Are You Keeping Smash Bros Spoiler Free?

I have been trying my darndest to keep the remaining roster and stages of Smash Bros Brawl a secret but in thinking about what has already been announced it got me thinking. Ever since Sakurai, the director of Brawl, announced that all future updates to the Smash Bros Dojo may contain spoilers I have been keeping myself away from most of the Brawl news. But after doing some quick math in my head about the currently announced newcomers it got me wondering if I already knew almost every character.

I know the final playable roster on Melee, I've been re-playing it for the last 2 weeks now, and there are a total of 25 characters. So let's assume that every character in Melee is returning, this could deinitely be false, and we are only 10 characters away from the Brawl roster of 35. As you will see below, there could easily be more than 35 characters in Brawl, but that number could be correct so we'll continue anyway.

So with 25 characters assumed to be there already, the Melee returners, let us count the already announced newcomers.

1. Diddy Kong
   
2. Pit from Kid Icarus
   
3. King Dedede
   
4. Solid Snake
   
5. Sonic the Hedgehog
   
6. Olimar
   
7. Lucas
   
8. Pokemon Trainer
   
9. Wario
   
10. Ike
    
11. Meta Knight

You can see by the list above that it would already put us at 36 characters, more than the 35 I was told. So we already have 36 characters that we know of, but that was assuming that every character is returning from Melee. So let's remove the "clone" characters from the list.

1. Dr. Mario
   
2. Falco
   
3. Pichu
   
4. Young Link
   
5. Ganondorf
   
6. Roy

The Smash Bros Dojo hasn't officially announced any of the "clones" as playable in Brawl up to this point so it could be argued that all "clone" characters have been removed. So that would put us at 30 characters. But what about the already announced Lucas and Ike from Melee character's existing franchises. Are these characters in addition to Ness and Marth from Earthbound and Fire Emblem or are they replacements? Do we add them to make it 32 or do we keep it at 30 and call them replacements?

There are a few possible explanations for this whole roster situation. 1) There are more than 35 playable characters, 2) everyone has been announced already (highly doubtful since there were spoiler warnings), or 3) the roster is mostly different aside from a few characters here and there so nothing can be assumed about Melee returners.

One thing is certain, there should at least be a few surprises left for me when I get the game next month. I just hope they didn't get rid of Roy seeing as he was my personal favorite. And by the way, if any of you know there to be more than 35 characters in Brawl, feel free to inform me.

Pikmin and Olimar Playable in Smash Bros. Brawl

Wow...wow...wow Sakurai. Olimar and his cute little Pikmin friends are joining the Smash Brothers Brawl lineup? That is totally awesome. What I really question now is whether there will be any secrets left to unlock when we actually buy this game?

Today the Smash Bros Dojo, the daily blog releasing Brawl information, released another little nugget of information. Pikmin will be joining the foray in more ways than one. Not only is Olimar, and his little Pikmin, playable characters in the game but their music is available (at least the World Map theme) to select during a Brawl match. I would imagine this must mean there will be a Pikmin themed stage in the works as well but it is yet to be confirmed. We are also patiently awaiting the moveset and Final Smash of Olimar. Until then you can wait the remaining 4 weeks or so until the game is released here in the States knowing you will be able to bombard your rivals with different-colored Pikmin. This could be a tough 4 weeks. Good thing Contra IV and Endless Ocean will be here to help pass the time.

Smash Bros Brawl Trophy Collecting Options

Just when I was thinking I may have hit a point where I couldn't see myself putting anymore time into Smash Bros Brawl they went out and announced the Coin Launcher mini-game. This game is basically a replacement for the slot machine lottery from Smash past. In previous games Sakurai, the director of Smash Bros, simply had us insert all of our coins from single player events into a slot machine and hope we got new trophies. Now, he wants us to have a little bit more fun when collecting our trophies.

