The 10th Hour 3.07.08: Top 10 Best Things About Brawl

Posted by Derek Robbins on 03.07.2008

Super Smash Brothers Brawl is two days away. 411's Derek Robbins is pretty excited about it as he breaks down the top 10 best things about the upcoming title.

Hello and welcome to the 10th hour! Before we get started, as always, there are a couple of things that I wish to hit on.

- I had my fantasy baseball draft yesterday. I realize my team probably sucks, but you can click here to see my draft. I am Feral's Flailers (Named for Feraligatr). Yes, I realize I took Hanley Ramirez at number one. Feel free to mock me relentlessly.

-I've been playing a lot of Pokemon Battle Revolution lately. It's not a very good game but I like taking my team into random wifi battles. I'm pretty much using it as a way to get me to Sunday (12:00 AM of course) for Brawl. I'll be sure to post my friend code and what not in next week's column. I'd really like to take on some of our readers! For those of you who still play PBR on wifi – all one of you – my team I usually run with consists of Feraligatr, Honchkrow, Bellosom, Gengar, Togekiss, and Arcanine. That's only two "OU" (Top-tier) pokemon so I think it's an alright group. So if you see that group, you're probably up against me.

Well, alright, enough of that. Let's get onto some reader feedback.

Reader feedback

As always, what they write is in italics and my response is a purely neutral font.

The first one is from Maffew


I'd take Sonic 3D Blast over Sonic Spinball any day.


I may be alone out there, but I really did like Sonic Spinball. I thought that the courses were interesting and it was the first pinball game that I actually thought was fun. Now, is it worse than most Sonic games? Sure. Would I say it deserves to be on the list? Absolutely not. I actually feel it is a very under-rated game.

Next up, we have a comment from DrBdan

"Remember that game you played in math class where you were that frog and
you had to eat certain numbers?"

Yeah it was called Number Munchers and it was the best game when I was in
elementary school. Oregon Trail was a close second.

When I was in grade 7 my school upgraded to top of the line Apple computers and
they had Super Number Munchers, where after eating enough numbers you built up a
power bar and became some sorta super-frog. You actually got a red cape and you
could move around killing the monsters. Ahh... the memories.


Hrrrm, Oregon Trail was probably my absolute favorite if I had to be honest. You could write terrible things when you died and you could also go hunting. Also, real men ford. That's all I'm saying.

As for Number Munchers: You could actually kill the troggles? That is so awesome. No longer will those filthy reggies prevent me from learning my multiplication tables! It's time to fight back!

This next one is from JTowski616

Hey Derek, love reading your stuff. I'm a big time gamer and I have noticed you
mention Persona 3 several times. Just wanna tell you that game is beyond
brilliant, the story, the game play. I'm not a huge RPG fan but the game is
probably the best I ever experienced in a long while. Looking forward to next
week's.


Well thank you for the compliment. Right now, there are two games that I love to see get as much mention as possible: Persona 3 and Earthbound. You mentioned the former and I appreciate that. As Sean McCabe has mentioned several times, the Final Fantasy series is a tad bit over-rated…and other JRPGs tends to get lost in the shuffle. Persona 3 is one of them and I think it's a darn shame. If I had to be quite honest, it was one of the most interesting gaming experiences I had all of last year.

Speaking of Sean McCabe

I have to say, you're way too harsh on Starfox Assault. Was it anything on
Starfox 64? No. Was it actually bad? No either. It was enjoyable enough. And I
think it should be taken out the list completely and replaced by Pokemon
Dash... and that's the first one to come to my head but believe me, there are
many games that could go on this list. Nintendo have been responsible for some
mediocrity and disappointments in their time, as big a fan of them as I am.

My most controversial choice would probably be Metroid Prime: Hunters. I hated
that game.


I agree that Pokemon Dash was putrid, but I think "Hey You Pikachu" would probably be a better choice. Man, they really HAVE milked that franchise haven't they? As for Starfox…I think I may have been a bit hard on it. It's probably because it went from a series that I love to complete trash. If I had to re-consider I probably would have put Adventures in over Assault.

Also, I'm not a fan of the Prime series. Well at least the first two. Number three was pretty good. I think Metroid Prime 1 might be one of the most over-rated games of all time. I just can't stand it. Hunters is kinda crappy too. I wish the online play could save it, but it really can't. The players make the Jump Ultimate Star online community seem awesome by comparison.

Here is a quick one from Brad
Its a shame there is no Dr Mario, otherwise #1 on the list would have been
easy.
There was a game on the 64 for Dr Mario (Im thinking tetris) which was
terrible.


