussion is always about the competitive scene, so the Classic Mode levels and cutscenes, and the side minigames like Break the Target and Race to the Finish, rarely ever get mentioned. Its like a peek into an alternate dimension.
Seconded, although I did play Melee right after Brawl myself. Interestingly I think this offers an insight on Brawl's aesthetic choices as well, as it feels intentionally designed to no longer feel as stiff and eerie as Melee and instead making the Smash universe look like it became its own world. I technically grew up on both at the same time, but Melee's Y2K aesthetic is going to stay unique in the Smash series for a long time imo. Both games almost feel like a pair, or a story told in two highly contrasting parts, while later games have felt more... samey and empty, imo. '^^
To me I love the Erie feel of 64 all the way to Brawl there was a serial and oddity to them. Like the stage 1-1 and 1-2 in Brawl and it's weird desolate waste land style that newer stages in Smash 4 and Ultimate just don't attempt to capture at all which at least for me is a bit sad but it what's makes 64 through Brawl absolutely memorable.
Glad that someone finally said this. Melee with its purple, red, and black colors, yellow text...the futuristic edge, the music, I fucking adore it. It's like no other game in the series, not just for its competitive edge. The fighting wire frames, the dark menu, hell, the Menu 2 theme has a blend of glee and dread to it that I can't explain. Target Test, Trophies, it just screams GameCube (which also has a dark purple aesthetic).
A really small detail with all the arcade mode cutscenes: nowadays it is customary to fade to black or white, or end on a cool final shot when ending a cutscene for a smoother transition. Melee's arcade mode cutscenes often feel like they just freeze. It looks borderline like the computer is frozen or glitched out, before you are then suddenly tossed into the gameplay. I think it adds to the eerieness.
Y2K / 2000s Era is very hard to describe especially if you didn't live through the early 2000s. The idea being ANYTHING 3-D was mind blowing at the time didn't even matter if it was going to age poorly. Just the simple expression of seeing these effects like rotoscoping, CGI, and Videogames becoming a respected art medium was enough to make people clamour with excitement. It's hard to describe what it's like when something is genuinely "New" but you know there's more to come. Like whenever we saw any graphic or special effect we always said "Just wait until 10 years from now and we'll be mindjacked into the games experiencing them real time" then technology peaked and reality came crashing down. Flying cars died during the 2000s. Which is a statement that might not mean anything to you but to me means everything. We didn't quite have a firm grasp what the future had in store. Nowadays? Everybody is a miserable prophet. Even my language might be too outdated to convey the time period.
Don't let the _Super Smash Bros. Melee_ renders distract you from the fact that Princess Daisy had a hidden third eye at the back of her head as one of the trophies.
@@ZombieaidZ yes furthermore she Can hover in smash. In OG Dragomball Tien claims levitation is angemerkt trait in his family ( and therefore not just being trained like in later DB)
Quite interesting, this whole video was the same thing that was floating around in my head for a long time when I was a child. That feeling of being in an empty virtual space that tried to make you feel good but the more you investigate you find somewhat uncomfortable details. Definitely this video is cinema!
SSB: A kid (Master Hand/Crazy Hand) plays with his Nintendo toys. SSBM: He grows up and works for Nintendo, creates a tech demo where many characters battle. The simulation-like vibes are due to his lack of experience in game design, and the game is left unfinished. SSBB: Angry that his game was cancelled, the designer finishes the game on his own, creating washed-up, post-apocalyptic versions of beloved Nintendo worlds (like Mushroomy Kingdom and the Subspace Emissary levels) out of spite. He creates Tabuu, a being intended to prevent the characters from escaping this world. Tabuu is defeated, of course, and the Nintendo characters return to their home worlds. SSB4: Nintendo finally accepts his game, and peacefully invites Nintendo characters to return in a formalized fighting tournament. Cut characters like Ice Climbers, Snake, Squirtle, Ivysaur, etc. decided not to return. SSBU: Nintendo returns to forcing competitors to return, this time pulling out all the stops to create the ultimate fighting game. However, disputes in leadership lead to a rift between two sides of the design team (Galeem and Darkhon), allowing the Nintendo characters to defeat both and break free of the game.
Great video, I honestly never thought about any of this in terms of Melee, but it gives me a lot of thought just about how this stuff goes into games, I love thinking about stuff like this and this video has helped SO MUCH.
I enjoyed this. It's funny how you feel about the art style. I only really feel that way about Yoshi. The sort of uncanny in-between of Mario 64 Yoshi and Mario World Yoshi. Otherwise I find it all very polished and great-looking, even today. It's not too detailed like Brawl, and not too simplistic (think the Classic mode trophies you unlock for each character). It's the perfect medium. And you're totally right, it is a time capsule of a particular point in history that I will cherish for the rest of my life. I also liked how you captured the mysterious part of Melee, which I haven't really seen explored before. I loved your theory-crafting section. Also, yes, I remember Galidor. And I loved it.
Glad to know that Melee's version of Race to the Finish doesn't fascinate just me :) You hit the nail on the head with that particular point, I was excited when you brought it up :D
And I like the idea that the reason everything feels "off," is because it's someone else distorted view of what a "Nintendo crossover" would look like. Like you're stuck in a kids fever dream who only sees the face value elements of everything coming together, like a loose idea swimming around the ether
The heavy reliance on N64 designs also adds a unique off-brand feeling to the game, I used to describe it feeling as if it were one of those bootleg Mexican toys that I find so often in markets before I knew they were based on N64 promotional renders, or even before I knew the N64 existed
So happy someone made a video about Melee's aesthetics! Personally, it's my favorite looking Smash game. Also, on a semi-related note, a possible reason for why the characters give you an "uncanny" feeling could be because they're based off how they looked like during the previous gens. Mario, for example, is based on his N64 artwork because Melee was in development before his modern redesign was finalized. Just another one of Melee's aesthetic quirks that makes it so cool to me!!
Melee feels weird as hell someone gets it This is such an interesting video idea. Examining the _smallest_ details in melee and explaining the vibe they gives off
this video is so freaking good. i have had these thoughts for years and have never been able to put it into words like you have here thank you for all the work you put into this!!
Thanks for making this video. I hardly ever see video essays about the game itself rather than about the minmaxing competitive scene or some drama video about a melee player texting kids or having beef with another player. While I don’t agree with all the vibes the game gave you, it’s great to listen to someone articulate the feelings they got from one of my favorite games.
I truly never thought such a video would exist if I didn't make it myself, so you can imagine how thrilled I was seeing that title! Melee was my first Smash game, and totally had kid me in awe with its level of depth and atmosphere. It was the first video game that really made me think about game worlds, their various details and implications. It's to this day my favorite Smash aesthetically, and I feel that the series has only been downhill since. I understand the current direction, and appreciate it for what it is, but Melee's desolate digitization (if I were to make up a name) was just so amazing, in the purest sense of the word.
That was partially why I wanted to make this video in the first place! I figured that if nobody else was gonna cover this topic, I might as well satisfy myself by doing the research and let everyone else reap the rewards.
Another thing that adds to the vibe of the game is the trophy section. It doesn't feel like a lot of these trophies were made for Melee, they feel like actual Nintendo vault assets that were just incorporated for the sake of padding the game with extra content, and as a result they have this weird, otherworldly vibe not seen since
This was a well-done video because I've always wondered why Melee has had this eeriness. Every point and case you mentioned has validity to it, especially the whole simulation theory. Glad you took the time to showcase this to everyone and give us an in-depth explanation of this topic. I believe what made this a cool aesthetic is the fact it makes you want to fight a big threat especially when the Warning Challenger Approaching appears when unlocking new characters or when you get to battle a monstrous version of Bowser at the end of Adventure Mode.
Melee’s aesthetic was fucking 2000’s to the core. Visually, execution and thought stimulating. Mf heros locked in a simulation. It all makes sense now!!
Something that sticks out to me is that it's a setup with no payoff. It gives off the vibes that maybe it's a simulation through context but never goes far enough to make it definitive and doesn't ever verify any kind of escape or even need to escape. There's a lot that's left unclear and unanswered, including if indeed it is a simulation then what the actual rules are and whether the characters within it are being rewarded or punished at any particular moment, and whether these are actually meant to be the characters at all or just recreations of them. There's an almost dreamlike weirdness to the whole thing, a smidge of familiarity that has fallen deep down into the uncanny valley. And I love that kind of thing. I love it when something makes itself mysterious by providing vague clues that may or may not be pointing towards something and leaves it open ended. I love it when things like this stay mysterious. Injecting detailed and complicated lore into this kind of thing ruins the very thing that makes them appealing to begin with. It's why I stopped liking things like Herobrine and The Backrooms. The mysteriousness is the appeal. Stripping this away forces the subject into a genre change, and you end up with some generic horror story that loses its novelty really fast and gets moved on from. Keeping the mystery alive keeps things interesting. There's room for endless speculation as long as nothing is made definitive. If everything is left up to your own imagination, you can find your own appeal that wouldn't be there in someone else's interpretation.
Man I'm so glad this video exists. I'm glad after so many years I've found someone who discusses Melee's vibes and style. As much as I loved this game as a kid it sure did creep me out lol. It feels like the starting point for a buncha lore and stuff for the series that kind of just never gets expanded upon. I wish we got like a melee 2 or something that had this style again and went further with it
Your video nailed Melee's aesthetic choice. The menu screen being eerie to the point I couldn't stay on the menu screen for too long without the irrational fear something unintended would happen. The weirdly realistic models, like Luigi and Peach always stood out to me the most due to lack of facial expressions and how cynical they are in the game(Luigi stomps on Mario, Peach throwing away Toad in her ending) they just felt like different characters at times.
