Super Smash Bros. Brawl
March 17,2008 - When Super Smash Bros. hit the Nintendo 64 back in the day, it was just the ideal game for small gatherings. No one knew what a phenomenon a single sequel, 2001's Super Smash Bros Melee, would transform the brand into. Seemingly overnight, you had a frothing army of players making a big push to throw Smash into the competitive gaming mix, even going so far as attempting to erroneously (but somewhat successfully nonetheless) label it a fighter in order to shoehorn it into existing major fighting game tournaments. Underneath the community controversy, however, was a genuinely incredible game that, alongside the likes of Halo, Wave Race: Blue Storm, Devil May Cry, and Tekken Tag Tournament, brought its generation of gaming in beautifully.

After all these years, Melee is still played constantly in some circles, and Brawl picks up right where the GameCube's instant classic left off. The recurring theme here seems to be simple: MORE. More of EVERYTHING – more characters, more stages, more music, more bonus content, and so on, all the way through the game's massive dual-layered disc (a first for the Wii). The game's 35-character roster, a figure that does not reflect multi-form characters, is a massive upgrade over Melee's lineup. However, a handful of characters, including Mewtwo, Pichu, and Dr. Mario, were sacrificed in the transition. 

Other characters whose move lists were very similar to others in Melee have been effectively de-cloned in Brawl, so the roster is not only huge, it's diverse. Newcomers like Lucario (Pokémon), Meta Knight (Kirby), and Wolf O'Donnell (Starfox) do a great job of not only adding more effective characters to the roster, but also representing the less-famous side of the Nintendo multiverse. This goes a long way in making Brawl feel much better-rounded than its predecessor, and the two third-party inclusions, Sonic The Hedgehog and Solid Snake, only enrich that.

The vast majority of your single-player time will go to Subspace Emissary, Brawl's full-scale follow-up to Melee's short-but-sweet nostalgic romp through Adventure Mode. Unlike Melee, where unlocking characters was a time-consuming tour of every corner of the game, Brawl gives you the option of taking the slightly less time-consuming tour through Subspace Emissary. Beyond the sheer size of the mode compared to Melee's, there are some other key differences. At the root of it all, there is a real storyline at hand here. It’s nothing too fancy, even though producer Masahiro Sakurai contracted writers who worked on Final Fantasy VII, it's more like an all-encompassing piece of fan-fiction.

As a result, you will not be picking one character and blasting your way through Subspace Emissary just like that. Instead, you will choose from a small handful of characters per stage, in the context of whatever is going on in the storyline. As you progress, you will unlock more and more characters, eventually filling out the game's complete roster. Unfortunately, as you get into the later running, the stages will gradually drift away from their classic gaming motif, eventually falling squarely into the bland filler category, making Subspace Emissary feel like it was made long just for the sake of being long. The final stage, The Great Maze, feels entirely bloated, dry, and unnecessary.

You have just about every control option you can imagine for the Wii, and Nintendo did an exemplary job of making the game work relatively well with any configuration you want (including just a sideways Wii Remote). However, as you would expect, the game is designed around the tried-and-true GameCube controller with which so many games of Melee have been played over the years. This can be both a great consideration and a bit of an annoyance. Unless you already have Wavebirds, it's easy to get irritated by being tethered so closely to your Wii, or by having to pay the suddenly-exorbitant going eBay price for the out-of-production Wavebird controller. Moreover, though entirely playable, the game just feels a little off with any of the other configurations. 

Whichever configuration you choose (Wii Remote, Wii Remote + Nunchuk, Classic Controller, and GameCube controller), the controls are entirely customizable. Attack, Special Attack, Jump, Guard, Grab, Smash, and Taunt can be mapped all over the controller in question, so your configuration of choice can be made more comfortable, whichever it may be.

Another addition that must be mentioned is that of online play. There are a few options here. “With Anyone” and “With Friends”. “With Anyone” gives you the choice of playing either a free-for-all battle or a two-on-two team battle, but that's pretty much the extent of your selection there. “With Anyone” battles run only two-minutes with anonymous players, and the item frequency is pretty high, so they're clearly intended for brief casual runs. You get significantly more choices on the “With Friends” side of things. This mode will open up just about every option imaginable to customize your battle, and even enable you to run multiple local players – a format not available in the two-on-two open matches. As usual with online Wii games, you will get a friend code particular to Brawl, because universal friend codes are evil and will molest your children, as Nintendo has already made us well aware. This is a minor but noteworthy inconvenience.

The game looks just about as good as you can ask for from a Wii game. All the character and stage detail definitely shows there's plenty of horsepower in this little white box, even if it doesn't quite stand up to its competitors in that regard. More importantly, the visuals do a beautiful job of fulfilling their end of the nostalgia bargain, and Brawl contains a vast array of classic gaming settings modernized to the Wii's visual standards, making this game a gorgeous stroll down memory lane.

In turn, the soundtrack is an old-school gamer's dream come true. Brawl's soundtrack is immense, containing a mixture of old Melee tracks, old cuts taken from past titles, and then the real treat – brand new covers of classic tunes from throughout gaming history, by some of the most prominent composers in the industry. The credits are graced by such prolific musical names as Noriyuki Iwadare (Grandia, Lunar), Kenji Ito (SaGa, Seiken Densetsu), Yuzo Koshiro (Streets of Rage, Shinobi), and Yoko Shimomura (Street Fighter II, Kingdom Hearts), who all updated several classic themes that suit their respective styles. These selections range from classic favorites like the Final Temple from Zelda II to obscure import tunes such as the Shin Onigashima theme. This is one of the most complete soundtracks of all time, and you'll spend a lot of time just unlocking and enjoying it all.

In the simplest terms, Brawl makes Melee look like a demo sampler. In fact, there's so much to this game that it's impossible to talk about it all in a single review. On top of everything that has been talked about here, trophy collecting is back from Melee, a stage customization system has been implemented, and it's possible to save replay data after a match (though that particular feature is kind of useless for high-level play, as it caps off at three-minute fights). All complaints are very minor, however, compared to the overwhelming positives that make this masterpiece one of the first truly “must-own” Wii games. Brawl has a lot to offer anyone, whether you've got deep roots in old-school gaming or just appreciate top-of-the-line games whenever they come along. The sheer volume and vast sources of content, combined with the incredible quality of the gameplay, make Brawl the easiest recommendation yet for anyone who has managed to land a Wii...or the best reason yet to track one down if you haven't.

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