Super Smash T.V.

Description

Super Smash T.V. is a highly acclaimed 16-bit conversion of the 1990 Williams arcade classic. Developed by the legendary Melbourne-based studio Beam Software, the game is a dystopian twin-stick shooter set in the a not-too-distant future of 1999. It depicts an ultra-violent television game show where contestants battle waves of mutant cyborgs, tanks, and club-wielding Mr. Shakedown clones for prizes ranging from luxury VCRs and toasters to their own lives. Heavily inspired by the films The Running Man and RoboCop, the game is thick in its satirical tone about media consumption with iconic digitised announcer quotes such as “Big money! Big prizes! I love it!” and “I’d buy that for a dollar!”.

The SNES port by Beam Software is widely regarded as the definitive home version of the era, primarily due to how it solved the twin-stick control dilemma. While the original arcade cabinet utilised two joysticks, Beam Software leveraged the SNES controller’s diamond-shaped face buttons (A, B, X, Y) to act as a surrogate for the second stick. This allows for 8-directional shooting entirely independent of movement on the D-pad, a feature that was significantly more intuitive than the lock or two-controller workarounds found on the Sega Mega Drive and other platforms. The game also shows off the SNES’s capacity for high sprite counts. Despite the console’s slower CPU compared to the Mega Drive, the game to display dozens of enemies and projectiles simultaneously with remarkably little slowdown. It also maintained the original’s level of gore; unlike many Nintendo titles of the period that were censored for violence, Super Smash T.V. retained its red blood explosions when enemies are dispatched.

For those interested in the Australian market, Super Smash T.V. reflects a peak era for domestic game development. It was developed by a team at Beam Software including Jamie Rivett and Graeme Scott, with art by Martin Thompson and music arranged by Marshall Parker. The game contains a hidden developer credit screen accessible by holding L + R and pressing B at the Beam Software logo. The Australian release was re-disturbed from the UK version. The game received wide acclaim in local media; early issues of Nintendo Magazine System Australia and Hyper praised it as one of the best arcade-to-home conversions on the system, frequently citing the “perfect” button-mapping as its greatest achievement. It is notable the PAL version did experience slow down, as was normal for the era,