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114-632: Super Smash Bros. Melee is a 2001 crossover fighting video game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the GameCube . It is the second installment in the Super Smash Bros. series. It features characters from Nintendo video game franchises such as Mario , The Legend of Zelda , Star Fox , Pokémon , and Donkey Kong among others. The stages and gameplay modes reference or take designs from these franchises as well. Melee includes all playable characters from

228-473: A sketch comedy show or as a humorous interlude on an award telecast. Such crossovers may sometimes involve the real actors—for example, a sketch on Royal Canadian Air Farce saw Yasir and Sarah from Little Mosque on the Prairie buying the gas station from Corner Gas , with many of the characters in the sketch being portrayed by the shows' real actors—although they may also feature one genuine star from

342-586: A video game meet and interact with each other. These can range from a character simply appearing as a playable character or boss in the game, as a special guest character, or a major crossover where two or more franchises encounter. Konami made the first crossover video game featuring Simon Belmont from Castlevania , Universal Pictures ' King Kong and Mikey from the Warner Bros. movie The Goonies in Konami Wai Wai World for

456-583: A " shared universe ". For example, in the Marvel Comics universe, Spider-Man has frequent dealings with another Marvel hero, Daredevil , just as in the DC Comics Universe, the Flash and Green Lantern often collaborate. In comic book terminology, these "guest star" roles are common enough that they are generally not considered crossovers; rather, this short-term collaboration to fight crime

570-399: A January 2014 episode of Republic of Doyle as Bill Murdoch, a 21st-century descendant of his regular character William Murdoch. The earliest example of a crossover in children's television was PBS ' 1971 program The Electric Company . Crossovers can take the form of a promotional cameo appearance , used to draw attention to another work of fiction, with little rational explanation in

684-544: A bat". In a similar competition, Nintendo Power named Super Smash Bros. Melee the 16th best game ever to appear on a Nintendo console, and selected it as the 2001 "Game of the Year". IGN named it the third best GameCube game of all-time in 2007 as a part of a feature reflecting on the GameCube's long lifespan, citing it as "the grand stage of fighters, much like Mario Kart is for racing fans". GameSpy chose it as fourth in

798-447: A cameo to a full comedy sketch or episode—is an extremely popular way of circumventing this problem. By various means, such crossovers typically avoid outcry from fans by being obvious parody or homage . However, on rare occasion, the humor of such crossovers can be used by one show make a narrative point by capitalizing on the audience's experience of the other program. Parodic crossovers can be directly established as being outside

912-531: A case in the turmoil of the time after the fall of the Berlin Wall . The episode was produced during the short transition period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany . Single-player video game A single-player video game is a video game where input from only one player is expected throughout the gameplay . Video games in general can feature several game modes , including single-player modes designed to be played by

1026-454: A crossover "event". In one case, a New York City blackout caused by Paul Reiser 's character on Mad About You was experienced by the characters on Friends and Madman of the People . Such "event nights" can also be linked by a single character's quest across multiple shows on the same evening. ABC attempted this kind of "event night" crossover with its Friday night programming during

1140-592: A device in establishing continuity in a shared fictional universe. This crossover is common in the Star Trek universe , where minor guest stars from one series have appeared as featured guest stars later ones. A good example of this crossover is that of the Klingons Kor , Koloth , and Kang . After the passage of about a century of narrative time, the three onetime adversaries of Captain Kirk appeared together in

1254-486: 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. In the same year, an e-sports competition known as " The Big House " was sent a cease and desist by Nintendo, due to the usage of Slippi. Fictional crossover This

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1368-574: A free gift in an issue of the British Official Nintendo Magazine . The soundtrack does not include music taken directly from the game, but features many live orchestral arrangements performed by the New Japan Philharmonic . The game contains a number of unlockable tracks that can be obtained after making certain in-game accomplishments. On the same website, the developers have posted discussions about

1482-490: A games-as-a-service model ( Overwatch , Destiny 2 , and Star Wars Battlefront 2 ), were indicators to many that the single-player model for AAA was waning. Manveer Heir, who had left EA after finishing his gameplay design work for Mass Effect Andromeda , acknowledged that the culture within EA was against the development of single-player games, and with Visceral's closure, "that the linear single-player triple-A game at EA

1596-434: A joystick direction. For example, by tilting the joystick to the side and pressing the "B" button, the character will use their "side special" attack. Tilting the joystick up, down, or not tilting it at all while pressing B will use the up, down, or neutral special, respectively. During battles, items related to Nintendo games or merchandise fall onto the game field. These items have purposes ranging from inflicting damage on

1710-473: A major Valiant hero. Cartoon crossovers are not uncommon, and most of them – like comics or live-action TV shows – will often feature characters owned by the same company or network. One example is Cartoon Network 's The Grim Adventures of the KND . It features five crossovers – Ed, Edd n Eddy , Codename: Kids Next Door , The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy , a reference to The Powerpuff Girls , and

