[Wii] Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Meh, I couldn't care less about today's update even if I tried since this looks really similar to Melee's Tournament mode. I rarely used Tournament mode (never played with more than two other people) and when I did play in Tournament mode, something that annoyed me was the fact that if you were playing with the second controller and ended up advancing on the left side of the brackets, then you had to play with the first controller - meaning you had to switch controllers with your friend and visa versa. Real annoying.

However, Sakurai seems to address that fact the Tournament mode is basically worthless if you don't have a large number of people that want to play or if you're by yourself.

Originally Posted by Sakurai

Of course, if you don’t have a large number of friends, you may not have much need for a tourney.

Still, we’re working seriously to make this mode fun for even those people.

Actually, you can also play this by yourself against computer opponents, so try it out if you’re so inclined.

"Making this mode fun for [people without a large number of friends]" sounds interesting, but I'll believe it when I see it.

How ya doing, buddy?

Quote:

This time, there are five different maps of varying difficulty—challenges you can take on with your favorite character.

Originally Posted by AcerBandit

It does say that. It could be there are only five levels like I'm reading it or five levels per character which would be fucking awesome.

Naaaahh.... Five levels PER character, probably with increasing difficulty for each level cleared.

Sakurai wouldn't botch it up that bad. Besides it also reads:

Quote:

Some levels have items as well, so you may be able to use them to cut your time even more.

Assuming that there is only five levels for the whole game, I doubt he would say that "'some levels' have items" if only two or three did; he would say "a few".

It HAS to be 5 levels/character.

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Originally Posted by immp

I hope all the brawl music maintains the quality that that FE track has.

Actually, I wasn't all that impressed with it. I don't like chorus-like vocal tracks AT ALL. (I'm hoping that I can skip through the intro so I won't have to listen to the "main theme" of Brawl.) This track would have been much better if Sakurai would have stuck with just orchestrating Fire Emblem's Title Screen music. (I hope to God that no more tracks are vocalized like this.) The one thing that might keep me from disabling this track entirely is that I hear another non-vocal arrangement at the end.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by STRIGON-2

Nothing particularly new...

Actually, I did notice a clock:



I wonder if it freezes opponents in time?

I was speaking idiomatically.

Meh, Meta Knight's special moves update didn't exactly blow me away as I've already seen them in the screen-recorded videos from the E3-for-all event, but at least I know they're specials and not his A-over attacks or whatever.

Not really too fond of the Meta Knight's Revenge arrangement. I love both originals for Kirby Super Star however (attached for your own curiosity.) When the Halberd was announced as a stage, I was hoping for an intense, hard-driven arrangement of one or both tracks to really get the blood pumping like the originals did in Kirby Super Star. (The second track is my favorite of the two.)

This arrangement doesn't seem like the type of track that would play as the double-barreled battery is about ready to blow you to kingdom come. The originals had the right feel to them. Even Sakurai admitted it:

Quote:

After going with the "serious touch" of the Halberd for the Kirby stage, I’m now thinking that maybe this overly peppy song is a little incongruous...

Now, I appreciate what Sakurai's trying to do by changing the styles of some of the original tracks in their arrangements, but he and Noriyuki Iwadare totally biffed this track. The first few seconds of the track being the original SNES synth only makes me crave the original. -__-

(Also, a downloadable video of how the original scenario went down.)

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Edit: Beaten to it, I guess.

Interesting update: It's the Ice Climber's Final Smash, Iceberg.



A big peak of ice rises out of the stage, hurting opponents and making the platforms smaller and slippery. The funny thing is is that the slipperiness of the platforms don't affect the Ice Climbers.

It says that sometimes opponents get frozen. I imagine that happens at higher damage levels, just like the Ice Climber's current B-down move in Melee sometimes freezes opponents at higher damage levels.

FELIPE NO

Yep, everything Chaotic said is true, nothing really new about the Training mode. However, about the Smart Bomb, their explosions engulf a good portion of the stage, and the thrower is apparently also vulnerable to the explosion:



And, one more thing with the duds is that some may not explode right away but will sit there for a bit, leading people to believe they are duds, and then explode.

