Super Smash Bros. on the N64 set the standard for a new style of fighting game that changed the way fighting games were played. While previous games in the genre were extremely technical and gave only skilled players a chance at success, Nintendo’s HAL team and Masahiro Sakurai crafted a brawler where players of any skill level could easily jump in and play, but was also an extremely deep experience, with numerous modes and multiplayer options, making it difficult to master. It didn’t hurt that the game’s roster consisted of Nintendo’s lineup of legendary heroes, making for a star-studded gaming affair. Although the first game was a success, it wasn’t until Nintendo released Super Smash Bros. Melee for the GameCube just two years later that the concept became fully realized: Melee added new modes, new characters, and new stages, as well as adding enhanced multiplayer options. The additions propelled Melee to become the crown jewel of most GameCube owners’ libraries, becoming the console’s biggest selling title by far, and a game many played even years after it released. It would be hard to improve on such a feat, but at E3 2006, we were promised just that with the shocking announcement of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the third installment in the series that has taken all of Nintendo’s beloved franchises and made a franchise of its own. Now, nearly two long years since its announcement, Brawl is finally in our hot little hands. And I can say without question, that this is the biggest, baddest, and best Brawl of them all.

First off, Super Smash Bros. Brawl features one of the biggest collections of Nintendo luminaries in history, with 35 total playable characters – 21 of which are available right from the start. As you might expect, the standard murderer’s row of Nintendo’s best all make appearances: Mario, Link, Samus Aran, Donkey Kong, Kirby, Yoshi, Fox McCloud, Pikachu, and Bowser. However, some brand-new characters made the cut as well, with Wario, Diddy Kong, Pit (from Kid Icarus), Meta Knight and King Dedede (from the Kirby series), Ike (from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance), Captain Olimar (from Pikmin), the Pokémon Trainer, and even Lucas (from the Japan-only Mother 3). Also, although not a new character entirely, Samus can now shed her bulky Power Suit and become a new leaner and quicker in a new Zero Suit form. Each of the newbies turns out to be a welcome addition to the series, with each adding a unique gameplay element in their own way. For example, the Pokémon Trainer does not actually fight in matches, but has three Pokémon fight for him: Squirtle, Ivysaur, and Charizard, with the ability to change out his fighter if the situation calls for it. Olimar, in contrast, fights using Pikmin he plucks from the ground, requiring players to manage their team as they go into battle. Our favorites among the newcomers have likely been Pit, Meta Knight, and Ike thus far, but that’s not to say that all of the others are not welcome additions.

In addition, there are plenty of hidden combatants as well – we won’t spoil most of them for you here, but fighters both old and new are hidden within the game. Some additions are welcomed, but others only made us tilt our head and say “huh?” Also, once again, several hidden characters are merely clones of established fighters – including one character that has TWO clones (although one is different enough to truly feel that it is a totally different character). It is worth noting that this time around that at least the clones feel more differentiated. That said, none really seem out of place; that is, except for the two most surprising additions to the game. For the first time in series history, Super Smash Bros. Brawl adds characters taken from third-party games into its roster, with Konami providing Metal Gear Solid’s Solid Snake and Sega bringing the legendary Sonic the Hedgehog to the action. Once again, neither fighter seems relatively out of place (although Snake is stretching it, certainly), and both fit in very well to what is a relatively balanced cast.

The game’s stages are also a vast and varied bunch, once again coming from across the Nintendo spectrum. There’s stages based upon Super Mario Sunshine (Delfino Plaza), The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Bridge of Eldin), Metroid (Norfair, Frigate Orpheon), Fire Emblem (Castle Siege), and Animal Crossing (Smashville), with even a stage based upon the Nintendo DS’s Pictochat application. Most of the stages are a lot of fun to play on, and some have some very unique mechanics – Wario’s WarioWare stage, for instance, actually forces players to occasionally complete a quick WarioWare micro-game, or risk major damage. There’s also Meta Knight’s Battleship Halberd stage, which has players avoiding cannon blasts and other weapons from Meta Knight’s giant aircraft, and Captain Olimar’s Distant Planet stage, which has players avoiding mighty rainstorms and enormous Bulborbs. Still, a few stages just miss the mark, such as the gigantic New Pork City stage (take from Mother 3), which is so massive and so disjointed that it can be extremely difficult to actually face off with another player without them finding an opportunity to run away. Of course, if you don’t like any of the stages, you can make your own with the game’s built-in and easy-to-use Stage Builder, which also features additional unlockable parts.