1824-586: A million copies. The game also sold well in North America, where it sold 250,000-copies in nine days. In the United States, Super Smash Bros. Melee was the 19th best-selling video game in 2001 according to the NPD Group . By July 2006, it had sold 3.2 million copies and earned $ 125 million in the United States alone. Next Generation ranked it as the fifth highest-selling game launched for

1938-471: A mixed response to the single-player modes, many reviewers expressed the game's multiplayer mode as a strong component of the game. 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". Melee ' s visuals garnered a positive reaction. GameSpot lauded the game's character and background models, stating that "the character models are pleasantly full-bodied, and

2052-501: A narrative in a particular direction, and so multiplayer games tend not to focus heavily on a linear narrative. By contrast, many single-player games are built around a compelling story. While a multiplayer game relies upon human-human interaction for its conflict, and often for its sense of camaraderie, a single-player game must build these things artificially. As such, single-player games require deeper characterisation of their non-player characters in order to create connections between

2166-427: A new concept derivative of an older one. Another intention is to give fictional characters more emotional credibility and thus increase immersion for the fans. Crossovers generally occur between properties owned by a single holder, but they can, more rarely, involve properties from different holders, provided that the inherent legal obstacles can be overcome. They may also involve using characters that have passed into

2280-515: A nomination in GameSpot ' s "Best Music" and "Best Fighting Game" categories. GameFAQs placed it sixth in a poll of the 100 best games ever and was in the final four of the "Best. Game. Ever." contest. In the 200th issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly , the editors selected Melee as the 92nd most influential game in their "Top 200 Games of Their Time" list, defining Melee as "Billions of things to unlock, plus Yoshi pummeling Pikachu with

2394-632: A number of different works. Illustrator Howard Pyle conceived his work Twilight Land as one such crossover. In it, a nameless narrator is transported to "Twilight Land" and meets famous fairy tale characters for a soirée in an inn: Mother Goose , Cinderella , Fortunatus , Sinbad the Sailor , Aladdin , Boots , the Valiant Little Tailor , and others gather in the framing device and tell each other adventurous tales featuring other literary personages. French author Jules Lemaître wrote

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2508-491: A playable demo that updated from the previous demo displayed at E3. Nintendo offered a playable tournament of the games for fans in which a GameCube and Super Smash Bros. Melee were prizes for the winner. Before the game's release, the Japanese official website included weekly updates, including screenshots and character profiles. Nintendo followed this trend with Super Smash Bros. Brawl , in which there were daily updates by

2622-555: A quote from Scooby-Doo , which are all licensed Cartoon Network series. During the 1970s and 1980s, crossovers were particularly common among the Hanna-Barbera properties. Some of the earliest examples happened on The New Scooby-Doo Movies which featured appearances by characters from Harlem Globetrotters , Josie and the Pussycats , Jeannie , Speed Buggy , Batman and Robin , and The Addams Family . Later,

2736-543: A remake of the Dead Space franchise. Around the same time, head of Xbox Game Studios Phil Spencer said that they still see a place for narrative-driven single-player games even though the financial drivers of the market tended to be live service games. Spencer said that developing such games with AAA-scale budgets can be risky, but with availability of services like cloud gaming and subscription services, they can gauge audience reaction to these games early on and reduce

2850-674: A rich family history by speculating familial connections between them (such as a blood-relationship between Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan ). Roger Zelazny 's novel A Night in the Lonesome October combines Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Frankenstein, Jack the Ripper, and the Cthulhu Mythos, although he never specifically identifies them as such ("The Count", "The Good Doctor", "Jack", etc.). Occasionally, authors will include into crossovers classic fictional characters whose copyright

2964-399: A rise in the popularity of the series, including releasing it outside of Japan. References are made throughout the game to the relationship between characters of the same universe; in one of the events from "Event mode", Mario must defeat his enemy Bowser to rescue Princess Peach . Furthermore, each character has recognizable moves from their original series, such as Samus 's firearms from

3078-639: 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. The game was ranked 58th in Official Nintendo Magazine ' s "100 Greatest Nintendo Games Ever" feature. In 2019, Game Informer ranked it as the 2nd best fighting game of all time. Edge magazine ranked the game 91st on their 100 best Video Games in 2007. The inclusion of Marth and Roy in Melee ' s roster led to increased awareness of

3192-759: A single player in addition to multi-player modes. Most modern console games and arcade games are designed so that they can be played by a single player; although many of these games have modes that allow two or more players to play (not necessarily simultaneously), very few actually require more than one player for the game to be played. The Unreal Tournament series is one example of such. The earliest video games, such as Tennis for Two (1958), Spacewar! (1962), and Pong (1972), were symmetrical games designed to be played by two players. Single-player games gained popularity only after this, with early titles such as Speed Race (1974) and Space Invaders (1978). The reason for this, according to Raph Koster ,

3306-400: A single-player element either as the core or as one of several game modes, single-player gaming had been viewed by the video game industry as peripheral to the future of gaming, with Electronic Arts vice president Frank Gibeau stating in 2012 that he had not approved one game to be developed as a single-player experience. The question of the financial viability of single-player AAA games

