SurooshX
Smash Journeyman
I got my EGM today, and I was extremely disappointed to find DK on my cover when it could have been Samus, Snake, or Sonic. I was upset, but I'll do this for the community anyway. This was EGM's special Brawl edition where they had a huge article dedicated to the epicess that is to come in just a short time. Here goes...
"IT'S THE KIND OF IDEA A COUPLE OF KIDS MIGHT COME UP WITH,
daydreaming about videogames over a peanut-butter sandwiches in the school cafeteria: What if there were a game that had every Nintendo character in it? Mario and Link together in the same game? Samus from Metroid? Donkey Kong and Bowser and maybe even outsiders like SOnic the Hedgehog and Solid Snake? What if they could fight each other? Man, that would be so awesome!
Super Smash Bros. is that daydream materialized, the ultimate fan fantasy, a videogame version of the comic-book crossoever: Superman battles Batman for the love of Lois Lane! And it brings the fans out in droves. Super Smash Bros. Melee, the series' last appearance, clung to the charts like a Beatles tune, eventually becoming the best-selling GameCube game of all time. Super Smash Bros. Brawl, scheduled to release on the on the Wii on February 10, has been picked apart and studied like a sacred text by hardcore fans, thanks to daily doses of info dished out through the Smash Bros. Dojo, Brawl's microscopically detailed promotional website (seek it out at Smashbros.com for the nuts-and-bolts info you won't find here).
If you've never set thumbs on a Smash Bros. game, it goes like this: Up to four famous and not-so-famous videogame characters gather together to throw punches, kicks, fireballs, Pokemon, Bob-bombs, baseball-bat swings, sword slashes, and a zillion game-nerd references at each other on a moving, transforming, or otherwise booby-trapped stage (Nintendo-themed, of course). The goal? To chuck your opponent off the airborne island, sending them to the ultimate videogame death: a bottomless pit. The overall effect is near-total chaos, something between a riot and a bar fight, only rainbow-colored and family friendly. Spaceships fly, bombs explode, Pokemon swoop, lava rises, characters get small, characters knock each other around like baseballs in a batting cage. It's nuts.
History re-beating itself
For a game that tries hard to push the limits of frantic, Brawl's creators spend a bizarre amount of effort in getting as many tiny game-trivia nuggets onto the disc as possible. Characters, items, collectables -- everything you see in Brawl is a virtual memorabilia. Nate Bihldorff, the game's US producer, is one of the people in charge of making sure this memorabilia gets the facts straight, and he's spent a ton of time playing through decades-old Nintendo games to verify quotes, character names, and art that appears in Smash Bros. "I'm a huge Nintendo nerd myself," says Bihldorff. "So I know that there are going to be people reading a lot of this stuff, and I want them to be able to rely on it as gospel."
Behind the scenes, the game's eccentric, tireless creator, Masahiro Sakurai, is the driving force behind Nintendo History 101. "There can be no question that, from the very beginning, [Sakurai] saw this as the encyclopedia of Nintendo," says Bihldorff. "You can tell the guy just loves Nintendo games, wants everybody to appreciate where videogames came from, and to make these old things new again. He wants to make sure [younger playes are] educated about what came before." Know the character Devil from the old Japanese Famicom game Devil World? Of course you don't. But you will.
'Shroom with a view
This compulsion to educate the masses on teh finer points on Nintendo trivia fits in nicely with another Sakurai goal: to stuff as much content into Smash Bros. Brawl as his (already delayed) shipping date will allow. Beyond the expected fighting-game options and modes, Brawl features a story driven adventure called "The Subspace Emissary" that, according to Bihldorf, goes well beyond any single-player effort the series has seen before. "It's a great plot, strung together be some really awesome movies starring all the characters that you know and love."
Bihldorf, stingy with the details, describes what sounds like a variety show for Nintendophiles. "You're basically playing with everybody and they're all joining up on your team as you go along," he explains. "You're going to be forced to play with a bunch of characters that you don't know, or maybe don't like. A lot of people are going to find characters they love that they otherwise wouldn't have touched. So you're too big a man to like Pokemon, but you're going to have to go through this section with Pikachu. And you may find out that he's a killing machine."
Aside from the "Emissary" Adventure, Brawl alos packs in two big-name non-nintendo characters (Sonic the Hedgehog and Metal Gear's Solid SNake), and elaborate level creator (which allows you to share your creations with your friends), and what is easily Nintendo's most ambitious online multiplayer effort. "You can trace it all back to Sakurai-san, this sort of Energizer bunny over there [in Japan]," says Bihldorff. "The amount of content he's crammed into this thing is unbelievable."
