Hi, my name is ENG and I'm a product tester for NOA's Super Mario Club. We test games spanning across all genres and throughout many stages of development. My first experience with the new Smash Bros. game, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, was back in March of 2006, when a playable alpha demo was created for the Japanese testers overseas. As part of a rewards/incentives program at the Super Mario Club, we are allowed access to builds of games we're personally interested in, via a point allotment system which you may be familiar with if you've ever worked at a retail store. I'd saved up enough of these for my division to test the build on our breaks.
At that point, there was almost no discernible difference from Melee. The engine was exactly the same, to a T, and the only new character was Pit. Only Pit, Mario and Fox were playable. All in all, it was a fun little demo, but not exactly worth my time and investment, especially given the test stage, which was essentially a stripped down, bare-bones version of the Battlefield stage you've seen on the Dojo.
But recently, we received the pre-release version of Brawl (NTSC), 99% completed and intact. My manager and I are on good terms, so she allowed my division to work on it. Our only job is to test every combination of game mechanics in order to discover any remaining bugs or glitches that the Japanese test teams may have missed, which is, in itself, a very rare occurrence.
With the completed version of the game in my office, it was impossible for me not to break down and tell someone. I know you guys here at Gamefaqs take Smash seriously, but I really don't want this to become a phenomenon. If you could keep it to the Melee board, I'd really appreciate it. I don't want this to cost me my job.
I know that no matter what I say, you won't be satisfied unless I tell you ALL the characters. Well, sorry, but that isn't going to happen. My aim isn't to spoil the game for everyone, just to give a few hints to make the wait a little more bearable. Here we go.
The roster shown at the convention demo is not the starting roster. The starting roster is Melee's starting roster in its entirety, plus Marth, Diddy Kong, Pokemon Trainer and Pit. The rest are unlockable. Zelda can still transform, but Sheik's smashes have significantly less knockback and his (her?) special moves are new, except for the needles.
Zero Suit Samus is playable as a separate character by holding A at the beginning of a match after choosing Samus, a la Sheik from Melee.
One of my favorite new stages is Big Shell, a location from Metal Gear Solid 2. The stage takes place on top of the Big Shell, near the helipad. Pigeons fly around and can be knocked around like the shy guys in Melee. At the start of a match, the players are surrounded on either side by a chain-link fence, but after taking enough damage, the fence will fall and players can be KO'd off the side, like in some of the Super Mario stages from Melee.
As for characters, I'll give you one and a half. Olimar was a shoe-in, and his arrival shouldn't be much of a surprise, so I don't consider that much of a spoiler.
I won't explicitly say which two third party characters haven't been shown, because that will ruin the speculation game, but they're from Capcom and Square-Enix.
Like I said, please keep this to the Melee board. I doubt the information I've given out is enough to track me down, but even so, I'd rather this be kept to a small group. I hope to see some of you online this February!