3420-418: A sort of sequel to Cinderella , named Princess Mimi , where Cinderella's daughter is courted by Polyphemus and Charles Perrault 's Hop-o'-My-Thumb . It is also common for authors to 'crossover' characters who have passed into the public domain, and thus do not require copyright or royalty payments for their use in other works. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill

3534-480: A specialized area for a character in which they aim to destroy ten targets in the least amount of time they can. These areas may include references to that particular character's past and legacy. Melee introduced "Adventure Mode", which takes the player to several predefined universes of characters in the Nintendo franchise. "All-Star Mode" is an unlockable feature that requires the player to defeat every character in

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3648-577: A symbol that appears behind their damage meter which represents their series, such as a Triforce symbol behind Link's damage meter and a Poké Ball behind a Pokémon species . Some characters represent popular franchises, while others were less-known at the time of the release; Marth and Roy represent the Fire Emblem series, which was not released outside Japan at the time. The characters' appearance in Super Smash Bros. Melee led to

3762-416: A variety of side-scrolling fighting challenges. The applicable modes range from "Classic Mode", which involves the player battling multiple opponents and a boss character, to the "Home Run Contest", a minigame involving the player trying to launch a sandbag as far as possible with a Home Run Bat for ten seconds. Some of these modes are personalized for the character; for example, the "Target Test" sets out

3876-547: Is a fighting game engine that features many fan-created and fictional characters and stages from various television series, movies, as well as other video games. Crossovers of multiple characters, owned by one company or published by one publisher , have been used to set an established continuity, where characters can frequently meet within one setting. This is especially true of comic book publishers , as different characters in various Marvel , DC , or Valiant comic books frequently interact with one another since they live in

3990-493: Is another example of this, as all of the main characters and most of the secondary / background characters are fictional characters whose copyright has expired, and all are characters of different authors and creators brought together within one massive extended universe. Many of the works of Philip José Farmer 's Wold Newton family sequences (which has also been explored and developed by other authors) also utilize and interweave numerous otherwise unrelated fictional characters into

4104-772: Is called a team-up . A crossover in comic book terms only occurs when a story spans more than one title. This has led to "crossover events" in which major occurrences are shown as affecting most or all of the stories in the shared universe; see Category:Crossover comics . The earliest such crossover event was Gardner Fox 's Zatanna's Search which took place in Hawkman #4 (October/November 1964), Detective Comics #336 (February 1965), The Atom #19 (June/July 1965), Green Lantern #42 (January 1966), Detective Comics #355 (September 1966), and Justice League of America #51 (February 1967). This story dealt with Zatanna attempting to reconnect with her father, Zatara , and seeking

4218-480: Is clearly intended in appearance and description by other characters to be Dr. Fu Manchu appears as a significant villain; however, as this character was not in the public domain at the time of writing and the rights still held by the estate of his creator Sax Rohmer , he is not directly named as such in the work and is only referred to as 'the Devil Doctor'. Crossovers involving principals can also occur when

4332-517: Is dead for the time being". Bethesda on December 7, 2017, decided to collaborate with Lynda Carter to launch a Public Safety Announcement to save single-player gaming. A few years later in 2021, EA was reported to have revived interest in single-player games, following the successful launch of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order in 2020. The company still planned on releasing live service games with multiplayer components, but began evaluating its IP catalog for more single-player titles to revive, such as

4446-400: Is different from a spoof , where one discrete character, setting, or universe, copies another character, setting, or universe, often in a comedic manner. Crossovers often occur in an official capacity in order for the intellectual property rights holders to reap the financial reward of combining two or more popular, established properties. In other cases, the crossover can serve to introduce

4560-462: Is down to a combination of several factors: increasingly sophisticated computers and interfaces that enabled asymmetric gameplay, cooperative gameplay and story delivery within a gaming framework, coupled with the fact that the majority of early games players had introverted personality types (according to the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator ). Although most modern games incorporate

4674-436: Is exclusive to the Japanese version of the game. Super Smash Bros. Melee features 25 (26 if Zelda and Sheik are considered separate) characters, 13 (14 with Zelda and Sheik separate) more than its predecessor. Fourteen are available initially, while the other 11 characters require completing specific tasks to become available. Every character featured in the game is derived from a popular Nintendo franchise. All characters have

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4788-408: Is from The Legend of Zelda . Although the stages are rendered in three dimensions, players can only move on a two-dimensional plane. Not all stages are available immediately; some stages must be "unlocked" by achieving particular requirements. Some stages feature moving elements and platforms and hazards that harm players, while others lack these elements. Single-player mode provides the player with

4902-442: Is measured by a meter that represents damage as a percentage. The higher the percentage value, the farther the player gets knocked back, and the easier they are to knock off the stage, which will result in the character's death and the loss of a stock , or life. Unlike other games of the same genre, in which moves are entered by button-input combinations, most moves in Super Smash Bros. Melee can be accessed via one-button presses and

5016-444: Is more common on animated programs, such as when Bender found and ate Bart Simpson 's shorts on Futurama , or Milhouse had a talking Bender doll on The Simpsons . This would seem to be another case when a popular franchise is acknowledged as fiction and not a crossover of the stories. Perhaps the most obvious parodic crossover is found when characters from two series interact outside either series. This occurs most commonly on

