Famous characters from Mario to Pac-Man brawl on floating platforms, and instead of health bars you have a damage number that climbs as you get hit. The higher that number, the farther you fly when someone connects, so the goal is to knock everyone else off the edge of the screen before they do it to you. Crates drop laser guns and bombs constantly, which keeps four-player matches loud, funny, and easy for anyone to join.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
The verdict
As a victory lap for Nintendo's entire history it's unmatched, cramming in nearly everyone who's ever mattered without feeling like a cash grab.
The mechanics
The core fighting is faster and more aggressive than past entries, and while the sheer number of characters creates balance headaches, matches rarely stop being fun.
Presentation
Stage hazards, music remixes and character animations are stuffed with fan service, and it all runs smoothly even when the screen is total chaos.
Staying power
World of Light offers a lengthy solo detour, but this is really built for couch battles and online play, and it rewards return visits for years.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
This is a fighting game but not the kind where you memorize long button combinations. Four characters bounce around a floating stage trying to knock each other clean off the screen. There are no health bars. Instead each player has a damage percentage that starts at zero and climbs every time you get hit. At ten percent a hit barely nudges you. At a hundred and forty, the same hit launches you across the sky like a baseball, and you get a split second to double jump and use your character's recovery move to scramble back to the platform before you fall into nothing.
The roster is basically every famous video game character, Mario, Pikachu, Sonic, Pac-Man, Sephiroth, Solid Snake, about eighty in all. Each one has a handful of moves you access by tilting the stick in a direction and pressing one of two buttons, so you can be doing something useful within a minute of picking up the controller. Items rain out of the sky constantly, laser guns, exploding bombs, hammers, and balls that release wild Pokemon to attack whoever is nearest, which keeps a match between four people of wildly different skill levels genuinely competitive.
If you are alone, there is a long single-player campaign that takes twenty or thirty hours, sending you across a big map of themed one-off fights with strange rules, like fighting three tiny metal Kirbys on a slippery stage. But the reason to own it is having friends over. Up to eight controllers work at once, and you can turn items off and pick a flat stage if you want a serious duel, or crank everything up for pure nonsense. Online play works but has noticeable lag, so treat it as a bonus rather than the main event.