5. Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS
How far we have come in such a short span of time. When Smash Bros. was first doing the rounds on the Nintendo 64, we were thrilled and delighted by the palette on offer on the Game Boy Color: a portable Smash Bros. title couldn’t have been further from reality at that time. So when it arrived on 3DS in 2014, it felt like a hugely ambitious title for the platform.
As cool as portable Smash Bros. was, the ambition occasionally impacted the experience. The console could barely keep up at times, with painfully long loading times that prevented access to the Miiverse during gameplay. But once you were in there and flinging fools around left, right and center, you hardly cared about the limitations.
That being said, veteran players used to the GameCube controller found the handheld’s wee circle button finicky, and sweaty fingertips often led to botched moves aplenty. Not to mention that ensuring cross-platform play with the Wii-U hamstrung the console version somewhat. Admissions had to be made for the portable version, and it led to fan favorites like the Ice Climbers getting axed, as well as the end of transforming characters.