5130-484: Is now considered one of the greatest video games ever made . It achieved strong sales upon its release, becoming the GameCube's best-selling title , with over seven million copies sold by 2008. Considered one of the most competitively viable Smash Bros. games due to its fast-paced and aggressive gameplay, Melee has been featured in many competitive gaming tournaments, boasting a dedicated grassroots fan community which has kept its competitive scene alive well beyond

5244-464: Is still held by the original authors (or at least their estates), but who are nevertheless considered iconic or 'mythic' enough to be recognised from a few character traits or descriptions without being directly named (thus not requiring royalties payments to be made to the copyright holder). A prominent example occurs within The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume One , wherein a character who

5358-483: Is that of Mad About You and Friends , which share the character of Ursula Buffay . Neither show shares any production or distribution commonality, but rather an actress ( Lisa Kudrow ), a setting ( New York City ) and a schedule ( Friends initially followed Mad About You on NBC 's Thursday night schedule ). Mad About You and Friends share another type of "network crossover". On rare occasions, networks have chosen to theme an entire night's programming around

5472-420: Is the battles between Nintendo characters, which has been suggested as being overly hectic; N-Europe questioned whether the gameplay is "too Frantic?", even though they enjoyed the variety of modes on offer. 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

5586-571: Is when the characters from all three shows split into groups, where the members all share the same clichéd character archetypes, such the main characters Goku, Luffy, and Toriko falling into the dumb, good-natured, strong character archetype. Manga artist Leiji Matsumoto has been known to cross over the characters of his various stories and characters such as Captain Harlock , Galaxy Express 999 , and Queen Millennia , all of which were originally written as separate, self-contained stories. In

5700-463: The Fire Emblem series outside of Japan. This, combined with the high sales and positive reception of Advance Wars , resulted in the next Fire Emblem title being localized. The game, simply called Fire Emblem in Western markets, is a prequel to Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade , the game from which Roy originates. All future Fire Emblem titles to date, barring Fire Emblem: New Mystery of

5814-926: The Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10 set of movies involved several crossovers, including such combinations as The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones . This was taken to an extreme in the 1977–79 series Laff-A-Lympics , which was essentially a gathering of the Hanna-Barbera characters for a regular series. Crossovers are not necessarily composed of characters under common ownership. Two of the most notable cartoon crossovers consisted of characters from different companies. Disney's movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit had characters from various companies, most notably Disney and Warner Bros. The film also includes cameos of characters from MGM . Another cartoon crossover would occur in 1990, Cartoon All-Stars to

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5928-530: The Maetel Legend , Queen Promethium is revealed to be having been Yukino Yaoi, the protagonist from Queen Millennia . Matsumoto has also created various crossovers with Space Battleship Yamato , an anime on which he served as director, although the rights to Yamato are actually owned by Yoshinobu Nishizaki. The first film crossover in a series of Universal Studios monster films was Frankenstein Meets

6042-513: The Metroid series and Link's arsenal of weapons. Super Smash Bros. Melee was developed by HAL Laboratory , with Masahiro Sakurai as the head of production. Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto served as co-producer. The game was one of the first games released on the GameCube and highlighted the advancement in graphics over the Nintendo 64 . The project proposal/initial design document for

6156-554: The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode, " Blood Oath " – as the Klingons and Federation had become allies in the century between, the former villains are now portrayed as heroes. The distinction between "spin-off" and "crossover" is sometimes narrow. The two terms can become especially conflated if two shows are linked by a guest star with a single appearance. There is debate, for instance over whether Out of

6270-847: The PlayStation 2 , Xbox or GameCube between January 2000 and July 2006 in that country. Approximately 4.06 million units have been sold in the country as of December 27, 2007. With a software-to-hardware ratio of 3:4 at one time, some have attributed the increasing sales of the GameCube near the launch date to Melee . As of March 10, 2008, Super Smash Bros. Melee is the best-selling GameCube game , with more than seven million copies sold worldwide. It has been estimated that at one point in time 70% of all GameCube owners also owned Melee . Several publications have acknowledged Super Smash Bros. Melee in competitions and awards. In their "Best of 2001" awards, GameSpy chose it as Best Fighting GameCube Game, IGN ' s reader choice chose it as Game of

6384-487: The public domain with those concurrently under copyright protection . A crossover story may try to explain its own reason for the crossover, such as characters being neighbors (notable examples being the casts from The Golden Girls and Empty Nest ) or meeting via dimensional rift or similar phenomenon (a common explanation for science fiction properties that have different owners). Some crossovers are not explained at all. Others are absurd or simply impossible within

6498-539: The 'we've added tons of great extra stuff' department". 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"; 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". Despite

6612-533: The 1997 season. There, they proposed that the title character of Sabrina the Teenage Witch should chase her cat, Salem , through Boy Meets World , You Wish and Teen Angel because it had run away with a "time ball" that was displacing each show through time. In 2013, the Canadian crime drama series Republic of Doyle and Murdoch Mysteries produced a crossover, which was complicated by