Above you can see the general concept of the mini-game. It has sort of a Missile Command feel to it but rather than protecting a few bases you are only protecting yourself and trying to shoot (with coins) trophies scattered throughout the arena. You control your aiming with the Wiimote twisting and fire with B. After a while you can build a green meter which allows for a faster rate of fire. So prepare yourself for a massive amount of coin loss in a matter of only a few seconds.

This is not the only way you can capture trophies for your collection however. Luckily for us Sakurai is allowing another tactic for building your trophy hoard. While playing through Subspace Emissary, Brawl's single player game, you can gather these neat little Trophy Stands and use them on enemies. These are items just like the Homerun Bat or the Star Flower that you hold in your hand and carry through the levels.

Simply throw the Trophy Stand at a weakened enemy and viola, you now can pick them up and they are added to your collection. This works on minor enemies as well as major bosses in the game. But for trophies that aren't of enemies and characters in the Subspace Emissary you will have to resort to the Coin Launcher mini-game. That is of course unless Sakurai has some more suprises in store for us in the coming months.

Smash Bros Brawl Spectator Mode

Spectator Mode was announced today on the Smash Bros Brawl website today. There are multiple games out there that allow you to watch other people play the game over the interweb. Perhaps the person you are watching has a very fast race time or are an exceptional sniper shot and you want to see how they do it. Or maybe you don't have cable and they are just some random guy you would rather watch than static. The difference here is that Smash Bros will allow you to bet on who you think will win the match you are watching. So if you think that Bowser will win the match then bet 200 tokens on him and see if you win. With your winnings you can use them to purchase various unlockable goodies in the game. Not to mention you unlock stickers while viewing and betting on matches. Not a clue what you do with stickers, but hey, at least you get something.

This does a few things for the online experience other than allow you to watch some random people having fun playing the game that you could very easily be playing yourself, no, it gives you a slightly different online experience. Now you are never certain if someone is betting on you when you are playing an online game (unless you are a loser and set "Allow Spectators" to NO, who would do that). You could be sitting at home playing a game online and lose someone a million tokens. You could single handedly destroy the last remaining hopes for a small family of 4 with nothing but a few measly little tokens remaining in their bank accounts. How do you feel about yourself now Bowser...HOW DO YOU FEEL?!!!?!!

Smash Bros Brawl Online Detailed

Is a hardrive needed for replays?
Sakurai announced that you will be able to save and send up to three minute replays of battles or other modes. At first glance one would think this would require a very large amount of data to save that much footage of a game. However, depending on how they save the data, they could keep extremely small sized save files. When looking at a game like Halo 3 that allows a similar feature they manage to keep two minute save files down to an extremely small 100 Mb. Considering the large amount of HD textures and high number of polygons in Halo 3, that is quite a feat.

The way the Bungie developers accomplished such small replay files was by only tracking (and saving) game code of everything happening in the game. Rather than saving the footage as a video file this allows the new viewer (the person you sent the replay) to move the camera around and zoom in and out. If the Smash Bros team uses a similar strategy for a game with no HD and a small environment you could easily get a three minute replay in under 40Mb file size.

To add to this, Sakurai has noted that we can save created levels, screenshots, and replays directly to an SD card. If the above tactic doesn't work, you still really don't need a harddrive.

Will there be an Adventure Mode creation tool?
The president of Nintendo of America recently told a media outlet during an interview that he wishes LittleBigPlanet was on the Wii and not on the PS3. In this game people create single-player levels from scratch and allow others to play through the level. My question with this Smash Bros update is whether or not you will be able to create single-player levels as well as Brawl stages. One thing I found interesting was a screenshot on the site with a ladder as an object option.

I have never once seen a ladder used in the way Mario is using that ladder in a Smash Bros game. In the middle of a Smash Brawl I think it would be awfully weird to stop the action and start climbing a ladder. So what could this mean for the create-a-level option? Perhaps a single-player level editor is on the horizon. One can only hope.