I like Dr. Mario. Why don't you? I think it's actually one of the better Mario spin-offs.

This final one is from Vitamin D


Pretty good list. Some of those I never played (obvious reasons) and some I did
and agree (Mario is Missing wasn't that bad but still not that great).

Perhaps he's my favorite character (it's ALL about Sonic, fuck Mario!) but you
just had to choose two Sonic games? Not just one?

Luckily, I'm thankful no Kirby game is up there. Perhaps it's because he never
made a bad game. =)

I am biased towards Sonic. I've said it once, and I'll say it again. I was foolish enough to play through Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 for crying out loud! That said, to only put one Sonic game up there would have been pretty low of me, considering he has appeared in some pretty shitty games. If it makes you feel any better, Sonic the Fighters ALMOST beat out Sonic 3D Blast, but I decided to go with the more mainstream title.

As for Kirby: I think most Kirby games are really good, but I'll have you know that originally slotted at number 10 was Kirby 64. I just don't like that game. Maybe I am crazy as hell, but I could barely force myself to finish it.

Also, Yoshi's Story was originally going to be where Yoshi's Touch and Go was, but then I remembered that Yoshi's Touch and Go exists. I actually repressed the memories they were so bad.

Top-10 Best things about Brawl

The final part of this two part extravaganza dedicated to Smash Brothers. This will be my last Brawl 10th Hour ever (Yes, the Nintendo checks have stopped coming in), so enjoy that while you can.

This is pretty much the 10 things I am happiest about with the upcoming game. Anything I can come up with is eligible. There will be some speculation, I'm sure.

Alright, with this short rules section out of the way, let's go.

10-) Not too many third party characters - When Snake was first revealed to be in Smash Brothers, the smash community went INSANE. Speculation was rampant about who else was going to join the raucous, with people throwing out some of the most famous third party characters out there – from Sonic to Mega Man to Cloud Strife – as probable to make the roster. Thankfully, Nintendo realized that too much of a good thing could dilute the magic and only elected to have TWO third parties in – Snake and Sonic. While one more would have been nice, it's hard to rag on Nintendo for including two characters that have pretty large fan-bases and keeping the number of non-first-party characters to a minimum. I think this pleases two different types of fans, so I am all for that. I must say, I'm so glad that Cloud didn't get in. I knew he wouldn't, but he re-defines generic JRPG character. It wouldn't have diluted the experience for me, but…it would have appointed me a permanent punching bag.

- Thank goodness I won't be seeing any of these folks in the game.

9-) Removal of Melee's "Advanced Techniques" - Yes, I realize that some new physics exploits have been found (including one that allows Toon Link to float for a while) but none of them are as game-breaking as the stuff that was found in Melee. The problem with the advanced techniques in Melee was the simple fact that they weren't meant to be there, so a lot of the casual players had no clue how to do them. If you pit a tournament player and a casual player in the same match, the casual player would have absolutely no chance to win because of the other player's ability to exploit physics. I'm sorry, fox fans, wave shining doesn't take skill. It's cheap. Big time tournament matches would basically come down to ‘who can exploit physics the best' and not ‘who is actually the best at the game' It really says something about a tournament scene when they have to BAN STAGES because Fox BREAKS them as opposed to banning the actual techniques. While Wave Dashing. Wave Shining, L-Canceling, etc have been removed…there will inevitably be more advanced techniques found. Hopefully they won't break the game open like Melee's did so online play won't become a hassle-filled cluster fuck of tournament players dominating normal people, but they will be found. I'm really glad though because, as of right now, online brawling can be fun for everyone. Some of the casual players can actually win now.

- What now Fox?

8-) Most everything has a co-op option - The main fault that people could pin on Smash Brothers Melee and Smash 64 was the simple fact that the single player mode really didn't offer much. Sure it could be fun it short bursts…but there really wasn't that much to keep you around. Once you got to a certain skill level, the computers never really offered a challenge, and there was just about nothing you could do to make it fun. Well, now you can play through a lot of the single player modes as a team. When you actually play with someone, even the most tedious of single player modes can be a blast. Hell, Halo 1's horrendous campaign was made somewhat passable thanks to co-op play. Let's say you get Brawl on Sunday and you really want to start unlocking things, the problem is…you have someone else around you that really wants to play. The solution is simple! You can co-op your way through the Subspace Emissary to unlock most everything the game has to offer. It's really a fun way to include everyone. On top of this, you can also co-op on event battles. My personal favorite part of the Melee single player was the event battles, so I'm glad that they brought in the ability to play them with someone else. As if that wasn't enough, the co-op events are different than the single player events giving you even more things to do. I really like that. The option to play through things solo or as a team is really awesome in my opinion and more games need to give you that option.

