Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Sunday morning my daughter and I waited in line in front of our local GameStop store to pickup our reserved copy of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. There were a few high school kids in the line but the line was not very long. In fact there were only about 10 kids when we got there half an hour before opening time. By the time the store opened 20 people were waiting in line. A few kids were saying they had not pre-ordered the game but still expected to buy a copy.

While inside the store, waiting to make our purchase, my daughter asked me to buy the guide book for it. I told her I would get her a wireless GameCube controller instead but, after seeing they only had the cheap Gamestop controllers I relented and got her the book. It counts as reading, right? This was also about the time some of those kids found out that "no pre-order" also meant "no sale". That's right, if you did not pre-order the game you were not going to get one on release day.

In the car ride home my daughter was pouring over the guide book, telling me all sorts of things I did not want to hear.

I have to tell you that I have not been following much of the press about this game. I knew it had been pushed back multiple times but that was about it. What surprised me (nicely) is the inclusion of the extended single player mode. We logged in over four hours in the adventure mode and have only completed 25% of it!

As in previous games there is a ton of unlockable content. Not just characters but trophies, stages, challenge levels, etc... So far we have unlocked three bonus characters (Ganondorf, Luigi and Marth). I don't remember how we unlocked all three but Ganondorf was unlocked by playing through Classic Mode with Link on Hard level.

The previous Smash Bros. game for the Game Cube was very good but this one takes it up a few notches. The extended single player mode is one thing but the online brawling is something else! You can even bet your coins on the result of matches you watch.

We have played a few games on Nintendo WFC and have experienced no problems.

As for controls, my daughter prefers to use the Game Cube controller while I like to use the Classic controller attached to my Wii-mote.

Yeah, this game was worth the wait and will likely become The game on the Wii for the next few months Mario Kart Wii may knock it down. I'm brawling, are you?