I'm also really curious to see how this soccer ball plays out:



I imagine that it's used to just be kicked into other players. Maybe you set it off by running into it and the harder you run into it, the father it goes and the harder it hits opponents?

One more thing I forgot to mention about yesterday's update; it looks like Ice Climber's Final Smash is going to take up the same ratio of stage space to stage size for every stage. In other words, the peak of ice will always cover, say 75% of the stage regardless of it's size. Look, New Pork City is a big stage, but it looks like most of the stage is taken up by the ice...



Compare that, and the size of the Ice Climbers to the size of the iceberg to these...





(The Ice Climbers are much bigger compared to the size of the iceberg in this last one.)

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Darkshineknight

lols event mode in brawl T___T who didnt see this coming. I bet all star mode will be announced too, totally ruining a day worth of a good update

If you weren't expecting Sakurai to totally ruin the surprises in the game for everybody before it comes out and didn't have your head up your ass, you'd actually find this a good update.



The update was indeed event mode. King Dedede is in the first event, meaning that he's NOT an unlockable character, but playable from the start. Could this mean that Sakurai's been updating us with all starting characters? (I thought 3rd party characters were supposed to be unlockable?) I hope he keeps it that way. I don't want anything unlockable revealed before the game comes out.



There are three different difficulty settings with the best time and/or score saved for each one. I have to say that this alone is a drastic improvement over Melee's single-difficulty-for-each-event ..... type thing. At least for me anyway, I find it a lot fun trying to break my own records, so the more, the merrier.



Then from there, the site talks about a few of the event matches, which I don't want to take the time to post since I posted the jist of the update. They're on the site if you want to take a look. >_>

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by wvlfpvp

I don't think Dedede's a PLAYABLE character in that one.

No kidding.

Quote:

I think you could get events before unlocking characters that were in them in Melee. I think you could get events before unlocking characters that were in them in Melee.

Originally Posted by AcerBandit

After you do that one event match he could be unlocked or you could go directly to an unlocking battle.

OK, OK, fair enough. I wasn't thinking when I posted that last night because I was already half asleep. It is true that Ganondorf was already encountered in an event match (#29, where Link was teamed up with Zelda to take out Ganondorf in the Temple stage, a Melee-style recreation of the end of Ocarina of Time) before he was unlocked, and clearing that event prompted a battle with him to unlock him. Other than that I am 99% positive that no other characters were encountered in Event Mode before they were unlocked. In fact, they had to be unlocked before the event matches involving them could be played.

Come to think of it, Luigi had to be encountered in Adventure Mode before he could be battled and unlocked. The timer had to be ended with a "2" in the ones place of the seconds in the Mushroom Kingdom stage. Then Luigi would knock Mario down in the intro to the next stage. Consequentially, Luigi would be teamed up with Peach instead of Mario on top of her castle. After the entire Adventure Mode is cleared, Luigi would be battled and unlocked if he was defeated.

I remember all of this because I unlocked a lot of stuff for my brother not too long ago.

Although I will have to say that fighting King Dedede while teamed up with Bowser on Delfino Island would be a strange way to unlock him... since he isn't really in a Kirby setting, unlike Ganondorf and Luigi in their respective settings in Melee.

As far as I know, all of the other characters were unlocked by beating a Multi-Man Melee game (Falco), an Event match (Pichu), clearing classic mode with a character, a certain number or all of the characters (Jigglypuff, Dr. Mario, Young Link, Marth, Roy, Mr. Game & Watch,) or just having a Combined Vs. Play Time of over 20 hours. (Mewtwo) I think some of the characters that can be unlocked in Classic Mode can also be unlocked in Adventure Mode.

I just hope that Sakurai makes it MUCH MUCH more difficult to unlock characters in Brawl. Aside from getting Mewtwo and Mr. Game & Watch, I was able to unlock all of the characters in Melee in less than three hours, maybe two, and that was only because I had to keep playing classic mode over and over again. Although I will give credit and say that a few of the stages can be pretty difficult to unlock. (Ignoring the fact that my three least favorite stages from the original were directly imported into Melee [Dream Land? Come on now, it's a slightly larger Battlefield stage with occasional wind!], and then were a pain to unlock as a kick in the teeth.) And while the trophies were cool and could be very challenging to unlock, they had no direct impact on game play.