The trademark Smash Bros. gameplay remains relatively unchanged as well, and anyone who’s picked up Melee should feel right at home. The standard regimen of standard, smash, and special attacks remains unchanged, and those who have played previous games should feel right at home with the action. The only real change is that Brawl does feel a tad slower than Melee, but this lower speed actually helps the gameplay, letting players strategize and plan out moves better. In addition, Super Smash Bros. Brawl allows players to make use of one of four different control styles for gameplay, supporting the Wii Remote (held sideways), the Wii Remote connected to the Nunchuk, the Wii Classic Controller, or a Nintendo GameCube controller. Of the four, and not surprisingly, the Cube controller seems the most at home with established players, with the exact same button layout as Melee, and the best overall feel. That said, the Classic controller makes a decent substitute, but Melee fans may feel a bit of a learning curve while using it. The Wii Remote and Wii Remote + Nunchuk schemes have the heaviest learning curve, and players should likely stay away if they plan to have any chance at victory in matches.

After over 20 years of being kidnapped, revenge is oh so sweet.

The biggest changes made to the core gameplay are the brand-new Final Smash moves: an exclusive, one-shot finishing move. In order to obtain one, a special item called a Smash Ball floats above the stage, requiring players to attack it in order to gain the ability. Once they do, they can unleash the move by pressing the special move button. These moves vary by the character, and include moves like Mario’s “Mario Finale” (a massive fireball), Link’s “Triforce Slash” (a bevy of sword slashes, with the foe captured by the Triforce), and Fox’s Landmaster (he takes command of the Landmaster tank, which can blast enemies away). The Final Smash system adds a tremendous new wrinkle to the gameplay, as obtaining one can turn a battle right around very quickly. In addition, the battle for the Smash Ball can be a very fast-paced affair. It can get a little tired and old, however, which is why it’s a good thing that the item can be turned off.

Other than the Smash Ball, there’s several other new items that make a Brawl appearance, including the powerful Cracker Launcher cannon, a Deku Nut (from the Zelda series), the Golden Hammer (a souped-up version of the original Smash Bros. hammer, with increased power), and the Dragoon (from Kirby’s Air Ride, which players must collect the three parts of to utilize). The biggest new item, however, is the Assist Trophy, which works similar to the Poké Balls of old (which also make a return). The Assist Trophies, however, contain one of many Nintendo characters that just missed the playable cut in Brawl, with characters like Waluigi, F-Zero’s Samurai Goroh, Punch Out’s Little Mac, Fire Emblem’s Lyn, and Star Fox’s Andross making appearances. You’ll be able to unlock more as the game goes on, with many bordering on extremely obscure and most having never left Japan in the first place. That said, it’s a cute way to throw a bunch more characters into the game, which proves to be Brawl’s greatest strength – the downright jaw-dropping amount of content that Masahiro Sakurai and his team were able to put into this game. Along with unlockable characters, stages, and Assist Trophies, you can obtain new trophies (which make a return) and stickers (a new collectable), as well as new songs and even short demos of classic Nintendo titles in the game’s Masterpieces mode. These are pulled from all over the Nintendo spectrum, and include so much pure Nintendo fanservice that it will likely even turn the most hardened Nintendo antagonist into a drooling fanboy within minutes. Quite frankly, if Nintendo ever wanted to make a time capsule for future generations, I’m pretty sure they could just stick this game in there and call it a day.

All of this, and I haven’t even gotten to what is one of the game’s biggest new features: a full-blown adventure mode entitled “The Subspace Emissary”. The mode features all of Nintendo’s best teaming up against the forces of evil in side-scrolling stages, each separated by full-motion cutscenes. Believe it or not, it’s perhaps the action-packed cutscenes that are the best part of the mode, as they feature some sweet segments sure to make Nintendo fans outright giddy with some surprising duos teaming up. The scenes aren’t voice acted, making the story a bit difficult to follow on occasion, but the story is relatively simple, so there’s no big worry. What turns out to be the mode’s Achilles heel is the actual gameplay itself – the Smash Bros. controls don’t exactly lend themselves well to an action game, and the combat can be extremely bland and tedious. In later levels, I actually gave up with the fighting in most cases and found myself running away from enemies, simply because I just wanted to get on with the game. In addition, the level designs are repetitive, with some rather poor choices: some levels are extremely short, while others are overly long. In particular, one stage near the end of the game is nearly four times as long as the other levels, and equally frustrating. There’s boss fights splattered throughout to keep the action hot, featuring some of Nintendo’s best baddies, but they don’t keep the mode from being relatively disappointing. You can also upgrade the mode’s characters by applying the aforementioned stickers to their trophies: however, it doesn’t feel like it changes the characters all that much, and feels more time-consuming than anything. That said, it’s probably the fastest and easiest way to gain many of the game’s unlockables, and it clocks in at only about 10 hours in length, so it’s not that much of a burden. In addition, there’s a co-op mode for two players to rock out on, but it feels like more of an afterthought than anything, as the second player rarely feels like a part of the game, and can disappear from the screen if the first player is going too fast. Fortunately, players can still find many other Smash Bros. single-player excursions, with Classic mode, Event mode, and special challenges like the Target Test, Home Run Contest, and Multi-man Brawls all making returns from Melee.

