The characters are, of course, what makes this game interesting. All the characters that have made Nintendo what it is today are represented, including Mario, Link, Samus Aran, Donkey Kong, and Pikachu. There are eight characters to choose from initially, and four more hidden characters to unlock. The game's backgrounds also reflect the various characters' natural envirornments: The Starfox stage is complete with buzzing Arwings, while Link's stage looks somewhat like a castle. The game's music is also pretty amazing, with tunes lifted directly from past games. So you'll hear the Legend of Zelda overworld theme, the world-famous Super Mario Bros. tune, and other littlepieces of incidental music, like the SMB star music and the Donkey Kong hammer tune. The look and sounds of the game really give it a "greatest hits" type of feel. The sound effects have been changed a bit from the Japanese version (the energy sword doesn't sound like a lightsaber anymore, and some of the speech has been changed), but not enough to really matter.