It's always interesting to see people describe games like these as being eerie or unsettling. All of these aesthetics you're describing as eerie were very cool to me and my cousins. That being said, I can definitely see where you're coming from, it doesn't just feel like you projecting your own fears onto the game and treating that interpretation as fact. Regardless of the "vibe", it was nice to see someone actually talk about the aesthetics of this game, like you said, I haven't really seen anyone do that before. Good video.
I had an idea personally of what Melee could be given the next game in the series, Brawl. What if after the events of Smash 64 the heroes beating master hand and righting whatever wrong that connected their universes that some kind of super computer began collecting data on the worlds of Nintendo in some kind of attempt to compile everything into one place. Or rather one thing. What if Tabuu is the culmination of all of Melee's Simulations it's desire to collect and dominate all the worlds manifest into a super weapon. Notice how throughout the entire game he's practically dominating the entire cast until he's struck by one thing he had no way to analyze a character from the whole ass other side of reality. Literally a different console! "There's no information on this Creature! He's not Nintendo!" You could argue this falls apart when it comes to snake but snake is also not a near reality warper like sonic, mario, or kirby. Sonic just so happened to have the complete element of surprise in every way imaginable. Tabuu could never have anticipated anything like it. The simulations never prepared him cause there was never anything even close to sonic in Melee.
That's a brilliant analysis, I love it! Especially since Tabuu's theme has the same bass line as Multi-Man Melee 1, so he's still very much in the lineage of Melee's Battlefield and the wireframes.
As a fanfic writer, I had the idea of the Melee cast find themselves stuck inside a video game program with a mysterious virus that will completely wipe their game if they can't find the source of its power.
Fantastic video!! I want to add on your point of Melee existing in a unique moment in Nintendo's timeline by bringing up its character designs; it was released AFTER the Nintendo 64 (allowing for characters to be rendered in higher fidelity), but BEFORE games that established the "signature" looks of these characters like Mario Party 4 for Mario's cast, Twilight Princess for Link's proportions/facial structure, and so on. As a result, the artistic direction for Melee's characters feels like what N64 games would've looked like if the system was more powerful. I also love how you delve into great detail on how alien Melee feels. In the "Hints of Oppression" segment, I really like how you infer that Melee itself is hostile toward the player. "A new character or horrifying monster could appear at any moment and players would have no idea why. As far as they're concerned, the situation only ever worsens because Melee disliked something they did and deployed countermeasures in response." That line really resonates me. And then you get into how the whole game feels like a simulation which just... blew my mind. The implication that the characters are being studied, the intro having the "mirage" fade away into the visuals of cold uncaring computer guts, the SUBJECT TABLE text in the Event menu (which, along with many other things in this video, I never even noticed before) is seriously cool and adds to the vaguely sinister aura Melee has. You say you don't know what you're talking about, but this video is so eloquently written and your opinions are so thoroughly explained that you're more or less a proven expert on analyzing game presentation. That, combined with your style of humor and great editing, will surely make this video a classic for years to come.
The "Challenger approaches" system gives me a vibe of a couple friends hanging out at the local dojo, only for someone to kick the door open in demanding to fight their strongest In reality it's most likely supposed to be aping the similar messages you would see in an arcade cabinet at the end of the day it's still hell of a mood
Hearing the Special Movie opening again after playing so many of those old games myself and being able to recognise most if not all of them is such a magical and rewarding experience, especially when it was Melee specifically who got me to branch out of Mario and Kirby and actually play more games all those decades ago
The Y2K Cyberspace-like atmosphere was also present in games such as Marvel vs Capcom 2 (The character selection and training mode leans heavy into that.) and REZ. With Y2K- aesthetic in it's revival phase it'd be intriguing to see the next Smash installment to be call-back to this style, probably leaning more into the simulation theory.
Thank you so much for making this! This finally disects this bizarre feeling I've had about this game for two whole decades now! The gamecube was my first home console and the cube menu that activates when there's no disc in the console used to make me so scared, like my gamecube has a virus somehow and that I messed something up. Melee felt like an extension of that, so much of it was so mysterious and creepy. The sound design, the look, and the off looking models. I remember thinking when Brawl came out how much more slick it was. The challenger approaching screen didn't terrify me for one. I think a big part of it with melee was also that the characters were so much harder to unlock so when the challenger approaching screen showed up it was legitimately a surprise whereas in future games they were a lot easier and more frequent.
This video is amazing! I've always loved the cyberspace feel of Melee's UI and stages. Before you said it, I was thinking about how it feels like a combat simulation too, like some cold machine is running tests to see which of these heroes/villains is the strongest. Though unintentional, the game's really poor balancing almost makes it feel like the machine knows about the fighters, but couldn't completely capture their likeness - resulting in canonically powerful fighters like Bowser or Kirby not actually being that strong. I did game dev as a hobby when I was a kid, but only made a few prototypes and unfinished games before moving on. If I ever go back to it though, I really do wanna try to make something that captures this feeling!
Fantastic video which perfectly describes Melee’s art direction. It’s crazy seeing how the developers’ limitations along with the Y2K movement led to such a strange but unforgettable feeling game. And the description you found for the character models describing them as just barely PS1 promotional models is so perfect it hurts! Thank you for making this video to help me rediscover my fascination with Melee’s art style and the style of Y2K as a whole! Also, I thought about some games that may not exactly hit the same feel, but they sure do share similarities, some more than others: Sonic Mega Collection: This game, despite being a collection, feels so abstract and mechanical in its presentation. The weird geometry used as menu devices; the oddly human-made like quality of some menus such as the games menu’s gears which feel just artificial enough to be AI rather than human-made; and the music’s otherworldly feel all make for a very interesting but weirdly nostalgic vibe. It feels like an AI’s take on a nostalgia-filled Tomorrowland museum encompassed by a specific feeling of singularity, as if all the menus are connected in one larger machine. The GameCube’s own menu: This one’s fairly obvious. It’s very Y2K and minimalistic in design. It’s almost as if they didn’t expect many people to see it honestly. The weird abstractions of the background, the ominous cube omnipresent as menus represented on each of its sides, and the slowed down rendition of the famicom’s boot up theme really make for a unique take of a startup screen. It makes the world of video games seem like you’re discovering an alien spacecraft, something so otherworldly yet so intriguing that you need to explore it. Mario Kart Double Dash!!: This game is a bit of a stretch, but hear me out. The game’s menus are very bouncy and cheerful, but still feel somewhat artificial. It’s like a man made computer’s rendition of the Super Mario characters in terms of their eye catching yet slightly off models. Same goes for some voice performances. For whatever reason, DK, Bowser, and Birdo all feel uniquely off character in terms of voice direction. Their voices being different but on brand enough to feel right… it’s just a strange feeling that I can’t shake! Wii Sports: This one feels like a sleeker version of Melee’s art direction. With the menu’s odd background elements and futuristic music, it invites players to a completely unique experience through motion controls. The sport areas themselves also feel a bit strange at points, like in places such as the tennis court and the baseball arena it feels as though nothing exists outside of them except for maybe a plain of grass or just something imitating grass. This especially holds true for those weird-ass training/challenge areas. The giant breakable walls for tennis look like a child-friendly version of Matrix mixed with TV static. Fortnite: Ok ok, this one is a super-stretch but LEMME COOK OKAY?? I’m talking mainly about the characters and the lobby. They feel like a poor man’s interpretation of Melee’s Y2K to put it bluntly. It’s like the antithesis, where it’s emulating the style of being AI-made but it’s clearly human. The lobby’s always had those circles on the ground for your characters, and while as a game it makes sense, without context they’re just really weird. Especially in terms of early Fortnite, along with the early blue background and metallic floor, it definitely looks artificial. Along with that, many of the skins just feel like replicas of existing characters. When I play as Peter Griffin, I’m only playing as a caricature of him, y’know? Devoid of his personality. Each skin based on IP feels this way imo: accurate, but without voices and with the plastic-y Fortnite art style, it’s like I’m playing a representation of a character. This list was really fun to make, and if I think of more games I may come back to this comment! If people are still reading, thank you and I hope I inspired you to write your own comment with your own games in mind!
Wii Sports Golf also has what looks like 3D realizations of the NES Golf courses, adding to the mystique. This mysterious land with fascinating course designs, while we play as golfers that look like a mix between Mario and (but more leaning into) realistic.
This has been my favorite game since I was 8 years old in 2004. I didn’t even know of its competitive side until 2013. Since 2013 I have been obsessed with its mechanics. This video just blew my mind tapping into nostalgia from those first 9 years. It’s such a unique world I always got sucked into. Very impressed with this video. Good work!!!
As a kid, I was always creeped out by the ending sequence of Classic Mode, where the characters turn back into lifeless trophies while falling onto the table with the music box playing in the background, and then a moment of still silence.
I'm glad I'm not the only person who's noticed these aspects of Melee! It's always stood out to me because of the mysteriousness and Y2K-ness to it. Also this video was so well done and the writing was great!