Hail to the king, baby!!!

The other huge new addition, and one that has been anticipated for quite some time, is Super Smash Bros. Brawl’s online mode. For the first time ever, players can use Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection to do battle with friends around the world, in addition to people they don’t know. Online play is split into two modes, “With Friends” and “With Anyone”. “With Friends” is the far more feature-packed of the two, allowing players (who have share friend codes, of course) to do battle with a full slate of options, including the ability to choose single or team match-ups, timed or stock battles, as well as choose the items that can be used (if any) and the set time or amount of stock in battles. You can even compete with a friend in a Home Run Contest, Target Test, or Multi-Man Brawl, a feature also available in local multiplayer. However, the game’s “With Anyone” mode is far more limited in its options. Players are forced into a 2-minute timed match with all items available, with random teams set if a Team Battle is selected. Player names are not revealed in this mode, and there is no form of stat-tracking or leaderboards – a major disappointment, since this is a standard for most online games for other systems and even a part of other Nintendo Wi-Fi games. It has also been confirmed that, even with recent announcements of downloadable content for upcoming Wii games, that Super Smash Bros. Brawl will not support any downloadable characters or stages, which could have been a major selling point. There’s also no voice chat, as you might expect, with communication limited to text bubbles that appear when players taunt – a feature that is also limited to “With Friends” match-ups.

However, the biggest drawback of the online mode is the technical problems that plague it: in our tests, while battles ran fine about 50% of the time, the game heavily lagged in the other 50%, sometimes reaching the point of being unplayable. This seems to be alleviated by playing in “With Friends” mode, but lag is still experienced in those modes as well. Since fighting games with online play have had a long history of severe lag, these problems aren’t altogether inexcusable, but it’s substandard nonetheless. The best way to play, as you may expect, is to get two or preferably more players together in a room and just go to town on each other. There’s nothing like trash-talking with your friends as you fight, and it makes for an extremely addicting good time. The online mode does have some cool abilities though, with players able to send and receive stages, snapshots, and replay videos not only to friends, but from Nintendo itself.

Melee is still an amazing-looking game for its time, so, as you may expect, Brawl stands as one of the best-looking games on the Wii so far. The actual detail put into the characters is amazing, as this is among the best that characters like Mario and Link have ever looked. The detail is also present in many of the stages, with cute little features seen throughout many of them. Those said, some characters, such as many of the enemies seen in the Subspace Emissary, lack a bit of imagination and feel more like rejects from other Nintendo titles. There’s also some lack of depth and color in the textures of some stages, which will likely not bother anyone too much throughout all of the fast-paced action. And fast-paced it is, as Brawl stays at a steady 60 frames per second in the game’s offline modes, and never once suffers a single hiccup or stutter even when the action gets out of control.

Pit and Zero Suit Samus make a shocking entrance.

With so many positives about the game, perhaps the game’s biggest triumph is the incredible amount of music featured throughout, taken from many of Nintendo’s best-loved and even least-loved games. Quite frankly, this is the biggest soundtrack I’ve ever seen in a videogame. There’s a stunning 12 hours of music in Brawl, and many of the songs are remixed or re-imagined versions of legendary themes, brought into the new millennium with great success. However, what makes this even more of an accomplishment is the fact that Masahiro Sakurai was able to bring together a who’s who of composers to write and record all of these tracks, including legendary Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu, who scored the game’s epic main theme. You’ll also hear the work of Yoko Shimomura (Kingdom Hearts), Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger), Motoi Sakuraba (Golden Sun, Tales series, Baten Kaitos), Akihiro Honda (Metal Gear Solid), and of course, Nintendo’s own Koji Kondo (Mario, Zelda). Players can also choose which songs they’d rather hear in-game through the game’s My Music menu, which uses sliders for players to choose the likelihood they’ll hear a certain song on a certain stage. In addition, players can even unlock new songs through regular gameplay.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is far more than just a game. It is a celebration of all things Nintendo, and a showcase for all that the company has accomplished in the nearly 25 years that it has existed in the videogame industry. Brawl is not just chock-full of nostalgia, though – it’s also the best multiplayer game on the market, and one of the most purely fun games every released. It takes everything about Super Smash Bros. Melee and makes it bigger and better, adding more characters, more stages, more modes, and enough unlockables to last an eternity. While a few of its new additions fall short, it still makes for one of the most feature-packed games ever, and one no Wii owner should be without. Quite simply, this is one Brawl you’ll never want to end.

Eric Jones