- I'll try to get this team going a lot.

7-) Ability to send pictures, videos, etc. - Maybe it's just me, but I really like the idea of randomly seeing a screenshot in the game that makes you laugh and being able to save it and send it to other people. Sure, a lot of the day one sent material will involve Bowser using his down throw (where he slams down on you) on various un-willing participants, but…the potential is quite large! With hundreds of people taking photos and sending them to each other – and entering them in Nintendo contests – there is bound to be some hilarity. As if that wasn't enough, Brawl takes a page from Halo 3's book and allows you to record your various matches. That's right! You can show the world "how good you are" by recording short snippets of matches and sending them to your friends. While some people may not like watching other people play, it can be fun. It allows you to learn some of their strategy and to see how other people play. Sure, I guess there's always youtube or veoh…but not everyone has video recording software, so this is kind of neat for the average brawler. You also have the ability to submit created stages online – although you can't battle on wifi with these unfortunately – which…I will touch on later. Needless to say, that's fucking awesome. The idea of somebody a couple of hundred miles away playing the level I worked on makes me really happy.

- We won't be seeing any of these sorts of pictures...I hope.

6-) Assist Trophies - My favorite item in Melee and Smash 64 (other than no items, durr hurr hurr) was the pokeball. It allowed for the cameo of several of my favorite pokemon and I really liked that. You never knew who was appearing next and it added an element of excitement. Well, Sakurai has decided to take it a step further this time and throw in assist trophies. They act essentially like pokeballs but add a lot of characters to the game that may not have otherwise appeared. A lot of people would have whined if Shadow the Hedgehog had been made a playable character, but…can anyone really complain about him as an assist trophy? He's just a fun cameo! You also have characters that you weren't really expecting to see at all make an appearance, which is neat. I mean, if I had told you back when this game was announced that the SNES version of Andross would make an appearance on the battlefield, you probably would have called me crazy but…there he is! Even though some of the Assist Trophies would have been awesome characters – I am looking at you, Little Mac – it's hard to complain about their existence. They add more franchises to a game that is all about the fanservice and add a bit of surprise to the battlefield. No matter what items I decide to have on and off (Just for reference, I refuse to play with healing items, hammers, or bombs. Though mines are okay), I can tell you that I will always be playing with the Assist Trophies and the pokeballs. Diversity is a good thing and I am so happy that brawl brings this to the table.

- Guess which AT I am looking forward to the most?

5-) Stage Creator - In melee, there were always those stages that you simply just didn't like. For me, it was icicle mountain. I couldn't stand that place. Every time somebody chose it I knew I was in for a match in which the action would be minimized and the jumping would be maximized. Well, thanks to this new mode…you can simply create your own stage to your preference! Are you a boring sort of tournament player that demands all stages be flat and include no items? Simple! Create a flat line of a stage with a simple background and have a blast! Want something complex? The creator has a plethora of options that you can cycle through. Now, I will admit, this mode can be a tad simplistic, but next to a character creator…this was one of the things that I most wanted in this game. Is it a shame you can't recreate Nintendo worlds with relative ease? Sure. I would have loved if I had the ability to create Saffron City from Smash 64 for play, but…I'll take the ability to create my own custom environment any day of the week. What's made even better is that you have the option to receive a custom stage from Nintendo every day. These are fellow user created stages, so you can experience the creativity of others first hand. I really like the idea of something I create being the "featured map of the day" and being sent all over the place. It's just something neat. While I know I'll be playing this game for years to come, this mode adds even more replay value to this pack.

- So happy your stupid stage from Melee won't be in Brawl.

4-) The Soundtrack - Without a doubt, I can say that this was the finest soundtrack ever compiled. Now you may be asking: "How do you know this!?" The answer is quite simple – I downloaded it. 300+ songs, and most of them are excellent selections. As an Earthbound fan there were a few songs that were left out – though there were a couple of extra songs found as code on the game disc…and with downloadable content being confirmed for the wii, you really never know – such as the eight melodies theme that I really would have liked included, but…that's just one franchise. For each franchise represented – and even some that aren't – there are several good songs chosen by Sakurai. As a fan of a particular series, you may feel bummed that certain songs were left out…but if you take off your fan goggles, I believe that you can truly appreciate an epic compilation of videogame music. While songs like Grand Theft Auto, Rock Band, and Guitar Hero have this game beat as far as more contemporary music is concerned…Smash Brothers beats them on the videogame front. I can't emphasize this enough. They really, really did a good job with this game's sound.