I'm kinda surprised he didn't get much of a mention, but when you compare Mr. Game & Watch in Melee to every other Smash Bros game (esp. 4 and Ult), it's night and day. In the newer games, G&W is a funny little guy, he has the funny beep boop music that plays on his stage and when he wins a match. He'll even transform into other funny little guys for certain attacks In Melee, the dude has a sinister aura surrounding him at all times. Flat Zone's theme and his victory theme are all pretty clearly hostile. When you KO him, he does a bunch of oppressive computer beeps. Him being the final character you unlock also adds to this eerieness. It's like he's some sort of alien invader. He shouldn't have been let in, he shouldn't be allowed, yet here he is. Brawl had the whole deal of G&W being the source of the Shadow Bugs in the SSE, but aside from that he's presented as a more neutral figure, even joining the fight against the big bads after playing with Peach's umbrella
I feel almost the same way when I unlocked him in Melee. Aside from not knowing about GnW games since it was from the 80s... GnW felt so weird and out of place. Everyone feels like they are from somewhere at least and then this thing gets unlocked and looks like a beta Mario shadow or something
I'm all for it I've always been enthralled by how weird and unique this game is it's such a grey line between eerie and comfortable, dark and colorful. I always used to play on the Mother stages because of how oddly cold and lonely most of the others felt, yet Melee still feels like a warm hug. I also used to be bothered by the challenger approaching screen and other things and they still have a bit of unsettlingness yet I they're awesome all at the sametime. Love Melee's vibe.
Smash 64 had a similar feeling. Brawl tried to make sense of the two games with the story mode, but it makes it creepier. Masterhand had a terrifying connotation.
A couple of days ago I was actually thinking about how much less intimidating Master Hand feels in recent installments. I remember the cutscene with the Melee announcer's cackling and the small whirring of the machinery of Final Destination before the music kicked in. Master Hand also used to look more grotesque and less robotic somehow but I don't know how to describe it. I think it's fair to say I would never have become a Smash fan without Melee's sense of asymmetry and mystery. Unexplained secrets, endless unlockables, weird characters, strange requirements...it feels like a cryptid somehow. I miss it so badly. I love Sakurai and his games, but nothing comes even close to Melee's feel. It becomes so easy nowadays to forget what made me fall in love in the first place: mystery and adventure.
The things you described made me think back to TheGamingBrit’s video titled “The Atmosphere of Tekken 4” where he also talks about the foreboding undertones that game has as well as the whole “digital apocalypse” vibe many early 2000s games had. I always thought there were certain elements about Melee that felt offputting like the giga bowser cutscene or the challenger approaching screens, so it’s cool to see you address those kinds of things when most people only ever really talk about Melee’s advanced tech or the professional scene. Great video!
It's interesting that you talk about the menus feeling uninviting because for me personally they were the coolest thing to me as a kid. There was just a *vibe* when booting up Melee that I had never experienced before that stuck with me.
This video really reminds me about a lot of the fanfiction that people made for melee. From written stories to machinamas, there was a pretty common theme that these works would have: Smash Melee existed in a simulation. These stories would forego the Smash 64 context and just run with the simulation idea. Obviously Master Hand/Crazy Hand would be the "gods" of the simulated world. Captain Falcon and Zelda were two characters that would commonly depicted to be aware of the simulation to some degree. A weird fanon started to be put together through all of these stories and that fanon would bleed into Brawl's unique aesthetic as well. People may not discuss Melee's aesthetics much, but maybe it's because that discussion was being made within fanfiction.
@develrandomdankmemes7586 It was because the wireframes have movesets based off of them, so both would end up investigating why this is the case after encountering the wireframes. Zelda was really good for this since she could become Shiek and sneak around to spy on Master Hand/Crazy Hand. Wireframes usually got depicted has unquestioning robot agents for the Hands, so they only interact with the fighters whenever they're going against the will of the Hands. (For example; A tournament was rigged for Falco to win and then Ganon shows up trying to break the narrative and the wireframes try to stop Ganon, but it also interrupts the fight Falco was going to have with Luigi. Somethin like that). With two characters being aware o the simulation, you can imagine where that leads. (There's so many Matrix parallels in these stories).
This was a really interesting video good job! I never thought of it this way, I too was a young buck when this came out and played this game countless times with my buds.We also played the first one because i owned that one too. We always thought the kid was playing with the trophies instead of dolls from the first one since he got older. I remember the thought process was "teenagers dont play with dolls anymore"
ive been waiting for a video like this my whole life! i think melee is such a visually beautiful game that reminds you that its a gamecube game. going from the gamecube menu to melee feels so natural
I think the easiest explanation for the art style was simply the time crunch that plagued melee's development. Lines, untextured boxes, the "light up circuit board" effect, simplistic, almost sinusoidal movement patterns for much of the objects, were most likely the simplest and quickest to do, and this dictated melees artstyle early on. I doubt much of it was what the devs really wanted to make melee look like, but I think they simply had no other choice. I'd go as far as to say that many of the patterns, textures, blocks, etc were modified versions of assets that likely existed in the GameCube's dev kit / prepackaged assets for testing purposes, given how untextured, simple, and placeholder many of the graphics in melee look. I think the devs did the best they could with what they had, and it truly gives melee a unique style imo
Oh damn, I'm actually one of the people that wrote one of those forum posts lmao. Specifically I wrote the Reddit post at 37:10 talking about Melee being like a simulation, with paragraphs about Battlefield, Final Destination, and All Star Rest Area respectively. Crazy to see my comment be used for a video like this, but I'm happy to see that it helped you make this video and collect your thoughts better. It was a dope video and encapsulated my feelings perfectly.
Oh wow, that was you! Your comment was one of the ones that I kept thinking about as I wrote the script. It was really helpful in making me feel less crazy. Do you want me to drop your name into the description? I'd be happy to if so!
I really enjoyed this video. When I was a little kid, my most recurring nightmares were strongly influenced by Smash 64 and Melee. Primarily due to my experience being jumpscared into oblivion by Smash64’s challenger approaching screen, but also many aspects of Melee. I distinctly remember the alarms of the Adventure mode Metroid escape sequence haunting me. Thanks for taking the time to go back and examine this aspect of the game.
I am AMAZED you didn’t mention how you defeat Giga Bowser. Based on the opening cutscene all of these characters are “inactive” as trophy’s and become “active” to fight. When you fight Bowser in Adventure Mode, you defeat him and watch his trophy fall off the stage with the KO sound and animation following, further implying that defeat means becoming “inactive” again. Suddenly, Bowser reappears from below the stage, still “inactive” and begins to BREAK out of his trophy form, becoming something much more unnatural. Bowser somehow broke all of the unspoken rules of the game just to fight you again, and when you defeat him again, he becomes “inactive”, falls off the stage, and SHATTERS as he hits the ground. This entire sequence and battle is hauntingly awesome
To be blunt, I'm not really interested in your fan theory. But I do appreciate someone taking a time to explore Melee's slight eeriness. I've always felt this way about the game, but moreso towards the "end" when you've got more weird characters like Game & Watch or Mewtwo, or weird stages like PokeFloats. Something about the All-Star meadow doesn't sit right with me. I never got people's issue with Mario 64, but I certainly felt it with Melee. The later games were more triumphant, more emblematic, so they don't have this feeling. But Melee's a time capsule, perhaps moreso than the others in the series.
I didn't find Melee "eerie" at all. I did find it less goofy, more "serious" in it's presentation than the first game or Brawl. But even then, the first game has things like the highly angular polygon team, Brawl has things like Super Mario never smiling! Like Master Hand actually bleeding from Tabuu's attack. I don't find Melee to be especially edgy or bleak in presentation. A little more than the other too, but not significantly more.
This was an incredibly amazing video. I cannot begin to stress how much I enjoyed this and extremely connected with everything you said and showed. What a well written, well edited, well put together video. Fantastic!
The “escape” line in the JP FD trophy always throws me for a loop cuz it contradicts literally every other game in the series. Even 64 coded the world with a very positive and whimsical tone in the opening. The Brawl dojo states that being in trophy form and unable to enjoy competing with others is akin to death. The only logical explanation that they would ever actively desire going to the alternate world where they’d be stuck in their trophy form is as a mark of personal honor and accomplishment, like “I climbed Mt. Everest” kind of deal
I'm glad someone finally put this feeling to words. For me, the feeling melee gave me was that it took place in a void. With how dark everything is, and how echoey both the sound effects and the music felt. When Brawl finally came out, and the concept of Subspace was broached in that game's "plot", to me it was the game telling me that Melee took place in that subspace dimension. So both these games made child me piece things together in her own way. It was something like. Melee took place in subspace, which is some kind of void existing between each nintendo world. And as for the aesthetic of the series getting more bright and lived in feeling as time goes on, my headcanon was always that Subspace was always sucking in more stuff from every nintendo dimension. Since Smash 64 was also pretty void-y as well, I took it that Smash 4 was so bright and lived in because of all the series history that had been sucked into Subspace. Also yeah, i never liked that whole kid playing with toys plot. Mostly because it flew right in the face of my headcanon and i disliked that lmao.
For me, Melee was my happy place as I struggled with a difficult childhood. It is bursting with so much nostalgia that I almost feel the need to defend it, so I am a bit biased on this one.
