Super Smash Bros Brawl

Written by Eric Sandstrom

Super Smash Bros Brawl for the Nintendo Wii has sold over 1.4 million units in its first week. Now we all know that since the game is very successful, it also means it’s very good. But how good?

Nintendo journalist Matt Casamassina dished out the goods on Brawl and why it will eat up your time like a wristwatch-eating termite.

"Super Smash Bros Brawl is a very straightforward 3D fighter. What you do is select some [Nintendo] characters, and you go to a 3D battlefield, and you fight. It sounds very simple, but it’s addictive."

I, too, have noticed that it’s quite addictive. In fact, I’m writing this in-between matches of Brawl.

During my worser moments, I’ve been having trouble sleeping, keeping food down, as well being highly influenced by Super Mario, in that, I’m eating giant outdoor mushrooms, hoping to grow twice my size.

Casamassina, himself, feels that Brawl is almost drug-like:

"... the moment you gather together with friends for a multiplayer match only to find, several minutes later, that you still haven't blinked, you'll have taken your first step into the digital drug that is Super Smash Bros. Brawl..."

Tragically, Super Smash Bros is such a drug, it made my Wii sick with its delicious, digital smack; in which case, it had to go back to Nintendo of America and get "cleaned up," at a console rehab, of sorts. As I recall, NOA is where the Virtual Boy went for rehab. (It's never been seen since.)

Nintendo says that, "[some] Wii consoles may have trouble consistently reading data off [Smash’s] large capacity disc," and that "Nintendo has specialized cleaning equipment that can resolve this problem."

How dirty can a Wii get, I wonder? I, for one, am glad I stopped cooking toast in it.

I digress, Casamassina loves the game's engrossing multiplayer, and now, thanks to Brawl’s online mode, you can play with all the skillful internet perverts and fetishists who will dominate, humiliate, and destroy you.

The game scholar goes on to say that, "Masahiro Sakurai and his team at Sora have drowned the fighter in high-caliber presentational extras, from a superb soundtrack to gorgeous full-motion cut-scenes."

I don’t need to say any more words than "Samus in her form fitting Zero Suit" to explain how important those cut-scenes are. Unequivocally, Zero Suit Samus is where nerds boners go to be nurtured, flourish, and thrive.

That, added with plenty of unlockable characters and thousands of combinations in which to pause and zoom into Zero Suit Samus, Brawl has unlimitless replay value.