3-) Sonic the Hedgehog - I mentioned above in the "fan feedback" section that I was a bit of a Sonic fanboy, and…well, you can imagine my delight when the blue blur was finally confirmed to be in the game. While he has fallen in recent years, I remember him for the times we had when I was growing up. Back in the early ‘90's Sonic wasn't washed up. He was Sonic the fucking Hedgehog. He was viable competition to Mario. Sakurai appears to remember this, and Sonic's moveset reflects that. All of his moves, and his stage for that matter, make me reminisce fondly about the Genesis era. I have to commend development for that because, really, it would have been easy to make him fight like he does in the 3D Sonic games…but they knew what the fans wanted. Great job. If you had told me back then that in the year 2008 Sonic and Mario would be in the same game together, I really wound not have believed it. Yet here we are, and I can finally relieve the best videogame rivalry of all time. The fat Italian plumber versus the cool blue hedgehog. Some people have complained about the presence of Sonic, but I think a lot of them have forgot about how big of a deal that this used to be. Smash Brothers Brawl is a game that embellishes itself in fan-service, and the ultimate bit of fan-service is to harken back to this classic rivalry. I can't say how happy I am to see Sonic in this game.

- Of course, if you don't like Sonic...you can always do this.

2-) Subspace Emissary - Sakurai could have played it safe. He didn't need to come up with a story mode for this game. On the contrary, he would have been fine if he had simply included an up-dated Classic mode and an up-dated Adventure mode. But no, Sakurai wasn't intent on simply releasing an updated game. He wanted to release a NEW game, and he did just that. The Subspace Emissary is a new single player mode that allows you to go through a story that plays through the eyes of your favorite Nintendo superstars. While I have heard mixed reports about how this game plays, I honestly can't be anymore excited about it. Some of the stages really remind me of Super Nintendo games – especially Donkey Kong's first level which looks like it plays right out of Donkey Kong Country – and the idea of playing through a story with such a…diverse cast makes me kind of excited. When I first heard of this mode, I figured it would last around three hours…but it appears the actual normal playtime is around eight. EIGHT hours for a fighting game one player mode. I would believe that this is a first. It would have been easy to simply deliver a couple of levels and call it that, so I have to respect Sakurai for making it a bit deeper than that. As a reward, you can unlock most every character through this mode. Luckily, if you wish to unlock your characters in a more traditional manner, you are allowed to do so. So if you play it and it turns out you don't really like it…you can simply stop. Better than forcing us to play through a mode we don't want to, right? Basically, it's a thing you can enjoy any way you want, and believe you me…I am prepared to enjoy it.

- I really like this Subspace pairing.

1-) Online Play - Believe you me, I am disappointed about the lack of a deeper system. I think voice chat, especially in friend battles, would have been a great addition. That said…I can't help but feel great that I can play online whenever I want. Like a lot of you, I have friends that I only know over the internet. I also have friends that have moves away that are avid Smash Brothers fans. No longer do I have to brag about how good I am, I can actually SHOW it to them! I wish Nintendo would realize that online play isn't "evil" and that a lot of their customers are very willing to embrace it. Sometimes I find it relaxing to simply pump up my music and get lost while playing an online game. Take PBR for example. Fighting random teams of pokemon while listening to the Jim Rome Show (Yes, I know, that's NOT music) can be soothing. Well, I imagine this to be the same experience. Just the ability to waste hour after hour playing new players with different strategies seems worth it to me. While the mode could certainly have been deeper, I think most people would be hard pressed to complain about its inclusion. Whether brawling it out in an online tournament or fighting random people to test your skill…I think this is the sort of mode that a lot of us will be enjoying for a long, long time.



Well, that's it for my two-part Smash Brothers special! I'll be back to more neutral topics next week, though what I'm going to do is a bit of a mystery to me. Right now, I'm thinking "Worst characters" or something along that line, I don't know. I've also been trying to do more unique lists lately, so if you have anything to suggest…drop me a line and I'll see what I can do.

You may have also noticed there were a ton of Mother-related pictures. I may be able to squeeze one more in before the end!

As always, if you wish to e-mail me with praise, complaints, suggestions, or if you simply have the strange desire to chat with me…my address is [e-mail] or [e-mail] Your choice. You can simply comment below, also.

See you guys online this Sunday!
Til' the Crossroads