Super Smash Bros. Brawl is Coming

March 9th. It is only a few days away, and I for one am tingling in excitement. Our Japanese cousins have had it for over a month now, and the reviews are incredible. Famitsu — a Japanese video game magazine — has given it a perfect score. This honor has only been awarded to six other games. Metacritic give it a 98 out of 100 and Game Rankings gives 98.3% (currently the highest ever). It has also gathered perfect scores from Thunderbolt Games, Gameplayer, GamerNode and Nintendo Power, which said that Super Smash Bros. Brawl is “one of the very best games that Nintendo has ever produced”. Whoa. Brawl may be the best rating game in history. Sales in Japan have been through the roof, and I expect on March 9th we could see some records broken.

The game can apparently be played with a Wii remote and and Nunchuk together (but doesn’t have to be). Of course, Nintendo has included online play using the Wi-Fi connection with some type of coin jackpot going to winners. This multiplayer functionality is great and again showcases that Nintendo has learned from its previous mistakes. Without Wi-Fi, the game has multiplayer tournaments and rotation modes that allow for up to 16 players, perfect for parties. As well as the bread and butter multiplayer modes, Brawl features an extensive solo mode, as well as a story based adventure mode.

Brawl also has a stage builder, for players to build their own stages as well as increased rule flexibility in ‘group’ mode. Sonic the Hedgehog, once a no-no in Nintendo world due to high competition between Sega and Nintendo, will be appearing in the game as well as Diddy Kong (from Donkey Kong), Ike (from Fire Emblem), Pit (from Kid Icarus), Wario (from Wario Land) and Solid Snake (from Metal Gear). Not appearing in the game are Young Link, Roy, Pichu, Mewtwo and Dr. Mario.

Brawl was originally suppose to come out for the holidays, but was aggravatingly pushed back further when it was only two weeks away, but from the sounds of it, whatever they were doing with the extra time payed off big. This is another perfect example of the fact that getting games right is more important to gamers than getting them out early. Several companies need to take a leaf out of Nintendo’s book and perfect their games before release.

The graphics look fabulous, and have gotten great reviews. This just goes to show that you don’t need heaps of processors to make a game look nice. Our technology is to the point that what matters most now is the artistic skill, not the tech capabilities. This ushers in a new era in gaming, where focus will be on the games not the console. So far, it looks like Nintendo is the only one that has caught on, but don’t expect that to last forever.

All in all, Super Smash Bros. Brawl sounds exciting, and I can’t wait to get my Wiimote on it.