SuperMash PC Review

SuperMash is a multicart thrown into a blender.

I distinctly remember my first exposure to multicarts. I had just popped in Midway’s Greatest Arcade Hits for the N64, and my mind was a tizzy with excitement. How could gaming get any better than this? This experience brought back even older memories of wandering through arcades,  paralyzed by the endless possibility of games. Surely, SuperMash, a game that purports to improve on the multicart—by taking the games and amalgamating them together—couldn’t possibly be a miss. But, after playing, I’m reminded by a fact that I discovered that day in front of the N64. There is a reason some cabinets collect dust in a forgotten corner of the arcade, or that the bargain bin is often filled with multicarts; more is not necessarily better.

Less is more

Let me give credit where credit is due: Digital Continue—the developers—are ambitious. When I first heard about the game, I almost couldn’t believe that the concept hadn’t been done before. It had that much promise. For those unfamiliar, SuperMash is essentially a game generator. It takes two seemingly opposing genres and ‘mashes’ them together. You pick your flavor from JRPG, Platformer, Shoot ‘Em Up, and a few other standard game genres, and you blend two of them together. You then play through the resulting concoction with a randomized character, weapon set, and power-ups.