Choices of Character

Super Smash Brothers; Melee is a game that has combined the most popular characters from some of the most popular games created in video game history.  The game pits players against one another in a last man standing fight to the character's death.  The ability to play as any character from an extremely wide selection of games is something that draws players in, allowing them to utilize their favorite aspects of each character.  This week's article discussing fiction discusses how the use of fictional worlds and characters is used in order to get players to enjoy the game, for Super Smash Bros.; Melee, half of this battle is already finished by utilizing the characters from other games.  Along with the fictional worlds that have been developed, the rules governing the game also affect the play.

Super Smash Bros. uses a series of growing challenges in order to teach the game rules to the player, the options for characters are limited at first, but as the experience of the player grows they are pitted against characters that they can use later in the game.  After defeating these characters the player are allowed to choose them.  These initial challenges are the ways in which a new player would be able to learn the rules governing the game.  This process of growing into the game is described at the end of the article; Fiction, in the last section, titled Rules and Fiction.  The author describes this as "a two-way process where the fiction of the game cues [the player] into understanding the rules of the game" (Juul).

This game takes place in a fictional world, which Juul describes as "derived from possible worlds" (Juul).  The theory of possible worlds is that in some way, shape or form, they could exist if the right chain of events happened in the right way.  This seems pretty far fetched, especially in the case of this game, because of the multiple fictitious worlds that are combined within the game.  

Due to the combination of characters within the game, the existence of all of their original worlds would have to be possible in order to for the player to connect the characters.  In some respects this would be more difficult, however, assuming that fans of all of the characters are playing Super Smash Brothers, they already find the character's worlds to be possible, and therefore find them all functioning together possible as well.

The combination of the characters into one complete world is something that is intriguing for players, and has helped the game become so popular.  The ability of a player to choose a different character each game, perhaps one of their favorites, is a draw. This ability to create change within the fictional world of the game is something that is unique to Super Smash Brothers.