It all adds up to a love letter from Nintendo to their most ardent fans, the very people who may be feeling neglected by Nintendo's recent focus on soccer moms and retirees. Hopped up on months of teaser details from the Smash Bros. Dojo, these super-fans are done daydreaming. They're ready for the real thing."
The rest of the article is talking about Nintendo itself and not Smash. There were however sub articles that were sort of interesting. Here they are:
"CUSTOM CHAOS
Brawl's level editor lets you share your G-rated creativity with the world.
For the woefully pale players who manage to run out of new content to play with Brawl, the game features a new editor that will alow them to make their own stages. That means countless of Nintendophiles are now lotting to re-create their favorite moments in 9-bit gaming. But while level editors in Nintendo games date all the way back to ExciteBike for NES, Brawl's does one better: Thanks to a submission option, these folks will be able to upload their creations for a chance to share to the masses.
Nintendo will broadcast one level per day, selected from the throng, to Brawl players who have connected their systems to the internet. It begs the question: Will there be a human sorting through all the Bullet Bill *****es and brick-spelled four-letter words? "I think there's a human in the process somewhere," says US Producer Nate Bihldorff. "Naughty children being what they are, we're sure to see our fair share of...inappropriate shapes." Still, if any of the phallus-faced Miis on the Check Mii Out Channel are anything to go by, we figure some subtle dirty work will slip past the censors."
"SMASHING WITH STRANGERS
Brawl's multiplayer modes finally push Nintendo deeper into online territory
Easily Nintendo's meatiest online game, Brawl packs lots of new-to-the-Wii features along with a very familiar -- and very annoying -- one: the friend code. If you want to Smash your friends online, you'll need to input codes for each buddy, even if you have previously entered his or her Wii console code. The system, according to outgoing Nintendo VP Perrin Kaplan, is designed to protect young players from contact with strangers. "Our goal is to ensure safety for everyone who plays online," she says.
And though you can play with your friends (and exchange whatever obscenities the filter will allow through customizable text-based taunts), Brawl's online matchmaking service makes players totally anonymous to another. Producer Nate Bihldorff says that this decision is as much about making online play accessible as it is about safety. "With Anyone Mode, you're not keeping track of any stats," he says. "The idea of people coming together to play for fun being more important than people being at each other's throats for the top spot on the leaderboards -- that's definetly part of [creator] Sakurai's original vision."
While waiting for online opponents to pick their characters and settings, players can practice on a dummy, an attempt to keep the adrenaline up. Brawl also features a Spectator mode that lets you watch online matches and bet coins on the outcome -- coins you can spend to unlock content. Very Nintendo."
"BRAWLING FOR A LIVING
Think Smash Bros. can't hang with serious fighting games? Just ask a pro...
With the amount of sheer craziness that takes place in any given Smash Bros. match -- the ever-chaning levels, the randomly dispensed weapons, the zooming and panning visual chaos -- you wouldn't expect there to such a thing as compettitive Smash tournaments (Only you would think that, guy-who's-writing-this.). But they do exist. An elite community of gamers plays Smash Bros. not as a party game, but as a fighting game. And they're extremely serious about it.
"The tourney players are way beyond anything that I could ever do in that game," says Brawl producer Nate Bihldorff. "And I played pretty relentlessly for a while." Bihldorff may have a lot of hours under his belt, but that's nothing compared [to] the time Major League Gaming pro Chris "KillaOR" McKenzie has logged. "I've played, probably, a year and a half straight, total time," he says. McKenzie and his competitive ilk, however, play under very specific conditions. They only use a handful of stages (the simplest, least interfering types), and they loathe items (*sigh* stereotypes again...). "We definetly take out the items," says McKenzie. "It makes it too much of a random, lucky type of environment instead of a skilled environment." The pros also tend to use just a few of the game's huge roster of characters, due to severe character imbalance -- somethin McKenzie is hoping Brawl will fix.
But he shouldn't get too optimistic about the prospect of an evened-out Smash Bros. "In a game like this," says Bihldorff, "you're never going to get to this utopia where everything's balanced perfectly. You strive for it, but the chances of it ever happening are pretty much nil. The character roster is just way too big. There are too many moves, too many factors."
Meanwhile, for anyone looking up their Smash Bros. game, McKenzie has one piece of advice: Use your head. "There are a lot of really technical players, but they're not smart with their technique," he says. "The best way to get better is to watch your mistakes, not so much be as fast as possible. Be the smartest Fox, not the fastest Fox.""