There are a few other things I have worries or suspicions about in regards to Smash Bros online features but that will have to wait until a later date. Not to say I don't love all these online features, because I absolutely do, I'm just saying there's more to it than what we know right now.

Smash Bros Brawl is an Online Feature Beast

My oh my. Just when I thought Super Smash Bros Brawl couldn't get any cooler Sakurai, the games director, goes and announces this. It still may not be Halo 3 in the online department but the announcement today over at the Smash Bros Dojoshows that there is a level editor available in the game. Not only is there a level editor in the game but it is possible to save your creations to an SD card and bring them to a friends house to play. What, that's not really all that cool? Well then just send the level to them over Nintedo's WiFi Connection and play against them online. Still not cool enough? Well then mail the level to Nintendo and every single day they will feature a new created level for random online matches. So if you are fighting online and set the level to random, millions of people a day could be playing on your creation. Love it while you got it though because it only lasts for a day.

So as of right now there are a multitude of online options for this game. You can setup various character statues in different poses and send snapshots to friends. You can battle it out in every level and mode against friends or stangers. You can record up to three minutes of replay footage and send it to a buddy. And now, you can create your own level, music and all, and send it to friends or Nintendo for multiplayer madness. Is this the end of the online mode announcements or does Sakurai have some more tricks up his sleeve?

Metroid vs Super Mario vs Smash Bros

In honor of the great (or at least we all hope) Metroid Prime 3: Corruption coming out next week I thought I should do a little research (and I use that term loosely) to see which of Nintendo's big games will sell more this year. With Nintendo claiming this month to be the month of Metroid I figured there would be no better time to compare Metroid Prime 3 to Mario Galaxy and Smash Bros Brawl. According to the popularity of Google searches, Super Mario is a far more important and searched brand. Somewhat unfair though due to the fact that "Super Mario" could easily be connected to a game like Super Paper Mario or New Super Mario Bros for the Nintendo DS.

In the end Metroid is the weakest of the brands and, in all reality, will most likely sell far fewer copies than that of the other two. But who really cares if it sells less than those other behemoths if the game ends up being as fun as it's past games in the series.

Sonic the Hedgehog in Smash Brothers Brawl?

Not sure if Best Buy actually knows anything at all about a certain game they will be selling in the next few months, Super Smash Bros Brawl, but they appear to think that Sonic the Hedgehog will be making an appearance in the game. At this point he still seems like a very likely choice for a second third-party character to join the ranks (alongside Snake from Metal Gear Solid) but nothing has been confirmed. If you're a Sonic lover, looking at this promotional material from Best Buy, there could be a chance your dreams come true. Or maybe the guy who made this has no clue about gaming and thinks Sonic is a Nintendo character so he thought he'd put him on there. Who knows?

4 Control Options for Smash Bros. Brawl

Nintendo's official Super Smash Bros. Brawl website blog updated today and announced that there are going to be four different control options for Smash Bros when the game releases sometime later this year. The four options will be to use the Gamecube controller, the Classic controller, the Wiimote and Nunchuk, or jus tthe Wiimote by itself. The site informs us that we will be using the Wiimote on its side in the NES-style (same as Excite Truck and Super Paper Mario) but there aren't any solid details just yet. This is great news though because we now have a guarantee that the game will control like a dream simply because it has the option to play it like the Gamecube version.

Another thing to note with this news is the fact that there could now potentially be the option to have an 8-player mode. Bust-a-Move managed an 8-player mode on the recently released Bust-A-Move Bash! by allowing 4 players to use Gamecube controllers and 4 players use the Wiimotes. The official site still shows the game is only 1-4 players but there is always the chance they will announce it in one of these daily blog updates. My hope, and the hope of every Nintendo fan in the world, is that there will be no need for an 8-player mode because the game will be Wi-Fi compatible. What do all you guys (the four of you that read this) think about this news?

Check out the official site right here.