Super Smash Bros. Melee[a] is a 2001 crossover fighting video game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the GameCube.

It features characters from Nintendo video game franchises such as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Pokémon, and Donkey Kong among others.

Like its predecessor, Super Smash Bros. Melee is a platform fighter that differs from traditional fighting games as the objective is to force their opponents beyond the boundaries of the stage.

"All-Star Mode" is an unlockable feature that requires the player to defeat every character in the game while having only one stock and three health supplements between battles.

[19] The characters' appearance in Super Smash Bros. Melee led to a rise in the popularity of the series, including releasing it outside of Japan.

On their official website, the developers posted screenshots and information highlighting and explaining the attention to physics and detail in the game, with references to changes from its predecessor.

[24] The game was in development for 13 months, beginning around autumn 2000, and Sakurai called his lifestyle during this period "destructive" with no holidays and short weekends.

[25] Unlike the experimental first Super Smash Bros., he felt great pressure to deliver a quality sequel, claiming it was the "biggest project I had ever led up to that point".

Despite the stressful development cycle, in a 2010 interview, Sakurai proudly called Melee "the sharpest game in the series... it just felt really good to play", even compared to its successor, Super Smash Bros.

[26][27][28][29] Marth and Roy were initially intended to be playable exclusively in the Japanese version of Super Smash Bros. Melee due to Fire Emblem's lack of representation in the West at the time; however, they received favorable attention during the game's North American localization, leading to the decision for the developers to include them in the Western version.

[32] Additionally, Ayumi Tachibana from Famicom Detective Club was considered as a playable character, but was ultimately relegated to a cameo role as a trophy.

Nintendo offered a playable tournament of the games for fans in which a GameCube and Super Smash Bros. Melee were prizes for the winner.

[41][42] Nintendo followed this trend with Super Smash Bros. Brawl, in which there were daily updates by the game's developer, Masahiro Sakurai.

[44] In January 2003, Melee was re-released as part of the Player's Choice program, a marketing label used by Nintendo to promote video games that have sold more than a million copies.

The soundtrack does not include music taken directly from the game, but features many live orchestral arrangements performed by the New Japan Philharmonic.

Focusing on the additional features, GameSpy commented that "Melee really scores big in the 'we've added tons of great extra stuff' department".

[57] Reviewers compared the game favorably to Super Smash Bros. IGN's Fran Mirabella III stated that it was "in an entirely different league than the N64 version";[14] GameSpot's Miguel Lopez praised the game for offering a more advanced "classic-mode" compared to its predecessor, while detailing the Adventure Mode as "really a hit-or-miss experience".

[53][56][57] In their review of the game, GameSpy stated that "you'll have a pretty hard time finding a more enjoyable multiplayer experience on any other console".

[57] Reviewers have welcomed the simplistic controls,[53][14][57] but its "hyper-responsiveness", with the characters easily dashing and precise movements being difficult to perform, was expressed as a serious flaw of the game by GameSpot.

[59] Similarly, Nintendo Spin's Clark Nielsen stated that "Melee was too fast for its own good", and "skill was more about just being able to wrap your head around what was happening as opposed to really getting into the combat".

[60] In regards to the pace of the game, Edge commented that it even made gameplay features such as "blocking" redundant, as the player is not given enough time to react to an attack.

[64] As of March 10, 2008, Super Smash Bros. Melee is the best-selling GameCube game, with more than seven million copies sold worldwide.

[83] GameSpy chose it as fourth in a similar list, citing that it had "better graphics, better music, more characters, more gameplay modes, more secrets to discover" in comparison to its predecessor.

[87] The inclusion of Marth and Roy in Melee's roster led to increased awareness of the Fire Emblem series outside of Japan.

[88][89][90] This, combined with the high sales and positive reception of Advance Wars, resulted in the next Fire Emblem title being localized.

[88] Super Smash Bros. Melee is a widely played competitive video game and has been featured in several high-profile tournaments.

[94] The tournaments increased in popularity, and an echelon of competitively successful top players emerged in each region of the United States and Japan.

[95][96][97][98][99][100] Melee was also included in the Evolution Championship Series (Evo) in 2007, a fighting game tournament held in Las Vegas.

Melee was hosted at Evo 2013 after a charity vote to decide the final game to be featured in its tournament lineup.

[110] In 2020, Project Slippi, a fork of the Dolphin emulator for Melee designed to introduce quality-of-life features such as replays and online play, was updated to support rollback netcode and integrated matchmaking, allowing netplay across large distances with little latency.