There you go. Be thankful for this. It tok a while to type.
"IT'S THE KIND OF IDEA A COUPLE OF KIDS MIGHT COME UP WITH,
daydreaming about videogames over a peanut-butter sandwiches in the school cafeteria: What if there were a game that had every Nintendo character in it? Mario and Link together in the same game? Samus from Metroid? Donkey Kong and Bowser and maybe even outsiders like SOnic the Hedgehog and Solid Snake? What if they could fight each other? Man, that would be so awesome!
Super Smash Bros. is that daydream materialized, the ultimate fan fantasy, a videogame version of the comic-book crossoever: Superman battles Batman for the love of Lois Lane! And it brings the fans out in droves. Super Smash Bros. Melee, the series' last appearance, clung to the charts like a Beatles tune, eventually becoming the best-selling GameCube game of all time. Super Smash Bros. Brawl, scheduled to release on the on the Wii on February 10, has been picked apart and studied like a sacred text by hardcore fans, thanks to daily doses of info dished out through the Smash Bros. Dojo, Brawl's microscopically detailed promotional website (seek it out at Smashbros.com for the nuts-and-bolts info you won't find here).
If you've never set thumbs on a Smash Bros. game, it goes like this: Up to four famous and not-so-famous videogame characters gather together to throw punches, kicks, fireballs, Pokemon, Bob-bombs, baseball-bat swings, sword slashes, and a zillion game-nerd references at each other on a moving, transforming, or otherwise booby-trapped stage (Nintendo-themed, of course). The goal? To chuck your opponent off the airborne island, sending them to the ultimate videogame death: a bottomless pit. The overall effect is near-total chaos, something between a riot and a bar fight, only rainbow-colored and family friendly. Spaceships fly, bombs explode, Pokemon swoop, lava rises, characters get small, characters knock each other around like baseballs in a batting cage. It's nuts.
History re-beating itself
For a game that tries hard to push the limits of frantic, Brawl's creators spend a bizarre amount of effort in getting as many tiny game-trivia nuggets onto the disc as possible. Characters, items, collectables -- everything you see in Brawl is a virtual memorabilia. Nate Bihldorff, the game's US producer, is one of the people in charge of making sure this memorabilia gets the facts straight, and he's spent a ton of time playing through decades-old Nintendo games to verify quotes, character names, and art that appears in Smash Bros. "I'm a huge Nintendo nerd myself," says Bihldorff. "So I know that there are going to be people reading a lot of this stuff, and I want them to be able to rely on it as gospel."
Behind the scenes, the game's eccentric, tireless creator, Masahiro Sakurai, is the driving force behind Nintendo History 101. "There can be no question that, from the very beginning, [Sakurai] saw this as the encyclopedia of Nintendo," says Bihldorff. "You can tell the guy just loves Nintendo games, wants everybody to appreciate where videogames came from, and to make these old things new again. He wants to make sure [younger playes are] educated about what came before." Know the character Devil from the old Japanese Famicom game Devil World? Of course you don't. But you will.
'Shroom with a view
This compulsion to educate the masses on teh finer points on Nintendo trivia fits in nicely with another Sakurai goal: to stuff as much content into Smash Bros. Brawl as his (already delayed) shipping date will allow. Beyond the expected fighting-game options and modes, Brawl features a story driven adventure called "The Subspace Emissary" that, according to Bihldorf, goes well beyond any single-player effort the series has seen before. "It's a great plot, strung together be some really awesome movies starring all the characters that you know and love."
Bihldorf, stingy with the details, describes what sounds like a variety show for Nintendophiles. "You're basically playing with everybody and they're all joining up on your team as you go along," he explains. "You're going to be forced to play with a bunch of characters that you don't know, or maybe don't like. A lot of people are going to find characters they love that they otherwise wouldn't have touched. So you're too big a man to like Pokemon, but you're going to have to go through this section with Pikachu. And you may find out that he's a killing machine."
Aside from the "Emissary" Adventure, Brawl alos packs in two big-name non-nintendo characters (Sonic the Hedgehog and Metal Gear's Solid SNake), and elaborate level creator (which allows you to share your creations with your friends), and what is easily Nintendo's most ambitious online multiplayer effort. "You can trace it all back to Sakurai-san, this sort of Energizer bunny over there [in Japan]," says Bihldorff. "The amount of content he's crammed into this thing is unbelievable."
