Those who have played the original “Super Smash Bros.” game are in for a real treat. Dan Fornace, a long time fan of the classic Nintendo fighting game, and game programmer, has recently made a free downloadable fan-made game for PC owners appropriately named “Super Smash Land.”
“Super Smash Land” holds true to the concept of the previous games. You damage players to increase their damage percentage. The higher the percentage, the easier it is for a player to be knocked out of bounds. However, Fornace has made the graphics resemble Nintendo’s original Gameboy graphics. This adds a nice nostalgia factor for fans of the both SSB and the classic Gameboy.
Players are given the starting fan-favorite characters of Mario, Link, Kirby, Pikachu and a secret character that has not been used in the original games. All of these characters’ different fighting moves remain intact. I found the controls to be very simplistic and easy to use. The arrow keys are used for movement, the Z key acts as the “A” button and the X key acts as the “B” button. The only thing I found unusual about the controls is that Z acts as “jump” as opposed to pressing “up” on the arrow keys.
Forance also put in a brand new mode that wasn’t even used in the original games. This new mode involves you climbing a tower with each floor holding a new fighting challenge. Some examples include not moving left, not jumping, and not touching platforms on the side. This mode offers a fresh dose of challenge to the already fun game play.
The only frustrating part of this game is the fact that I personally had a hard time getting the game to work on my computer. Mac owners can only play this game with the Wine program. However, a full Mac version is currently in the works.
“Super Smash Land” is a great game with a huge nostalgia factor, and for the value of being absolutely free, I highly recommend this gem to any “Super Smash Bros.” fans.