6726-471: The Blue is a spin-off of Happy Days , or whether the star of Out of the Blue merely crossed over into Happy Days . Often, the problems of bringing together two shows with different narrative ambitions make the writing of a crossover burdensome. Such difficulties are encountered by situation comedies that wish to crossover with dramatic television programs. The satirical crossover—ranging in length from

6840-654: The Chipmunks , the Smurfs , ALF (from his short-lived cartoon spinoff ), Garfield , and the trio of Baby Kermit , Baby Piggy , and Baby Gonzo (from Jim Henson's Muppet Babies ). Animation companies granted unlimited, royalty-free use of their cartoon characters for this project, a feat that has been unequalled before or since. This cartoon was also introduced by then- President George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush , and would be distributed to schools and video stores free of charge nationwide. Webtoons (animated shows from

6954-689: The Emblem , have been released overseas. Super Smash Bros. Melee is a widely played competitive video game and has been featured in several high-profile tournaments. Many consider it to be the most competitively viable game in the series. Melee version NTSC was first released on the GameCube in 2001 in Japan and later North America, Nintendo ran the first ever Melee tournament named Premium Fight most likely from August 25 to August 27, 2001. The tournaments increased in popularity, and an echelon of competitively successful top players emerged in each region of

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7068-533: The Famicom in 1988. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games , released in Japan two months before Super Smash Bros. Brawl , was the first time that Mario and Sonic (as well as their associated characters) appeared in a game together. In literature , some authors also engage in crossovers by including characters from different novels they have written in one. The first popular crossover in literature

7182-625: The Rescue . This cartoon featured popular characters from children's Saturday morning cartoons, banding together to promote an anti-drug message. ABC , CBS , Fox , and NBC aired this half-hour special one Saturday morning with characters from all their networks, including Huey, Dewey, and Louie (from Disney's DuckTales ), Winnie the Pooh , Tigger , Slimer (from The Real Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters ), Michelangelo (from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ), Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Alvin and

7296-674: The United States and Japan. Professional gaming organizations began to take more notice of Melee and started sponsoring players professionally. Several professional Melee players including Christopher "KillaOR" McKenzie, Isai Alvarado , and Ken were seen in the 2005 "I'm a Professional Gamer" episode of the MTV reality series True Life . Tournaments became larger, more televised and more professional. Increases in audience and competitor counts, as well as prize pools, were also seen. From 2004 to 2007, Major League Gaming sponsored Melee on its Pro Circuit. Ken Hoang , also known as "The King of Smash"

7410-628: 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. Sakurai stated that the development team had suggested characters from four other games to represent the Famicom/NES era, until the developers eventually chose the Ice Climbers to fulfill this role. Additionally, Ayumi Tachibana from Famicom Detective Club

7524-568: The Wolf Man , in 1943. After the comics publishing house Marvel Comics ventured into movie production , they set off to produce solitary films with popular superheroes from the Avengers team, with characters from upcoming films making cameo appearances in films starring another superhero, leading up to the crossover film The Avengers (2012). Inspired by Marvel's success, Warner Bros. , who hold movie rights for DC Comics ' heroes, announced

7638-704: The Year , Electronic Gaming Monthly chose it as Best Multiplayer and Best GameCube Game, and GameSpot chose it as the Best GameCube Game and tenth best game of the year. During the 5th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards , the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated Super Smash Bros. Melee for " Console Fighting Game of the Year " and " Outstanding Achievement in Animation ", which were ultimately awarded to Dead or Alive 3 and Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee , respectively. It also received

7752-506: The agent has issues over possibly becoming a sperm donor, with David Boreanaz (who plays Booth) repaying the favor in " Road to the North Pole ". An appearance by Elmo , from Sesame Street , was made, in a hallucination of Connie Ray 's, on TV sitcom The Torkelsons . Fan fiction fusions between different science fiction movies and series are often created, such as Star Wars and Star Trek or Babylon 5 and Stargate . M.U.G.E.N.

7866-710: The aid of Hawkman, Batman, Robin , the Atom, Green Lantern, and the Elongated Man along the way. The first major crossover event was spearheaded by the Marvel Editor-in-Chief at the time, Jim Shooter . As a way to further toy sales he devised the Secret Wars crossover which brought all the major Marvel heroes into a 12-issue miniseries to battle a common threat. After the threat was dealt with, they all returned to their regular titles. Secret Wars

7980-438: The change as they did not have confidence that a studio with an AAA-scale budget could produce a viable single-player game based on the popular Star Wars franchise. Alongside this, as well as relatively poor sales of games in the year prior that were principally AAA single-player games ( Resident Evil 7 , Prey , Dishonored 2 , and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided ) against financially successful multiplayer games and those offer

8094-455: The characters have no prior relationship, but are related by time period, locale or profession. The Law and Order series, for example, afford a commonality of setting and profession which lends itself to crossovers, both within the franchise and in a wider universe. Following the cancellation of the ABC soap opera One Life to Live and its high-rated finale, several characters crossed over into