Basically, I just hope that Sakurai makes almost everything in the game a huge pain in the fucking ass to unlock. And doesn't import any suck-ass stages from the original or Melee into Brawl.

OK, [/SPAM] and [/RANT].

Originally Posted by Chaotic

I at least wanna know if some of the clones are returning...

Sakurai said that there would be no clones in Brawl. But if you're talking about clone characters that were in Melee with a reworked moveset for Brawl, well, that's a different story.

Originally Posted by KrelEN

I don't want to see a plethora of secrets before the game's out.

Originally Posted by Nall

I agree, I'd rather keep all the secret characters, well, a secret. At least until the game is released.

Word. Just make them harder than hell to unlock, please.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by KrelEN

I'm pretty sure Pichu was an event-unlockable. I could be wrong!

Dude, did you even read my post, or what you even quoted, for that matter?

Quote:

I am 99% positive that no other characters were encountered in Event Mode before they were unlocked.

Quote:

As far as I know, all of the other characters were unlocked by beating ... an Event match (Pichu)...

Ganondorf was unlocked by fighting against him while teamed up with Zelda. After he was defeated, he had to be defeated again. In other words, he was seen on screen and interacted with before the duel took place to unlock him.

Pichu was unlocked by beating the Legendary Pokémon event, which involved nothing more than a selectable character, fighting wire frames and legendary Pokémon and Wobbuffets poping out of Poké Balls. After that, then Pichu was fought to be unlocked; he wasn't actually part of the event.

Originally Posted by Divest

The only thing I am disappointed about is the exclusion of Jigglypuff (my main charcter). On the other hand, I am very happy with the exclusion of edge checkers Roy and Marth...

.......

What the fuck are you talking about? Jigglypuff will probably be a secret character and there's not a snowball's chance in hell of all of the characters being announced. Besides, I'm sure there will be some type of "edge checker" in some form after all of the characters have been experimented with. And, most of the time, there's an easy way to get around "edge checking." Just keep going as far the character can go toward the ledge without using the B-up move and then use it when it's absolutely necessary to make a recovery. Most of the time, the character will come up straight up or almost straight up instead of coming straight over, making it very difficult for opponents to meteor strike you or knock you back.

Originally Posted by Diversion

*sweet info*

Given many of these comments, the extended development definitely seems to be showing dedication to a polished title, a challenge, and more content than before. We're at quite a few known characters and levels, and that's a great start!

I personally think May 2005 is a bit early. I would say sometime in the summer of 2005. But still, that's two and a half years of development by the time it's released. And I heard that Melee only had 10 months of development, which sounds a bit short to me.

This is why I'm so psyched about this game. I mean, I thought the game already had a large development time compared to Melee (whatever that is) anyway, and then when it was delayed for two months, that told me that they're probably approaching the anal-retentive point about getting this game polished up to the max, which is a very very good thing.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by KnowsNothing

I disliked the Temple stage because of the camera issues: too much zooming + health meter right in the fucking way.

I had a big problem with the damage percentage getting in the way on the Past Stages Yoshi's Island stage, especially when you were on the bottom and a character was hit to the upper right.

But, if you watched the videos of the Brawl game play that was recorded at that E3-for-all event, the damage percentage and character icon becomes transparent whenever it touches one of the players, so that problem has been fixed.

Speaking of those E3-for-all Brawl videos.... was I the only one that was irritated by the people playing? Talk about a bunch of scrubs! Constantly ignoring items, horrible fighting skills.... An inexperienced 12 year old could kick their asses! The videos brought me more irritation than satisfaction.

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Originally Posted by Black Mage

Yeah, it's not like they were playing a completely new game for the first time ever.

Yes, that's true, and I understand that, but what I was referring to was how a lot of them seemed to run way from their opponents, attack nothing but the air, or totally ignore interesting items, like assist trophies and items that weren't in Melee. I don't know, maybe it's because I'm kind of an item whore and used to running up and concentrating on pummeling my opponents directly instead of using hit and run tactics like they seemed to be doing. :/

Anyway, wouldn't it be funny if tonight's update went something like this:

Quote:

I have some bad news folks, we have decided to change the release date once again.