The realest part of this feeling is when you say how in later smash games the characters are invited but in N64 and Melee (and brawl too a bit) they really feel like they're being played, either by a kid or by a computer simulation. They really feel like they don't wanna be there
I think in essence, we are talking about eras where machine limitations try to present cinematic effects that they aren't quite capable of, same as like Mario 64, that's why these games feel 'off' because they can't create detailed nuances that match the experience that the developers probably aimed for. But I loved Melee growing up and I used to take so many snapshots from the game and never thought they looked off. Remember that in the old Mario stage, even though the danger signs are off camera, the player has the option to adjust the camera when they pause the game, so they are able to see these things.
MELEE is one of a kind. I love ultimate but this game is something else. I loved the trophies with the in depth descriptions. I learned so much about the Nintendo universe through them. May be easy to some but getting every trophy in melee is the hardest video game achievement I have accomplished
I will always love the muted colors of this game. the sky and the menus just feal so different. It's like getting a game that's half premade test assets and half original assets. It's proboly one of the most nostolgic things for me.
Thank you so effing much for talking about this, I’ve adored this game’s aesthetic my whole life and I’ve been trying to put my finger on just what makes it so interesting to me for so unbelievably long, I think I would’ve gone insane if I didn’t find this, amazing vid 😊
I got in a car accident today(no I didn’t call 411). Honestly, this was a good pick me up. Melee always felt like “better 64”. From doll(64) to simulation(melee), brawl always felt like Taboos home in realism, on poor hardware🤷🏽♂️✨
Man its the weirdest thing, like 2 weeks ago i looked up “why does melee sound so creepy” and i got no results. Then a couple days later this is posted
I love how smash bros is always something you discover at your cousins house
I had Brawl, but I experienced Melee at a cousin's house. We had an exchange I can't forget.
Me: "You're totally beating the crap outta that weird cat alien!" (Mewtwo)
Cousin: "That's me."
Me: "Oh."
Omg your pfp is cute! Who's the artist?
Me (to my cousin while playing the original Super Smash Bros): OMG, Super Smash Bros has a sequel called Melee, but sadly its on the Gamecube
*Goes back to my cousin house the following month and they have a Gamecube and Melee*
102%
Same
OKAY FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE WHO NOTICED. This is why I love Melee so much though. No other Smash game feels as "off" and Y2K as it does.
If you'd like to check out more games with a strong y2k aesthetic just browse the Dreamcast library because there's tons of them, especially stuff developed in house by Sega themselves or by Capcom. Those two companies knew how to play to that visual's strengths.
Exactly!!!
That would work as a fantastic premise for a adventure mode
Years ago, I made a series of SmashBoards forum posts discussing it! I was going to make a game, but unfortunately it's just fallen far down my priority list. I'd love to make it one day, though, or at least art-direct it. It's something I spent a lot of time on understanding fundamentally and wanting to expand on and see more of.
A couple of things I learned that weren't mentioned in the video:
1. The art direction for Melee, Brawl, and Kirby Air Ride (a game aesthetically between Melee and Brawl I'd say) was headed by Sakurai's wife, Michiko Sakurai. I wrote a probably poorly-translated letter to HAL Laboratories years ago asking if there were any way to get her consultation for a list of inspirations. Unfortunately, it seems she was not in a position to take such requests and/or HAL was not able.
2. One of the visual themes not mentioned here is what I'd call "Elegance". There's also mystery, mysticism, beauty, serenity, isolation. Whether it's just visually with levels like Fountain of Dreams, or musically with orchestral flutes, trumpets, and pianos, there's a sort of grand, "serious" undertone to everything. There's some silliness like Kirby and Ness' taunts, but the presentation lends itself to, as mentioned, "tech demo" vibes. And what's the best way to do that? Elegance. Power, yet restraint. Beauty, yet functionality.
3. A big factor is actually a simple thing to do with the lighting, though I don't know the exact details of how it works: the shadows are almost always black. In real life and in most art, "bounce light" is a phenomenon where surrounding light/color will still cast onto the shadow of an object. There's also atmospheric color, etc. It's complicated, however, and so games in the 90s-mid 2000s had this "eerie" or "spacey" feel to them because that's how things would look in more remote parts of space.
4. The isolation plays a big role into it imo. Everything from the sound design like the hit/high damage sound, to the well-crafted-but-still-calculated remixes, to the announcer and character voices echoing lend itself to this idea. Synths are limited and not very playful. The orchestral instruments used are usually just the ones considered "acceptable" by those who were traditional, successful, well-regarded composers who wanted to elevate video games in the zeitgeist as something serious, whereas prior technological limitations relegated video games to being seen as fun, childish, not high-class. Also, most backgrounds of stages are usually empty in Melee.
5. The technological stages play a big part in it, but it's not just ANY tech. It's a very, very advanced tech. Pristine. Made with care. Powerful, but also beautiful. Intricate, detailed, but not absurdly so. Made almost... with foresight. Like they were arenas crafted by entities who knew what they'd be used for. And you don't. You can't understand them. Not as much as they did, at least. It invokes a certain vibe, especially when it comes to space objects, because even with our modern technology, that shit is hard to do.
I could write more, but I didn't want to go on too long! Somebody let me know if they want to pay somebody to advise them on/help them with making a game like this! I have no programming prowess, but I can help!
This game feels timeless to me. The exact opposite of "off".
I honestly ADORE the Melee background aesthetic. Battlefield/FD, Target stage, and even Race to the Finish have some of the coolest Y2K looks I've ever seen in gaming (glad you pointed these out btw). These awesome looks are one of the biggest reasons I LOVE the GameCube Era of Nintendo.
I've always loved the target stage background cause it reminds me of the FBI VHS warning you'd see in the beginning of each tape 😂 or the "COMING SOON TO VHS" screen with boxes sliding into place
@@benamisai-kham5892omg it does
11:26 most accurate description I’ve heard about melee’s art style. It’s like seeing those late 90’s/2000’s silicon graphic renders you’d see on posters and magazines come to life. That’s what made me really appreciate melee as a kid
The metal Bros was so legit though. I love how they just shut down like missiles, and they just get up ready for the next task. Like they totally have zero empathy for themselves, the player, and probably like it’s whole existence.
@@Sauceyjames Don’t you mean “shot down?”
@@lucasgibbs4050 Or “shoot down?”
One interesting thing to note about the Fighting Wire Frames is that it's implicated that Master Hand did not create them, but rather some mysterious character or entity that we never see or hear about again, creating false characters, not unlike Tabuu or Galeem/Darkhon.
"Who built the Fighting Wire Frames and to what purpose remains a mystery. They're a simple collection of wires which house a sparse framework of bones and organs that lends them a rather disturbing appearance." - Male Wire Frame trophy description.
This description is present in both English and Japanese versions. There's a possibility that there's a greater evil at play in Melee that never really gets expanded upon.
Crazy Hand
An Interesting theory but unlikely imo. Crazy hand is never said to be able to create things like Master Hand, only destroy. I think that would undermine the hands' duality and contrast so I don't buy it.
Tabuu could be involved with their origin, but they’re certainly in Hand’s custody now. (Reminds me of the Subspace enemies in Smash Run) Perhaps Subspace Emissary wasn’t his first rodeo trying to take over the World of Trophies? He’s likely stuck in Subspace to begin with cuz Hand whooped his ass before
Given their technological nature, I like to think that was Brawl's Ancients making them with their tech, before they subsequently disappeared prior to Brawl's own events. They, along with their computers then producing the Alloys in Brawl, were most likely attempting to mimic the clone-making abilities of the supernatural forces that are Tabuu, Galeem, and Dharkon.
@@rainstarsworld9429Tabuu whooped Hand’s nonexistent ass.
I always called Melee "the season finale of Nintendo." It felt like a culmination of the N64 era, with everything on the line for middle school-aged me. It really inspired me as the fanfic writer I am today, and how I think about games.
God, that's such a genius way to put it. Season finale
Devils Never Cry
can you write a fanfic about me and my wife? i got da $$$
It felt and was so new at the time. This and Metroid Prime was crazy alien to my younger self at the time. 3D gaming was still in its infancy and the graphical leaps we were seeing at the time were insane. Definitley a sense of magic we don't have today and haven't had in a long time
Indeed, this is built into the way Mr. Sakurai looked at the game. Smash 64 is kids toys being played with as shown in the intro. Melee is about more realism and mayhem. More dramatic. Crazy hand is there. Intense but serious.
the Gamecube in general had a vibe no other console could replicate. it truly felt like years of gaming had all led up to Melee, a celebration of everything Nintendo up to that point.
while Brawl was my first Smash game and will always hold a special place in my heart, much of its content owes a debt of gratitude to Melee.
i mean how exactly would you understand the feel of melee when it was new if you only experienced it after brawl..?
Original Xbox n PS2 had the same charm. 6th gen consoles were something else
I love the way that CONEY described it in one of his videos where it doesn't feel like you're playing as Fox or Ness, but like fox.exe and ness.exe being loaded into a stage for battle, as the characters spawn in with a loading animation that all characters use instead of unique intros, which they never do in any other Smash game.
Wtf that is trippyyyyyyyyy
In smash four 3ds theres no unique intros either I think
@mlalbaitero they use the same unique intros that wii u uses
I always felt that Melee's asthetic was different compared to titles before and after it. I'm glad someone took the time to dissect and analyse it.
A lot of it is reused in _Kirby Air Ride._ _Air Ride_ seems more like a _Melee_ game than a _Kirby_ game, to a great extent.
Melee is like one big creepypasta. For those that didn't have Internet (and even if you did you'd have unreliable information), all of these unlocks and strange changes would feel like you were going nuts.