It all adds up to a love letter from Nintendo to their most ardent fans, the very people who may be feeling neglected by Nintendo's recent focus on soccer moms and retirees. Hopped up on months of teaser details from the Smash Bros. Dojo, these super-fans are done daydreaming. They're ready for the real thing."
The rest of the article is talking about Nintendo itself and not Smash. There were however sub articles that were sort of interesting. Here they are:
"CUSTOM CHAOS
Brawl's level editor lets you share your G-rated creativity with the world.
For the woefully pale players who manage to run out of new content to play with Brawl, the game features a new editor that will alow them to make their own stages. That means countless of Nintendophiles are now lotting to re-create their favorite moments in 9-bit gaming. But while level editors in Nintendo games date all the way back to ExciteBike for NES, Brawl's does one better: Thanks to a submission option, these folks will be able to upload their creations for a chance to share to the masses.
Nintendo will broadcast one level per day, selected from the throng, to Brawl players who have connected their systems to the internet. It begs the question: Will there be a human sorting through all the Bullet Bill *****es and brick-spelled four-letter words? "I think there's a human in the process somewhere," says US Producer Nate Bihldorff. "Naughty children being what they are, we're sure to see our fair share of...inappropriate shapes." Still, if any of the phallus-faced Miis on the Check Mii Out Channel are anything to go by, we figure some subtle dirty work will slip past the censors."
"SMASHING WITH STRANGERS
Brawl's multiplayer modes finally push Nintendo deeper into online territory
Easily Nintendo's meatiest online game, Brawl packs lots of new-to-the-Wii features along with a very familiar -- and very annoying -- one: the friend code. If you want to Smash your friends online, you'll need to input codes for each buddy, even if you have previously entered his or her Wii console code. The system, according to outgoing Nintendo VP Perrin Kaplan, is designed to protect young players from contact with strangers. "Our goal is to ensure safety for everyone who plays online," she says.
And though you can play with your friends (and exchange whatever obscenities the filter will allow through customizable text-based taunts), Brawl's online matchmaking service makes players totally anonymous to another. Producer Nate Bihldorff says that this decision is as much about making online play accessible as it is about safety. "With Anyone Mode, you're not keeping track of any stats," he says. "The idea of people coming together to play for fun being more important than people being at each other's throats for the top spot on the leaderboards -- that's definetly part of [creator] Sakurai's original vision."
While waiting for online opponents to pick their characters and settings, players can practice on a dummy, an attempt to keep the adrenaline up. Brawl also features a Spectator mode that lets you watch online matches and bet coins on the outcome -- coins you can spend to unlock content. Very Nintendo."
"BRAWLING FOR A LIVING
Think Smash Bros. can't hang with serious fighting games? Just ask a pro...
With the amount of sheer craziness that takes place in any given Smash Bros. match -- the ever-chaning levels, the randomly dispensed weapons, the zooming and panning visual chaos -- you wouldn't expect there to such a thing as compettitive Smash tournaments (Only you would think that, guy-who's-writing-this.). But they do exist. An elite community of gamers plays Smash Bros. not as a party game, but as a fighting game. And they're extremely serious about it.
"The tourney players are way beyond anything that I could ever do in that game," says Brawl producer Nate Bihldorff. "And I played pretty relentlessly for a while." Bihldorff may have a lot of hours under his belt, but that's nothing compared [to] the time Major League Gaming pro Chris "KillaOR" McKenzie has logged. "I've played, probably, a year and a half straight, total time," he says. McKenzie and his competitive ilk, however, play under very specific conditions. They only use a handful of stages (the simplest, least interfering types), and they loathe items (*sigh* stereotypes again...). "We definetly take out the items," says McKenzie. "It makes it too much of a random, lucky type of environment instead of a skilled environment." The pros also tend to use just a few of the game's huge roster of characters, due to severe character imbalance -- somethin McKenzie is hoping Brawl will fix.
But he shouldn't get too optimistic about the prospect of an evened-out Smash Bros. "In a game like this," says Bihldorff, "you're never going to get to this utopia where everything's balanced perfectly. You strive for it, but the chances of it ever happening are pretty much nil. The character roster is just way too big. There are too many moves, too many factors."
Meanwhile, for anyone looking up their Smash Bros. game, McKenzie has one piece of advice: Use your head. "There are a lot of really technical players, but they're not smart with their technique," he says. "The best way to get better is to watch your mistakes, not so much be as fast as possible. Be the smartest Fox, not the fastest Fox.""
There you go. Be thankful for this. It tok a while to type.
I hope I receive a good cover. *crosses fingers for Samus*