It became the GameCube's best-selling title, with sales of 6 million copies worldwide. It was released to a massive amount of glowing, positive reviews and was widely received as a vast improvement over its predecessor, with upgraded graphics and audio, refined gameplay, and a tremendous amount of new characters and content. Melee, with a larger development team and higher production values. provided HAL Laboratory the incentive and financial means to develop the series' 2001 GameCube sequel, Super Smash Bros.
It was popular for featuring famous Nintendo characters such as Mario from the Mario series, Link from The Legend of Zelda series, and Pikachu from the phenomenally popular Pokémon franchise, and it gained high marks for its unique take on the fighting genre. The event proved otherwise the game was popular and successful enough in Japan after its 1999 release that it was decided to be distributed as an international release, and it garnered immense critical acclaim and sales figures abroad as well as at home. The game was originally planned to be released in Japan only, and it had a small budget and a small amount of promotion attached it was developed more as a "novelty product" rather than a high-profile heavily-anticipated video game and was not expected to be a huge success. Through 1998, second-party Nintendo developer HAL Laboratory, creator of the Kirby franchise and led by Masahiro Sakurai, developed a fighting game for the Nintendo 64 titled Super Smash Bros. universe, known as the Dairantō Smash Brothers (大乱闘スマッシュブラザーズ, Dairantō Sumasshu Burazāzu, lit. Nintendo 64, Nintendo GameCube, Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Wii U
HAL Laboratory, Sora Ltd., Game Arts, Bandai Namco Games Merged logo for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U versions.