"And this one time out of nowhere, Luigi killed Mario!"
"Then Bowser came back onto the stage and turned into a monster! Did I mention the SECOND Master Hand??"
Even the seemingly random nature of character unlocks would feel bizarre.
(I can only attest to the characters, I was never good enough as a kid for the wacky stuff)
You think it can’t get any more bizarre, then you play Brawl
WHEN DR.MARIO CHALLENGED ME AND MY BROTHERS…… Mannnnnne
Plenty of reliable info to be had in the early days of this game. Melee has 3 guides from 02 and 1 from 01 on gamefaqs. Not to mention the forums, and the abandonware forums hijacked as sub-forums.
The Announcer VA said that the echo is meant to sound like an Circus Announcer or something along those lines
My impression was that of a wrestling announcer. Similar vibe.
@@MetalFreezer3000 That's amazing. It does sound digital.
I always thought underground sports announcer or an AI voice coming through abandoned/ancient-yet-still-functioning amazing technology.
@Dairunt1 the
@@MetalFreezer3000 Nintendo can be a circus sometimes.
This video is so validating to my younger self, who simultaneously loved and feared this game with no explanation as to why. The continue and game over screens made me run upstairs and hide for a few minutes just to make sure it was over, but I always looked forward to playing the game, despite my fears of it
Okay ! Because I had a love/hate relationship with this game growing up that I still have playing this game as an adult. I was re-playing this game very recently and still had that feeling.
Duuuuude this is EXACTLY how I felt. I hardly ever played this game at night or in a dark room lmao
I love hearing off moments when kids saw something adults made as entertainment without intending to make it an unsettling thing but they can't help but get creeped out by thinking about it too hard and taking it more seriously or not being as accustomed to the world as adults are. And this has a good mix of that and adjacent interesting concepts with the deep dives into the settings
I'm so freaking happy SOMEONE ELSE finally noticed and could put into words my exact feelings on Melee, its aesthetics, and its underlying themes of eeriness and mysteriousness that really make it stand out from every other smash game. No other game has ever evoked such wonder and intrigue in me while simultaneously feeling so unsettling. There truly is no other game like it, that's the reason it's my favorite smash game and my 2nd favorite game of all time.
Honestly, Melee has a sense of finality because it's the end of Classic Nintendo. After Melee, all of Nintendo changed. The Mario series received a dramatic redesign. Zelda went toon with even more dramatic stories, Metroid bloomed, Fire Emblem became a thing in the west. Melee feels like the end of 80s & 90s Nintendo.
Melee’s overrated asf. Brawl is better especially with the hard gritty designs
@@Abner-gu3ve Brawl will never be superior to Melee in gameplay, the brawl feels slow, prepared for boring casual gameplays of 8 years old who cannot really compete. And I like Brawl a lot its superior in textures, size, yes, but never in gameplay, make you think of how much they screwed that aspect that they tried to make ALL the smash games after brawl more competitive, like Melee. That speaks volumes.
@@Abner-gu3ve I mean, I like Brawl a lot it's arguably my most nostalgic smash, but that literally has nothing to do with my comment on my love for Melee. Melee was an end of an era, Brawl was a relatively creative step in the "modernisation" of Nintendo
@@Abner-gu3veproject plus :)
@mariodelgadogt if you're not all that into competitive smash, then melee is kinda eh. Brawl is better for casual play, which is actually most people who play smash.
Melee’s art direction really makes it trascend its technical flaws. I think it’s why the game still looks so charming.
It's really the game design that made the technical flaws turn out to be positives, the engine the game is built on is just so good
When I was younger I used to be deathly afraid of glitching games and stuff like that. No-clipping into the dark void in a source game for the first time comes to mind. What always got me the most was wireframes cause they always freaked me out for the very reason you said in this video and I never even realised it. It's honestly ironic looking back cause now I really enjoy working with and making 3D models which requires paying attention to the wireframes and topology massively. Suppose it's an instance where fear can turn to admiration!
Awesome video by the way, really well made :D
Reminds me of when I saw Debug footage of Melee, seeing that the space behind the camera in a stage was usually a black void, was really creepy to me.
That, and seeing weird things that weren't supposed to be possible, like playing as Master Hand, and how prone to crashing the game was in Debug. It was like accessing something not meant to be handled by a normal kid (which it wasn't).
People can debate which Smash Game is the best, but to me aesthetically, Melee has the best style out of any Smash game. It's hopeful Y2K techno feel always stood out compared to the other games, great video.
Enormous agree. It was sophisticated!
It's not even close
I do love how brawl looks.
As someone who grew up with Brawl and never played Melee, its so surreal seeing and hearing about all the little things people never seem to talk about. The discussion is always about the competitive scene, so the Classic Mode levels and cutscenes, and the side minigames like Break the Target and Race to the Finish, rarely ever get mentioned. Its like a peek into an alternate dimension.
Seconded, although I did play Melee right after Brawl myself. Interestingly I think this offers an insight on Brawl's aesthetic choices as well, as it feels intentionally designed to no longer feel as stiff and eerie as Melee and instead making the Smash universe look like it became its own world.
I technically grew up on both at the same time, but Melee's Y2K aesthetic is going to stay unique in the Smash series for a long time imo. Both games almost feel like a pair, or a story told in two highly contrasting parts, while later games have felt more... samey and empty, imo. '^^
To me I love the Erie feel of 64 all the way to Brawl there was a serial and oddity to them. Like the stage 1-1 and 1-2 in Brawl and it's weird desolate waste land style that newer stages in Smash 4 and Ultimate just don't attempt to capture at all which at least for me is a bit sad but it what's makes 64 through Brawl absolutely memorable.
If you get some time ,play it one time lil bro. Gaming Historia available rn.
Glad that someone finally said this. Melee with its purple, red, and black colors, yellow text...the futuristic edge, the music, I fucking adore it. It's like no other game in the series, not just for its competitive edge. The fighting wire frames, the dark menu, hell, the Menu 2 theme has a blend of glee and dread to it that I can't explain. Target Test, Trophies, it just screams GameCube (which also has a dark purple aesthetic).
Mewtwo is based on his Gameboy sprite, thus the larger head.
A really small detail with all the arcade mode cutscenes: nowadays it is customary to fade to black or white, or end on a cool final shot when ending a cutscene for a smoother transition. Melee's arcade mode cutscenes often feel like they just freeze. It looks borderline like the computer is frozen or glitched out, before you are then suddenly tossed into the gameplay. I think it adds to the eerieness.
they do freeze because it's loading in the map during those few seconds before gameplay
Y2K / 2000s Era is very hard to describe especially if you didn't live through the early 2000s. The idea being ANYTHING 3-D was mind blowing at the time didn't even matter if it was going to age poorly. Just the simple expression of seeing these effects like rotoscoping, CGI, and Videogames becoming a respected art medium was enough to make people clamour with excitement. It's hard to describe what it's like when something is genuinely "New" but you know there's more to come. Like whenever we saw any graphic or special effect we always said "Just wait until 10 years from now and we'll be mindjacked into the games experiencing them real time" then technology peaked and reality came crashing down. Flying cars died during the 2000s. Which is a statement that might not mean anything to you but to me means everything. We didn't quite have a firm grasp what the future had in store. Nowadays? Everybody is a miserable prophet. Even my language might be too outdated to convey the time period.
You are so perfectly spot on with this. I was going to add but it would only subtract. *types furiously in running Festivus grievance document*
Don't let the _Super Smash Bros. Melee_ renders distract you from the fact that Princess Daisy had a hidden third eye at the back of her head as one of the trophies.
That's what happens when you overlap a polygon texture improperly over a UV map.
Dont let the 3rd eye distract you from the fact they also modeled her panties
@@General_Capno it is all planned she is relaten to Tien.
@@kaih6560Her third eye sees all
@@ZombieaidZ yes furthermore she Can hover in smash. In OG Dragomball Tien claims levitation is angemerkt trait in his family ( and therefore not just being trained like in later DB)
Quite interesting, this whole video was the same thing that was floating around in my head for a long time when I was a child.
That feeling of being in an empty virtual space that tried to make you feel good but the more you investigate you find somewhat uncomfortable details.
Definitely this video is cinema!
I've always called it "gamecube era crust"
The finest crust
@@raemdespairbringer 🥂
Chicken and fishcrust tends to be the most flavorful part of the meal, so it seems like a good comparison.
@lpfan4491 ur eating garbage and this comparison is awful.
SSB: A kid (Master Hand/Crazy Hand) plays with his Nintendo toys.
SSBM: He grows up and works for Nintendo, creates a tech demo where many characters battle. The simulation-like vibes are due to his lack of experience in game design, and the game is left unfinished.
SSBB: Angry that his game was cancelled, the designer finishes the game on his own, creating washed-up, post-apocalyptic versions of beloved Nintendo worlds (like Mushroomy Kingdom and the Subspace Emissary levels) out of spite. He creates Tabuu, a being intended to prevent the characters from escaping this world. Tabuu is defeated, of course, and the Nintendo characters return to their home worlds.
SSB4: Nintendo finally accepts his game, and peacefully invites Nintendo characters to return in a formalized fighting tournament. Cut characters like Ice Climbers, Snake, Squirtle, Ivysaur, etc. decided not to return.
SSBU: Nintendo returns to forcing competitors to return, this time pulling out all the stops to create the ultimate fighting game. However, disputes in leadership lead to a rift between two sides of the design team (Galeem and Darkhon), allowing the Nintendo characters to defeat both and break free of the game.