Instead of pushing it back further, it has been changed to...

DECEMBER 3RD, 2007!

Which means Brawl can be found at your local retail store at this very moment!

That's right! It was all a lie!

PSYCH!

Too bad that will never happen.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by Zeta26

And the worse part of those trailers were also the screaming girls.

No kidding. I would have been there, I would have told them to shut the hell up.

Anyway, today's update tells you how to create a friends list before setting everything up before battling online. Quite frankly, it's a lot to post, so check it out yourself.

It sort of satisfied my curiosity on how the online battling part would work, but I'm still feening for more info on the actual content of the game, just as long as it's nothing that has to be unlocked.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

EDIT: Damn you people.

Originally Posted by Zeta26

Speaking of Brawl. Did anybody catch the following Pokemon that's now been brought to light in the new update?

What Pokémon that's been "brought to light"? They're are all from the last game(s). Nothing new, except that Celebi and Mew drop gifts, which is pretty cool:



The following Pokémon have been confirmed to be returning Brawl in this update:

Suicune, Lugia, Entei, Staryu, Bellossom, Ho-Oh, Wobbuffet, Togepi, Snorlax, and of course, Celebi and Mew.

There are screenshots of each one if you want to take a look.

FELIPE NO

I don't think I would mind having Pity Final Smashes on. Not for me, but for my opponents in the future after I become somewhat decent at Brawl. In Melee, I play against CPU characters all the time and win over 95% of the time because I've played it that much. If the same thing starts happening in Brawl, something to make the CPU characters more challenging is always good.

About the X: Tunnel Scene music, do you think it will play in the Lylat Cruise stage? Looking at the game, it appears to be a 3-D space shooter, so it would make sense to play it on that stage. Honestly, I don't think the Tunnel Scene music is that great; it seemed to be one of those OK tracks that are considered good because of nostalgia. I would prefer it if the Lylat Cruise stage had all Star Fox music.

Also, I have something interesting to point out to you all.

If you look in the corner of updates, there is usually the icon of the game series that the update is from.



Here, even though Lyn isn't in the game as a playable character, she's an assist trophy from Fire Emblem, and Fire Emblem is in the game so far with a playable character and a stage.

But for things whose games aren't heavily represented in Brawl...



...there is the standard Smash Bros. icon.

The point I'm getting at is that when Samurai Goroh was introduced as an assist trophy...



...the F-Zero icon is in the update! Since all of the other game series who have an icon at least have a stage and a song so far (Animal Crossing), this might possibly mean that we are at least going to have an F-Zero stage, or possibly the return of Captain Falcon, though I'm not trying to establish anything as being absolutely certain here.

Just something I noticed.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I call total bullshit on that. Must be a mistranslation of the date and/or the contents.

I can't see Sakurai letting something like this slide, since he's been so secretive with the game so far.

Now if it was January 15th, I might believe it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Zeta26

Monday's Update - Pokeball Item

Uh, OK. I was about ready to post today's update, but Zeta here seems to have gotten it a day early... posting it 24 hours ago, considering that it should have been just updated about 15-20 minutes ago. The time seems to be OK on my profile, so... how did you see the update early?

At any rate, not a terribly exciting update, but it is kind of funny that one can pick up a heavy Pokémon to chuck at people.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Chaotic

I know you've heard enough of my bitching, but I don't think anyone could be happy about this update, even if you were sarcastic with it. :|

Well, a music update was also posted today, the music that plays on The Summit stage. Just like Sakurai said, it uses what little music is in Ice Climber to create the different atmospheres the stage goes through. (Note sure what's up with those voice-like sound effect at the beginning, but it's a pretty nice track nonetheless.)

Then the guy says:

Quote:

Unfortunately, however, the timing of the phrases shifts during Slow Brawls. Please forgive that.

Um, I think it would be more of a problem if it busted into the rock arrangement before the tip broke off and started sliding down the mountain than it would if the transitions are simply being delayed and the music repeats a little.

