Super Smash Bros. is a 1999 crossover fighting game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. It was first released in Japan on January 21, 1999, in North America on April 26, 1999, and in Europe on November 19, 1999. The first installment in the Super Smash Bros. series, it is a crossover between several different Nintendo franchises, including Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Metroid, F-Zero, Mother, Kirby, and Pokémon. It presents a cast of characters and locations from these franchises and allows players to use each character's unique skills and the stage's hazards to inflict damage, recover health, and ultimately knock opponents off the stage.

A fighting game is a genre of video game that involves combat between two or more characters. Fighting game combat often features mechanics such as blocking, grappling, counter-attacking, and chaining attacks together into "combos". Characters generally engage in battle using hand-to-hand combat—often some form of martial arts. The fighting game genre is related to, but distinct from, the beat 'em up genre, which pits large numbers of computer-controlled enemies against one or more player characters.