Great video, I honestly never thought about any of this in terms of Melee, but it gives me a lot of thought just about how this stuff goes into games, I love thinking about stuff like this and this video has helped SO MUCH.
I enjoyed this. It's funny how you feel about the art style. I only really feel that way about Yoshi. The sort of uncanny in-between of Mario 64 Yoshi and Mario World Yoshi. Otherwise I find it all very polished and great-looking, even today. It's not too detailed like Brawl, and not too simplistic (think the Classic mode trophies you unlock for each character). It's the perfect medium. And you're totally right, it is a time capsule of a particular point in history that I will cherish for the rest of my life.
I also liked how you captured the mysterious part of Melee, which I haven't really seen explored before. I loved your theory-crafting section.
Also, yes, I remember Galidor. And I loved it.
OKAY SO I'm not the only one who's like "This game is fucking creepy as hell." The Failure screen is still creepy all these years later.
Glad to know that Melee's version of Race to the Finish doesn't fascinate just me :)
You hit the nail on the head with that particular point, I was excited when you brought it up :D
The biggest thing about melee vs all the other games, is that it feels alien rather than fantastical
And I like the idea that the reason everything feels "off," is because it's someone else distorted view of what a "Nintendo crossover" would look like. Like you're stuck in a kids fever dream who only sees the face value elements of everything coming together, like a loose idea swimming around the ether
The heavy reliance on N64 designs also adds a unique off-brand feeling to the game, I used to describe it feeling as if it were one of those bootleg Mexican toys that I find so often in markets before I knew they were based on N64 promotional renders, or even before I knew the N64 existed
Yo I was thinking the exact thing. Melee to me is like a bunch of bootleg toys fighting each other
So happy someone made a video about Melee's aesthetics! Personally, it's my favorite looking Smash game.
Also, on a semi-related note, a possible reason for why the characters give you an "uncanny" feeling could be because they're based off how they looked like during the previous gens.
Mario, for example, is based on his N64 artwork because Melee was in development before his modern redesign was finalized. Just another one of Melee's aesthetic quirks that makes it so cool to me!!
Well done video. This is why I love up-and-coming smaller TH-cam channels. So much more effort goes in.
my most vivid childhood experience with Melee was the terrifying game over screen
I love the playable FMV comparison. Melee's vibes will always stick with me and this video does a fantastic job at articulating why.
Melee feels weird as hell someone gets it
This is such an interesting video idea. Examining the _smallest_ details in melee and explaining the vibe they gives off
He should make one about the N64 game.
this video is so freaking good. i have had these thoughts for years and have never been able to put it into words like you have here thank you for all the work you put into this!!
Thanks for making this video. I hardly ever see video essays about the game itself rather than about the minmaxing competitive scene or some drama video about a melee player texting kids or having beef with another player. While I don’t agree with all the vibes the game gave you, it’s great to listen to someone articulate the feelings they got from one of my favorite games.
I truly never thought such a video would exist if I didn't make it myself, so you can imagine how thrilled I was seeing that title! Melee was my first Smash game, and totally had kid me in awe with its level of depth and atmosphere. It was the first video game that really made me think about game worlds, their various details and implications.
It's to this day my favorite Smash aesthetically, and I feel that the series has only been downhill since. I understand the current direction, and appreciate it for what it is, but Melee's desolate digitization (if I were to make up a name) was just so amazing, in the purest sense of the word.
That was partially why I wanted to make this video in the first place! I figured that if nobody else was gonna cover this topic, I might as well satisfy myself by doing the research and let everyone else reap the rewards.
the unfathomable despair of the backyardigans
The loud happiness of Super Mario 3D World
Future Video Essay Titles, for $100
The adjective noun of subject.
2001 Gamefaqs taught me that Samus is Metroid's boyfriend. That is my entire addition to this discussion, please and thank you.
i've seen fanart that backs that up.
I love it when people analyze games like this. It's like having childlike wonder come back for half an hour
Another thing that adds to the vibe of the game is the trophy section. It doesn't feel like a lot of these trophies were made for Melee, they feel like actual Nintendo vault assets that were just incorporated for the sake of padding the game with extra content, and as a result they have this weird, otherworldly vibe not seen since
This was a well-done video because I've always wondered why Melee has had this eeriness. Every point and case you mentioned has validity to it, especially the whole simulation theory. Glad you took the time to showcase this to everyone and give us an in-depth explanation of this topic. I believe what made this a cool aesthetic is the fact it makes you want to fight a big threat especially when the Warning Challenger Approaching appears when unlocking new characters or when you get to battle a monstrous version of Bowser at the end of Adventure Mode.
Melee’s aesthetic was fucking 2000’s to the core. Visually, execution and thought stimulating.
Mf heros locked in a simulation.
It all makes sense now!!
Something that sticks out to me is that it's a setup with no payoff. It gives off the vibes that maybe it's a simulation through context but never goes far enough to make it definitive and doesn't ever verify any kind of escape or even need to escape. There's a lot that's left unclear and unanswered, including if indeed it is a simulation then what the actual rules are and whether the characters within it are being rewarded or punished at any particular moment, and whether these are actually meant to be the characters at all or just recreations of them. There's an almost dreamlike weirdness to the whole thing, a smidge of familiarity that has fallen deep down into the uncanny valley.
And I love that kind of thing. I love it when something makes itself mysterious by providing vague clues that may or may not be pointing towards something and leaves it open ended. I love it when things like this stay mysterious. Injecting detailed and complicated lore into this kind of thing ruins the very thing that makes them appealing to begin with. It's why I stopped liking things like Herobrine and The Backrooms. The mysteriousness is the appeal. Stripping this away forces the subject into a genre change, and you end up with some generic horror story that loses its novelty really fast and gets moved on from. Keeping the mystery alive keeps things interesting. There's room for endless speculation as long as nothing is made definitive. If everything is left up to your own imagination, you can find your own appeal that wouldn't be there in someone else's interpretation.
this is the video I’ve needed for years
Love the topic of this video. I've always noticed and loved the melee aesthetic
Man I'm so glad this video exists. I'm glad after so many years I've found someone who discusses Melee's vibes and style. As much as I loved this game as a kid it sure did creep me out lol. It feels like the starting point for a buncha lore and stuff for the series that kind of just never gets expanded upon. I wish we got like a melee 2 or something that had this style again and went further with it
This video perfectly details the way I've felt about this game for the past 20 years, thank you for doing it justice
Your video nailed Melee's aesthetic choice. The menu screen being eerie to the point I couldn't stay on the menu screen for too long without the irrational fear something unintended would happen. The weirdly realistic models, like Luigi and Peach always stood out to me the most due to lack of facial expressions and how cynical they are in the game(Luigi stomps on Mario, Peach throwing away Toad in her ending) they just felt like different characters at times.
It's always interesting to see people describe games like these as being eerie or unsettling. All of these aesthetics you're describing as eerie were very cool to me and my cousins. That being said, I can definitely see where you're coming from, it doesn't just feel like you projecting your own fears onto the game and treating that interpretation as fact. Regardless of the "vibe", it was nice to see someone actually talk about the aesthetics of this game, like you said, I haven't really seen anyone do that before. Good video.
Oh my goodness, I’m so happy someone made this video! The stages and aesthetics in melee were always so creepy to me, even if it rocks!
I had an idea personally of what Melee could be given the next game in the series, Brawl. What if after the events of Smash 64 the heroes beating master hand and righting whatever wrong that connected their universes that some kind of super computer began collecting data on the worlds of Nintendo in some kind of attempt to compile everything into one place. Or rather one thing. What if Tabuu is the culmination of all of Melee's Simulations it's desire to collect and dominate all the worlds manifest into a super weapon. Notice how throughout the entire game he's practically dominating the entire cast until he's struck by one thing he had no way to analyze a character from the whole ass other side of reality. Literally a different console! "There's no information on this Creature! He's not Nintendo!" You could argue this falls apart when it comes to snake but snake is also not a near reality warper like sonic, mario, or kirby. Sonic just so happened to have the complete element of surprise in every way imaginable. Tabuu could never have anticipated anything like it. The simulations never prepared him cause there was never anything even close to sonic in Melee.
That's a brilliant analysis, I love it! Especially since Tabuu's theme has the same bass line as Multi-Man Melee 1, so he's still very much in the lineage of Melee's Battlefield and the wireframes.
As a fanfic writer, I had the idea of the Melee cast find themselves stuck inside a video game program with a mysterious virus that will completely wipe their game if they can't find the source of its power.
Literally me too to a certain degree, this is so comforting lol
that’s so fun. i wish melee had a story mode.
@@pearallaxSounds a Little like brawl.
this feels more a the amazing digital circus episode when the character is trapped on vr world
Fantastic video!! I want to add on your point of Melee existing in a unique moment in Nintendo's timeline by bringing up its character designs; it was released AFTER the Nintendo 64 (allowing for characters to be rendered in higher fidelity), but BEFORE games that established the "signature" looks of these characters like Mario Party 4 for Mario's cast, Twilight Princess for Link's proportions/facial structure, and so on. As a result, the artistic direction for Melee's characters feels like what N64 games would've looked like if the system was more powerful.
