Mashup for the masses

by ERIK LEIJON

Earlier this month, Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii/Nintendo, Sora) became the fastest-selling Nintendo game of all time, moving 1.4 million units in the U.S. in its opening week.

The Mario franchise is no stranger to the top of sales charts, but the four-player combat Super Smash Bros. series has positioned itself as the most important property in the massive, star-studded Nintendo library. What began as yet another Mario spinoff has grown into an event celebrating over 25 years of Nintendo gaming.

Nearly every Nintendo game—big or small—is represented in some capacity in this Flinstones Meets the Jetsons x 1000. Super Smash Bros. Brawl’s allure is hardly about the gaming at all—it’s about the history.

Still, the series continues to provide addictive, straightforward and rudimentary gameplay for the masses, making it the ultimate property mashup for hardcore fans and an easily consumable time warp for everyone else. The controls, which are so familiar even N64 Smash Bros. players will be experts after five minutes, are perfectly simple despite some minor issues with the remote’s tiny directional pad.

There are hundreds of options, but every match centres around trying to knock your opponent off a Nintendo-themed platform by attacking with your fists and the plethora of items strewn across every level. New to the equation are time-stopping, screen-filling special moves. For vets, the characters can’t absorb as much damage as before, but similarly to how it can be tough to jump, everyone experiences the same problems together so the fights are always even.

The online mode, which doesn’t provide enough options to non-friend games, is always preferable to playing against AI opponents. The single-player Subspace Emissary mode, the coin shooting game and level editor are worth your time as well.

Nintendo has branched off into casual gaming in recent years, and despite this title being peppered with obscure references, it might be Nintendo’s most inclusive game yet. Instead of attracting your grandma or some new untapped market, Smash Bros. is tailor-made for the husband or office drone who owned a Nintendo console in the ’90s and hasn’t followed the scene since Microsoft and Sony became industry powerhouses.

With a familiar face like Nintendo back on top, the time is right to wheel out 35 of its most famous characters spanning every system from Game & Watch to Wii (even Konami’s Solid Snake and Sega’s Sonic make cameos). There are so many secrets packed within, it will take players months to unlock every character, stage and trophy.

It might be disconcerting to some that Super Smash Bros. represents another famous Nintendo licence that essentially could not be Wii-ified, meaning the controls are more akin to the older methods and in no way utilize the motion sensor technology.

Smash Bros. was never about pushing new boundaries—it was about gathering not only your favourite characters into one game, but all your friends together for a highly sociable gaming experience.

Into the lair

Dragon Quest Swords (Wii/Square Enix, Genius Sonority) is not your traditional, turn-based Japanese RPG. It’s a basic role-playing game where the fight scenes play like a mix between a light-gun shooter and Wii Sports.

Instead of cycling through menus to attack foes, the Wii remote functions as a sword. There are manoeuvres such as slash, parry, block and various combos, but similar to the pitiful Red Steel, the action occurs at very slow speeds and thus isn’t particularly exciting.

Still, as a layman’s role-playing game, there are enough special attacks and magic at your disposal to provide a few hours of fun. Not a horrible bet for game-starved Wii owners.