8208-419: The combat". 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. Despite the new features added to the game, some reviews criticized Melee for a lack of originality and for being too similar to its predecessor, Super Smash Bros . Caleb Hale from GameCritics.com noted that while it

8322-435: The context of the hosting show's narrative. When not clearly presented as parody, this is frequently scorned by fans as blatant commercialism. A notable example of this is The Simpsons episode " A Star Is Burns ", in which the character of Jay Sherman (from The Critic ) appeared. It originally aired on March 5, 1995, on FOX right before The Critic began its second season, its first season having aired on ABC. This episode

8436-444: The continuity of one or all of the properties being crossed over. A good example is the crossover between The Simpsons and The X-Files , which was largely accepted as being outside standard X-Files continuity. They can occur by virtue of a dream sequence , in which the characters of one show will appear as part of a dream had by a character on another show. This method was perhaps used most famously to explain to audiences that

8550-509: The entirety of Newhart had been the dream of Bob Newhart 's character on The Bob Newhart Show . It has more recently been used to demonstrate that cast members of The Young and the Restless appeared in a dream of a character on The King of Queens . Parodic crossovers can take the form of " gag " cameos by characters of one property appearing on another. Crossovers of this type can also be completely wordless. This type of crossover

8664-439: The fictional setting, and have to be ignored by the series' respective continuities . Still others intentionally make the relations between two or more fictional universes confusing, as with The Simpsons and Futurama , where each show is fiction in the other. In contrast with legal crossovers, unofficial crossovers are created solely because of the artistic pleasure derived by their creators. Unofficial crossovers often take

8778-473: The first game and also adds characters from additional franchises such as Fire Emblem , of which no games had been released outside Japan at the time, in addition to new stages and gameplay modes. Like other games in the Smash Bros. series, Melee ' s gameplay system offers an unorthodox approach to the fighting game genre, with a counter that measures damage with increasing percentages, representing

8892-457: The form of fan-written fiction and fan art , but the trope is increasingly prevalent in amateur films and audio . Whereas official crossovers are frequently stymied by such concerns as copyright, royalties payments, quality of writing and ownership of the characters, unofficial crossovers are unfettered by such concerns, so long as property holders do not exercise their right to enjoin the distribution of such material. A good example would be

9006-496: The game was completed on July 5, 1999. Sakurai wanted to make an opening FMV sequence to pay homage to the debut of the GameCube. HAL and Sakurai worked with three separate graphic houses in Tokyo to make the opening sequence. 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. The game

9120-411: The game while having only one stock and three health supplements between battles. In the multiplayer mode, up to four players or computer-controlled characters may fight in a free-for-all or on separate teams. The central processing unit (CPU) characters' artificial intelligence (AI) difficulty is ranked from one to nine in ascending order of difficulty. Individual players can also be handicapped;

9234-482: The game with the GameCube for $ 99.99. Super Smash Bros. Melee features both new and re-arranged music from many of Nintendo's popular gaming franchises. In 2002, Enterbrain released a soundtrack in Japan titled Dairantou Smash Brothers DX Orchestra Concert . The same soundtrack was released in 2003 as Smashing... Live! as a bonus for subscribing to Nintendo Power magazine in North America , and also as

9348-461: The game's developer, Masahiro Sakurai. Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu reported that Nintendo advertised the game in between showings of Pokémon 4Ever across movie theaters in Japan. 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. In August 2005, Nintendo bundled

9462-435: The game's music and voice acting between Masahiro Sakurai and the game's composers. Shogo Sakai took over as the game's composer in place of Hirokazu Ando on February 14, 2001. Super Smash Bros. Melee received critical acclaim from reviewers, most of whom credited Melee ' s expansion of gameplay features from Super Smash Bros . Focusing on the additional features, GameSpy commented that "Melee really scores big in

9576-460: The game's original lifespan. It was followed by Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii in 2008. 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. Most attacks inflict damage and can, if enough damage is dealt, knock back the enemy. Each character's health

9690-410: The game. These trophies include figures of playable characters, accessories, and items associated with them as well as series and characters not otherwise playable in the game. The trophies range from the well-known to the obscure, and even characters or elements only released in Japan. Super Smash Bros. had a similar system of plush dolls; however, it only included the 12 playable characters. One trophy

9804-436: The higher the handicap, the stronger the player. Victory is determined in five ways, depending on the game type. The two most common multiplayer modes are “Time mode”, where the player or team with the most KOs and least falls wins after a predetermined amount of time, and "Stock mode", a battle in which the last player or team with lives remaining wins. This can be changed to less conventional modes like "Coin mode", which rewards

9918-572: The inclusion of Solid Snake to Sakurai, and Yuji Naka of Sonic Team requested the inclusion of Sonic the Hedgehog to Sakurai, but neither characters were added as the game was too far in development. Additional development time later enabled all three characters to be included in Brawl . 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

10032-558: The internet) can also have crossovers with different webtoons, franchises, YouTubers and more. Some examples are when Kate from TomSka 's Crash Zoom series makes an appearance in Eddsworld as a trick or treater who possesses Matt and Edd in the episode, "Trick or Threat". In addition to this a couple of characters from Eddsworld make appearances in some Crash Zoom episodes such as "Orcs and Dorks". Anime has also participated in many crossover events featuring characters or shows from