I also love how you delve into great detail on how alien Melee feels. In the "Hints of Oppression" segment, I really like how you infer that Melee itself is hostile toward the player. "A new character or horrifying monster could appear at any moment and players would have no idea why. As far as they're concerned, the situation only ever worsens because Melee disliked something they did and deployed countermeasures in response." That line really resonates me.
And then you get into how the whole game feels like a simulation which just... blew my mind. The implication that the characters are being studied, the intro having the "mirage" fade away into the visuals of cold uncaring computer guts, the SUBJECT TABLE text in the Event menu (which, along with many other things in this video, I never even noticed before) is seriously cool and adds to the vaguely sinister aura Melee has.
You say you don't know what you're talking about, but this video is so eloquently written and your opinions are so thoroughly explained that you're more or less a proven expert on analyzing game presentation. That, combined with your style of humor and great editing, will surely make this video a classic for years to come.
That's so kind of you to say! It's reassuring to know that my crazed ramblings weren't entirely crazed after all. Thank you very much!!
The "Challenger approaches" system gives me a vibe of a couple friends hanging out at the local dojo, only for someone to kick the door open in demanding to fight their strongest
In reality it's most likely supposed to be aping the similar messages you would see in an arcade cabinet at the end of the day it's still hell of a mood
Hearing the Special Movie opening again after playing so many of those old games myself and being able to recognise most if not all of them is such a magical and rewarding experience, especially when it was Melee specifically who got me to branch out of Mario and Kirby and actually play more games all those decades ago
The Y2K Cyberspace-like atmosphere was also present in games such as Marvel vs Capcom 2 (The character selection and training mode leans heavy into that.) and REZ. With Y2K- aesthetic in it's revival phase it'd be intriguing to see the next Smash installment to be call-back to this style, probably leaning more into the simulation theory.
Thank you so much for making this! This finally disects this bizarre feeling I've had about this game for two whole decades now!
The gamecube was my first home console and the cube menu that activates when there's no disc in the console used to make me so scared, like my gamecube has a virus somehow and that I messed something up. Melee felt like an extension of that, so much of it was so mysterious and creepy. The sound design, the look, and the off looking models.
I remember thinking when Brawl came out how much more slick it was. The challenger approaching screen didn't terrify me for one. I think a big part of it with melee was also that the characters were so much harder to unlock so when the challenger approaching screen showed up it was legitimately a surprise whereas in future games they were a lot easier and more frequent.
This video is amazing! I've always loved the cyberspace feel of Melee's UI and stages. Before you said it, I was thinking about how it feels like a combat simulation too, like some cold machine is running tests to see which of these heroes/villains is the strongest. Though unintentional, the game's really poor balancing almost makes it feel like the machine knows about the fighters, but couldn't completely capture their likeness - resulting in canonically powerful fighters like Bowser or Kirby not actually being that strong.
I did game dev as a hobby when I was a kid, but only made a few prototypes and unfinished games before moving on. If I ever go back to it though, I really do wanna try to make something that captures this feeling!
Fantastic video which perfectly describes Melee’s art direction. It’s crazy seeing how the developers’ limitations along with the Y2K movement led to such a strange but unforgettable feeling game. And the description you found for the character models describing them as just barely PS1 promotional models is so perfect it hurts! Thank you for making this video to help me rediscover my fascination with Melee’s art style and the style of Y2K as a whole!
Also, I thought about some games that may not exactly hit the same feel, but they sure do share similarities, some more than others:
Sonic Mega Collection:
This game, despite being a collection, feels so abstract and mechanical in its presentation. The weird geometry used as menu devices; the oddly human-made like quality of some menus such as the games menu’s gears which feel just artificial enough to be AI rather than human-made; and the music’s otherworldly feel all make for a very interesting but weirdly nostalgic vibe. It feels like an AI’s take on a nostalgia-filled Tomorrowland museum encompassed by a specific feeling of singularity, as if all the menus are connected in one larger machine.
The GameCube’s own menu:
This one’s fairly obvious. It’s very Y2K and minimalistic in design. It’s almost as if they didn’t expect many people to see it honestly. The weird abstractions of the background, the ominous cube omnipresent as menus represented on each of its sides, and the slowed down rendition of the famicom’s boot up theme really make for a unique take of a startup screen. It makes the world of video games seem like you’re discovering an alien spacecraft, something so otherworldly yet so intriguing that you need to explore it.
Mario Kart Double Dash!!:
This game is a bit of a stretch, but hear me out. The game’s menus are very bouncy and cheerful, but still feel somewhat artificial. It’s like a man made computer’s rendition of the Super Mario characters in terms of their eye catching yet slightly off models. Same goes for some voice performances. For whatever reason, DK, Bowser, and Birdo all feel uniquely off character in terms of voice direction. Their voices being different but on brand enough to feel right… it’s just a strange feeling that I can’t shake!
Wii Sports:
This one feels like a sleeker version of Melee’s art direction. With the menu’s odd background elements and futuristic music, it invites players to a completely unique experience through motion controls. The sport areas themselves also feel a bit strange at points, like in places such as the tennis court and the baseball arena it feels as though nothing exists outside of them except for maybe a plain of grass or just something imitating grass. This especially holds true for those weird-ass training/challenge areas. The giant breakable walls for tennis look like a child-friendly version of Matrix mixed with TV static.
Fortnite:
Ok ok, this one is a super-stretch but LEMME COOK OKAY?? I’m talking mainly about the characters and the lobby. They feel like a poor man’s interpretation of Melee’s Y2K to put it bluntly. It’s like the antithesis, where it’s emulating the style of being AI-made but it’s clearly human. The lobby’s always had those circles on the ground for your characters, and while as a game it makes sense, without context they’re just really weird. Especially in terms of early Fortnite, along with the early blue background and metallic floor, it definitely looks artificial. Along with that, many of the skins just feel like replicas of existing characters. When I play as Peter Griffin, I’m only playing as a caricature of him, y’know? Devoid of his personality. Each skin based on IP feels this way imo: accurate, but without voices and with the plastic-y Fortnite art style, it’s like I’m playing a representation of a character.
This list was really fun to make, and if I think of more games I may come back to this comment! If people are still reading, thank you and I hope I inspired you to write your own comment with your own games in mind!
I really appreciate the effort you put into your list! Great analysis all around.
Wii Sports Golf also has what looks like 3D realizations of the NES Golf courses, adding to the mystique. This mysterious land with fascinating course designs, while we play as golfers that look like a mix between Mario and (but more leaning into) realistic.
This has been my favorite game since I was 8 years old in 2004. I didn’t even know of its competitive side until 2013. Since 2013 I have been obsessed with its mechanics. This video just blew my mind tapping into nostalgia from those first 9 years. It’s such a unique world I always got sucked into. Very impressed with this video. Good work!!!
I like the idea of melee being a simulation the characters are trapped in. The art style vibe and voice acting really does tie it all together
What is a video game if not a simulation?
As a kid, I was always creeped out by the ending sequence of Classic Mode, where the characters turn back into lifeless trophies while falling onto the table with the music box playing in the background, and then a moment of still silence.
I'm glad I'm not the only person who's noticed these aspects of Melee! It's always stood out to me because of the mysteriousness and Y2K-ness to it. Also this video was so well done and the writing was great!
I'm kinda surprised he didn't get much of a mention, but when you compare Mr. Game & Watch in Melee to every other Smash Bros game (esp. 4 and Ult), it's night and day. In the newer games, G&W is a funny little guy, he has the funny beep boop music that plays on his stage and when he wins a match. He'll even transform into other funny little guys for certain attacks In Melee, the dude has a sinister aura surrounding him at all times. Flat Zone's theme and his victory theme are all pretty clearly hostile. When you KO him, he does a bunch of oppressive computer beeps. Him being the final character you unlock also adds to this eerieness. It's like he's some sort of alien invader. He shouldn't have been let in, he shouldn't be allowed, yet here he is. Brawl had the whole deal of G&W being the source of the Shadow Bugs in the SSE, but aside from that he's presented as a more neutral figure, even joining the fight against the big bads after playing with Peach's umbrella
Its like he is part of a primordial force given shape and assuming a close approximation of a human form.
I feel almost the same way when I unlocked him in Melee. Aside from not knowing about GnW games since it was from the 80s...
GnW felt so weird and out of place. Everyone feels like they are from somewhere at least and then this thing gets unlocked and looks like a beta Mario shadow or something
I'm all for it I've always been enthralled by how weird and unique this game is it's such a grey line between eerie and comfortable, dark and colorful. I always used to play on the Mother stages because of how oddly cold and lonely most of the others felt, yet Melee still feels like a warm hug. I also used to be bothered by the challenger approaching screen and other things and they still have a bit of unsettlingness yet I they're awesome all at the sametime. Love Melee's vibe.
As a competitive melee player that also grew up playing melee it holds a special place in my heart, this was an amazing video :)
Mans forgot the announcer is master hand
Smash 64 had a similar feeling. Brawl tried to make sense of the two games with the story mode, but it makes it creepier. Masterhand had a terrifying connotation.
A couple of days ago I was actually thinking about how much less intimidating Master Hand feels in recent installments. I remember the cutscene with the Melee announcer's cackling and the small whirring of the machinery of Final Destination before the music kicked in. Master Hand also used to look more grotesque and less robotic somehow but I don't know how to describe it.