It will be much better with the music matching the atmosphere. Jeesh, what a guy.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by kuttlas

....one of them will rip the soundtrack before it comes over to the US.

Yes, but remember that some of the music tracks have to be unlocked. (Not saying somebody won't rip a partial soundtrack of what's available right off the bat though.)

Most likely, by the time the person unlocks every track in the Japanese version they imported, the game may already be on sale locally, so they basically jumped the gun because we all know that there will be some people who will play the English version non-stop until everything's unlocked. At least WAY more than the people who imported the Japanese version anyway.

Speaking of that, I was thinking about the people that import games to get them earlier. For Brawl, there's only about a 2.5 week gap between release dates, and assuming that they are able to find a Japanese seller that's not sold out and ships the game right away, it will still take about a week to get here. Not to mention that a modded Wii is needed, it will be more expensive, especially with shipping costs, and of course the game will be in Japanese, which only a small minority of Americans can read.

That's a hell of a lot of trouble just to get the game about 1.5 weeks earlier than everybody else.

Originally Posted by BigCN401

Blah. There's no option to change "language".

I noticed that too. I always liked changing it to Japanese to practice my reading skills on the trophy descriptions, so hopefully the option to set it to Japanese will be there. (I'm currently taking Japanese in college. <_< )

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Chaotic

Y HALO THAR F-ZERO GRAND PRIX!

Not really, it's Mario Circuit. It's the F-Zero Grand Prix stage from Melee, just done in Mario Kart format.

Regardless if you're talking about Mute City or Big Blue, it's a totally different stage. Mute City picked up and moved every so often while in Big Blue, battles actually took place on top of vehicles. Here, the battle stays in the same spot and vehicles run players over from the side as opposed to riding on top of them.

The only similarity it has with F-Zero Grand Prix either stage is that vehicles come in from the background to run players over.

All that aside, I will have to say that being able to see the position of the vehicles on the screen in the background is a nice touch.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I guess King Dedede's standard special move is to inhale people and then forcefully spit them back out like he did in the older Kirby games. (I wonder how that's going to work...? When he did it to Kirby, Kirby always got damaged from hitting the side of the arena where he was fighting King Dedede. There will be no sides to hit here, so this move should be interesting to see how it works.)

I find it kind of funny that Kirby gains another inhale ability for his inhale ability. I imagine that he will probably only gain the ability to forcefully shoot people out after copying King Dedede. Since King Dedede could pretty much do everything Kirby could when it came to inhaling (aside from copying), it's not like Kirby really gains a lot after copying King Dedede.

But we'll see, since no one knows how this move's going to work.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Dark Nation

- The WarioWare Stage shows Japanese... Hiranaga (?) Text when the stage changes.

Well, it only makes sense as these commercials were aired in Japan. It reads "mereruna", though I couldn't tell you what it means since I don't know a lot of Japanese. I imagine it will be translated to something like "Stay Dry" (or whatever) since Nintendo of America has never left Japanese in localized games.

Quote:

- At the Pokemon Stage where Groudon Appears, the player controlling Squirtle has the name "zenigame".
This is the only time in the commercial that a name different from the default appears. Its significance is unknown.

"Zenigame" is what Squirtle is originally called in the Japanese versions of Pokémon games.

Quote:

- As with Melee, the Pokemon Gym Stage shows a video of the character on a screen in the background.

Don't you mean Pokémon Stadium? :P

Quote:

- Oddly, it shows all three of the Trainer's pokemon on the stage at the same time, following Yoshi. This probably was done specifically for the commercial, unless the ability to have all three of them on the stage at once is possible. While this is shown as true for the Final Smash, what they were doing right now seemed different.

You're thinking about this way too much. It's most likely just three people playing as the Pokémon Trainer, each with a different Pokémon out. The other person is playing as Yoshi.

Quote:

As far as the Chaos emerald goes, I looked all over the second commercial but I couldn't find it.

Yeah, I couldn't find it either. I tried pausing right at the start of where the Lylat Cruise was being shown in the second video. But either I wasn't fast enough or the guy that mentioned it was seeing things.

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