10146-726: The knockback the character will experience, rather than a depleting health bar seen in most fighting games. Melee was first released in Japan in November 2001, in the Americas in December 2001, and in Europe and Australia in May 2002. The game received widespread acclaim from critics, earning praise for its visuals, simple controls, gameplay, and orchestrated soundtrack, as well as several awards and acknowledgments from various publications; it

10260-807: The monsters forming teams in numerous movies, much like the Marvel movie franchise. Godzilla , Mothra and Rodan (Radon) each first appeared in standalone films before being set against each other or even teaming up against stronger enemies. Their first encounter was in 1964, first in Mothra vs. Godzilla and a few months later of all three in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster . In 1962, Toho released King Kong vs. Godzilla . Crossovers in video games occur when otherwise separated fictional characters, stories , settings , universes , or media in

10374-498: The music for its nostalgic effect, with soundtracks ranging from multiple Nintendo series. Reviewers have welcomed the simplistic controls, 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 . With a milder criticism of controls, Bryn Williams of GameSpy commented that "movement and navigation seems slightly too sensitive". The basis of Melee ' s gameplay system

10488-526: The network's remaining soap opera General Hospital , remaining in the same timeline as their former show. Though most common on shows of the same production company (see, for example, " Hurricane Saturday "), crossovers have also occurred because shows share the same distributor or television network . A notable example of this kind of link is that between Murder, She Wrote and Magnum, P.I. These shows were made by different companies, but owned by Universal Studios and broadcast on CBS . Another case

10602-529: The opponent to restoring health to the player. Some items are throwable (ranged items), some do melee damage (battering items), and some have an instant effect on the player (transforming items). Most stages have a theme relating to a Nintendo franchise or a specific Nintendo game and are interactive to the player. For example, the Mushroom Kingdom stage is from Super Mario Bros , and the Temple stage

10716-473: The production of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and further plans to develop the cinematic DC Extended Universe , while Paramount Pictures and Entertainment One announced plans to create a cinematic universe on the Transformers film series . There have been numerous crossovers in Japanese cinema. The boom of kaiju films saw a lot of crossovers produced at Toho Studios , with some of

10830-447: The quality of their textures is amazing". IGN 's Fran Mirabella III praised the game's use of physics, animation and graphics, although his colleague Matt Casamassina thought that "some of the backgrounds lack the visual polish endowed upon the characters" when giving a second opinion about the game. Critics praised the game's orchestrated soundtrack; while GameSpot 's Greg Kasavin commented that "it all sounds brilliant". GameSpy praised

10944-459: The richest player as the victor. Players must collect coins created by hitting enemies and try not to lose them by falling off the stage; harder hits release higher quantities of coins. Other options are available, updating from Super Smash Bros. , such as determining the number and type of items that appear during the battle. Trophies (known as "Figures" in the Japanese version) of various Nintendo characters and objects can be collected throughout

11058-515: The risk involved before releases. As the narrative and conflict in single-player gameplay is created by a computer rather than a human opponent, single-player games are able to deliver certain gaming experiences that are typically absent—or de-emphasised—in multiplayer games. Single-player games rely more heavily on compelling stories to draw the player into the experience and to create a sense of investment. Humans are unpredictable, so human players - allies or enemies - cannot be relied upon to carry

11172-408: The roster of 26 Nintendo characters, as well as the trophy system, which Nintendo Spin labeled as "a great addition to this game". When released in Japan, it became the fastest selling GameCube game with 358,525 units sold in the week ending November 25, 2001. This success continued as the game sold more than a million units only two months after its release, making it the first GameCube title to reach

11286-444: The same company or network. One of the biggest projects down would be Dream 9 Toriko x One Piece x Dragon Ball Z Super Special Collaboration as it includes three Shonen Jump franchises, being Dragon Ball Z , One Piece , and Toriko , crossed over into an hour long special-like most crossovers, this special is filler, a fan-service episode that follows the common plot line in most crossovers. What makes this crossover unique

11400-487: The series... it just felt really good to play", even compared to its successor, Super Smash Bros. Brawl . On the game's official Japanese website, Sakurai and the developers explained reasons for making particular characters playable and why some characters were not added. Initially, the development team wanted to replace Ness with Lucas , the main character of Mother 3 , but retained Ness in consideration of delays. Video game developer Hideo Kojima originally requested

11514-510: The show amid a cast comprised otherwise of the sketch show's own stable of actors. Parodic crossovers can be used to lend verisimilitude to the fictional world of a program. Characters from a fictional television series may appear on a stylized version of an established non-fictional television series, such as game shows or reality shows . These crossovers between celebrity hosts and fictional characters are quite common on situation comedies . Mama's Family once appeared on Family Feud and

11628-448: The shows' incompatible historical settings; Murdoch Mysteries is a historical series set in the 1890s, while Republic of Doyle is set in the present day. The problem was solved by having the actors cross over as relatives of their primary characters; Allan Hawco appeared on the November 25, 2013 episode of Murdoch Mysteries as Jacob Doyle, a 19th-century ancestor of his regular character Jake Doyle, while Yannick Bisson appeared on