I think it's fair to say I would never have become a Smash fan without Melee's sense of asymmetry and mystery. Unexplained secrets, endless unlockables, weird characters, strange requirements...it feels like a cryptid somehow. I miss it so badly. I love Sakurai and his games, but nothing comes even close to Melee's feel. It becomes so easy nowadays to forget what made me fall in love in the first place: mystery and adventure.
The things you described made me think back to TheGamingBrit’s video titled “The Atmosphere of Tekken 4” where he also talks about the foreboding undertones that game has as well as the whole “digital apocalypse” vibe many early 2000s games had. I always thought there were certain elements about Melee that felt offputting like the giga bowser cutscene or the challenger approaching screens, so it’s cool to see you address those kinds of things when most people only ever really talk about Melee’s advanced tech or the professional scene. Great video!
It's interesting that you talk about the menus feeling uninviting because for me personally they were the coolest thing to me as a kid. There was just a *vibe* when booting up Melee that I had never experienced before that stuck with me.
This video really reminds me about a lot of the fanfiction that people made for melee. From written stories to machinamas, there was a pretty common theme that these works would have: Smash Melee existed in a simulation.
These stories would forego the Smash 64 context and just run with the simulation idea. Obviously Master Hand/Crazy Hand would be the "gods" of the simulated world.
Captain Falcon and Zelda were two characters that would commonly depicted to be aware of the simulation to some degree.
A weird fanon started to be put together through all of these stories and that fanon would bleed into Brawl's unique aesthetic as well.
People may not discuss Melee's aesthetics much, but maybe it's because that discussion was being made within fanfiction.
interesting, do you know why falcon and zelda were the ones depicted like that?
@develrandomdankmemes7586 It was because the wireframes have movesets based off of them, so both would end up investigating why this is the case after encountering the wireframes.
Zelda was really good for this since she could become Shiek and sneak around to spy on Master Hand/Crazy Hand.
Wireframes usually got depicted has unquestioning robot agents for the Hands, so they only interact with the fighters whenever they're going against the will of the Hands. (For example; A tournament was rigged for Falco to win and then Ganon shows up trying to break the narrative and the wireframes try to stop Ganon, but it also interrupts the fight Falco was going to have with Luigi. Somethin like that).
With two characters being aware o the simulation, you can imagine where that leads. (There's so many Matrix parallels in these stories).
@@Tribow ohh makes sense. thanks for sharing
This was a really interesting video good job! I never thought of it this way, I too was a young buck when this came out and played this game countless times with my buds.We also played the first one because i owned that one too. We always thought the kid was playing with the trophies instead of dolls from the first one since he got older. I remember the thought process was "teenagers dont play with dolls anymore"
ive been waiting for a video like this my whole life! i think melee is such a visually beautiful game that reminds you that its a gamecube game. going from the gamecube menu to melee feels so natural
I think the easiest explanation for the art style was simply the time crunch that plagued melee's development. Lines, untextured boxes, the "light up circuit board" effect, simplistic, almost sinusoidal movement patterns for much of the objects, were most likely the simplest and quickest to do, and this dictated melees artstyle early on. I doubt much of it was what the devs really wanted to make melee look like, but I think they simply had no other choice. I'd go as far as to say that many of the patterns, textures, blocks, etc were modified versions of assets that likely existed in the GameCube's dev kit / prepackaged assets for testing purposes, given how untextured, simple, and placeholder many of the graphics in melee look. I think the devs did the best they could with what they had, and it truly gives melee a unique style imo
Oh damn, I'm actually one of the people that wrote one of those forum posts lmao. Specifically I wrote the Reddit post at 37:10 talking about Melee being like a simulation, with paragraphs about Battlefield, Final Destination, and All Star Rest Area respectively. Crazy to see my comment be used for a video like this, but I'm happy to see that it helped you make this video and collect your thoughts better. It was a dope video and encapsulated my feelings perfectly.
Oh wow, that was you! Your comment was one of the ones that I kept thinking about as I wrote the script. It was really helpful in making me feel less crazy. Do you want me to drop your name into the description? I'd be happy to if so!
@@Kirbunny Sure, I'd appreciate that!
Done and done!
I really enjoyed this video. When I was a little kid, my most recurring nightmares were strongly influenced by Smash 64 and Melee. Primarily due to my experience being jumpscared into oblivion by Smash64’s challenger approaching screen, but also many aspects of Melee. I distinctly remember the alarms of the Adventure mode Metroid escape sequence haunting me. Thanks for taking the time to go back and examine this aspect of the game.
I am AMAZED you didn’t mention how you defeat Giga Bowser. Based on the opening cutscene all of these characters are “inactive” as trophy’s and become “active” to fight. When you fight Bowser in Adventure Mode, you defeat him and watch his trophy fall off the stage with the KO sound and animation following, further implying that defeat means becoming “inactive” again. Suddenly, Bowser reappears from below the stage, still “inactive” and begins to BREAK out of his trophy form, becoming something much more unnatural. Bowser somehow broke all of the unspoken rules of the game just to fight you again, and when you defeat him again, he becomes “inactive”, falls off the stage, and SHATTERS as he hits the ground. This entire sequence and battle is hauntingly awesome
To be blunt, I'm not really interested in your fan theory. But I do appreciate someone taking a time to explore Melee's slight eeriness. I've always felt this way about the game, but moreso towards the "end" when you've got more weird characters like Game & Watch or Mewtwo, or weird stages like PokeFloats. Something about the All-Star meadow doesn't sit right with me. I never got people's issue with Mario 64, but I certainly felt it with Melee. The later games were more triumphant, more emblematic, so they don't have this feeling. But Melee's a time capsule, perhaps moreso than the others in the series.
I didn't find Melee "eerie" at all. I did find it less goofy, more "serious" in it's presentation than the first game or Brawl. But even then, the first game has things like the highly angular polygon team, Brawl has things like Super Mario never smiling! Like Master Hand actually bleeding from Tabuu's attack. I don't find Melee to be especially edgy or bleak in presentation. A little more than the other too, but not significantly more.
This was an incredibly amazing video. I cannot begin to stress how much I enjoyed this and extremely connected with everything you said and showed. What a well written, well edited, well put together video. Fantastic!
Thank you so much!
The “escape” line in the JP FD trophy always throws me for a loop cuz it contradicts literally every other game in the series. Even 64 coded the world with a very positive and whimsical tone in the opening. The Brawl dojo states that being in trophy form and unable to enjoy competing with others is akin to death. The only logical explanation that they would ever actively desire going to the alternate world where they’d be stuck in their trophy form is as a mark of personal honor and accomplishment, like “I climbed Mt. Everest” kind of deal
The Race to the Finish stage is also called "Keep going on!" in Japanese, "Tsukisusume!"
Great video and analysis, glad I found your channel!
I'm glad someone finally put this feeling to words. For me, the feeling melee gave me was that it took place in a void. With how dark everything is, and how echoey both the sound effects and the music felt. When Brawl finally came out, and the concept of Subspace was broached in that game's "plot", to me it was the game telling me that Melee took place in that subspace dimension.
So both these games made child me piece things together in her own way. It was something like. Melee took place in subspace, which is some kind of void existing between each nintendo world. And as for the aesthetic of the series getting more bright and lived in feeling as time goes on, my headcanon was always that Subspace was always sucking in more stuff from every nintendo dimension. Since Smash 64 was also pretty void-y as well, I took it that Smash 4 was so bright and lived in because of all the series history that had been sucked into Subspace.
Also yeah, i never liked that whole kid playing with toys plot. Mostly because it flew right in the face of my headcanon and i disliked that lmao.
For me, Melee was my happy place as I struggled with a difficult childhood. It is bursting with so much nostalgia that I almost feel the need to defend it, so I am a bit biased on this one.
I’m just glad I’m not the only one who found something slightly creepy with melee
The realest part of this feeling is when you say how in later smash games the characters are invited but in N64 and Melee (and brawl too a bit) they really feel like they're being played, either by a kid or by a computer simulation. They really feel like they don't wanna be there
I think in essence, we are talking about eras where machine limitations try to present cinematic effects that they aren't quite capable of, same as like Mario 64, that's why these games feel 'off' because they can't create detailed nuances that match the experience that the developers probably aimed for. But I loved Melee growing up and I used to take so many snapshots from the game and never thought they looked off. Remember that in the old Mario stage, even though the danger signs are off camera, the player has the option to adjust the camera when they pause the game, so they are able to see these things.
MELEE is one of a kind. I love ultimate but this game is something else. I loved the trophies with the in depth descriptions. I learned so much about the Nintendo universe through them. May be easy to some but getting every trophy in melee is the hardest video game achievement I have accomplished
I will always love the muted colors of this game. the sky and the menus just feal so different. It's like getting a game that's half premade test assets and half original assets. It's proboly one of the most nostolgic things for me.
Thank you so effing much for talking about this, I’ve adored this game’s aesthetic my whole life and I’ve been trying to put my finger on just what makes it so interesting to me for so unbelievably long, I think I would’ve gone insane if I didn’t find this, amazing vid 😊
I got in a car accident today(no I didn’t call 411). Honestly, this was a good pick me up.
Melee always felt like “better 64”. From doll(64) to simulation(melee), brawl always felt like Taboos home in realism, on poor hardware🤷🏽♂️✨
Man its the weirdest thing, like 2 weeks ago i looked up “why does melee sound so creepy” and i got no results. Then a couple days later this is posted
Playing this game by yourself on a Sunday night, after all of your friends had to go home is one of the creepiest and saddest moments of childhood 💙