11742-720: The townsfolk of The Vicar of Dibley have had their heirlooms valuated on Antiques Roadshow , for instance. One of the earlier instances of crossovers in TV productions outside the US is the episode Unter Brüdern  [ de ] (1990), which was produced by WDR and DFF as a crossover between the West German crime series Tatort and the East German crime series Polizeiruf 110 . Their respective popular heroes Horst Schimanski and Peter Fuchs join forces to solve

11856-643: The unauthorised live action fan film Batman: Dead End which brings together the properties of Batman , Alien and Predator in one setting. Unofficial crossovers can also occur in a "what-if" scenario. Roger makes frequent cameo appearances in Family Guy , while Brian makes cameos on American Dad! . Roger, Rallo Tubbs , and Klaus Heissler were seen in the final Family Guy Star Wars spoof, " It's A Trap! ", as Moff Jerjerrod , Nien Nunb , and Admiral Ackbar , respectively. Stewie also appears as an interactive hallucination of Booth on Bones when

11970-419: Was "every bit as good as its Nintendo 64 predecessor" he also felt "the game doesn't expand much past that point". On a similar note, Edge stated that "it's not evolution; it's reproduction", in reference to a perceived lack of innovation. The nostalgic nature of the game received a positive reaction, as well as the accompanying stages and items that allude to past Nintendo games. Gaming journalists have welcomed

12084-596: Was considered as a playable character, but was ultimately relegated to a cameo role as a trophy. The developers have noted characters that have very similar moves to each other on the website; such characters have been referred to as "clones" in the media. Nintendo presented the game at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2001 as a playable demonstration. The next major exposition of the game came in August 2001 at Space World , when Nintendo displayed

12198-660: Was considered to be the game's best player from 2003 to 2006, and has won over $ 50,000 from Smash tournaments. 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. Due to the large turnout and popularity that year, Evo again included Melee at their 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 events. The competitive Smash community

12312-497: Was featured in a 2013 crowd-funded documentary called The Smash Brothers . The film detailed the history of the professional scene and profiled seven prominent Melee players including Hoang, Azen, Jason "Mew2King" Zimmerman , Isai, PC Chris, KoreanDJ, and Evo 2013 and Evo 2014 champion, Joseph "Mang0" Marquez . Commentary footage from a Melee tournament is the origin of the Wombo combo internet meme . In 2020, Project Slippi,

12426-570: Was hailed as both a critical and commercial success, largely because the events of the crossover had lasting effects on the characters (such as the introduction of Spider-Man 's black suit which would later become the villain Venom ). Jim Shooter later perfected his crossover technique at Valiant Comics with the Unity event. Unity brought all the Valiant characters together to defeat Mothergod , but

12540-457: 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. 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

12654-721: Was largely condemned by fans of The Simpsons as existing to promote The Critic , an animated series considered inferior by comparison. Even Simpsons creator Matt Groening objected, preferring to remove his name from the credits of that particular episode in protest. In its simplest and most common form, a television crossover involves a starring character on a parent show appearing on a spin-off or vice versa because of established character relationships. An obvious example of this type of crossover occurred when Cliff Huxtable of The Cosby Show visited his daughter, Denise , on A Different World . More complex multi-production franchises can utilize crossovers of characters to serve as

12768-579: Was raised following the closure of Visceral Games by Electronic Arts (EA) in October 2017. Visceral had been a studio that established itself on a strong narrative single-player focus with Dead Space , and had been working on a single-player, linear narrative Star Wars game at the time of the closure; EA announced following this that they would be taking the game in a different direction, specifically "a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency". Many commentators felt that EA made

12882-1163: Was the 1885 Mark Twain novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , which had an important guest appearance by Tom Sawyer . Similarly, Lady Glencora Palliser from the Pallisers series of Anthony Trollope appears towards the end of Miss Mackenzie , a novel published between the first and second Palliser novels in 1865, a character first introduced in the novel, Can You Forgive Her? (1864). Andrew Lang 's 1890 collection, Old Friends: Essays in Epistolary Parody , contains letters combining characters from different sources, including one based on Jane Austen 's Northanger Abbey and Charlotte Brontë 's Jane Eyre . Kim Newman frequently uses this device, as does Stephen King . The works of James Branch Cabell , J.D. Salinger , William Faulkner , Margaret Laurence , Thomas Pynchon , Kurt Vonnegut , Mordecai Richler , Sir H. Rider Haggard , Edgar Rice Burroughs , Robert Heinlein , and Isaac Asimov also cross over with each other, linking different characters and settings together over

12996-462: Was told within the existing Valiant Comics titles (and two bookend special issues). Readers were not obliged to buy all 18 chapters as the story was coherent when reading just one title, but far more layered when all were read. Like Secret Wars , the Unity crossover had lasting effects on the Valiant universe; most notably the introduction of Turok , the birth of Magnus, Robot Fighter and the death of

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