By now we should all be familiar with the Super Smash Bros. formula: Mix basic platforming action with old-school, button-pressing, arcade-style combat while adding copious amounts of, oh, every Nintendo game ever made. With Super Smash Bros. Brawl, it’s a fan-service smorgasbord at its glorious best, folding in not only all of the goodies that made it into the series’ two previous iterations (Super Smash Bros. and Super Smash Bros. Melee), but just about every bit of Nintendo lore that’s surfaced between Melee’s 2001 release and now. This includes appearances of hardcore, obscure stuff like Electroplankton and Sin and Punishment paraphernalia, Captain Olimar and his Pikmin, and just about any first-party Nintendo tidbit you can think of. For Nintendo fans, that’s great stuff. The more the merrier. But how does the game balance out between the die-hard fans and the less committed?

Brawl, in any of its differing control configurations (it supports the Wii-mote/Nunchuk combo, the Classic Controller, and the original GameCube controller), offers largely the same game mechanics as before, with a few adjustments that neither make nor break the game. You’re still jumping around, trying to smack your opponent in order to raise his damage percentile enough to make your next hit the one that sends him flying into subspace. With up to four players using every special ability at their disposal, both online and off, it’s like a galactic sumo wrestling match in which the only goal is to knock everyone else out before you are knocked out.

In many ways, it’s a little like, say, a Dynasty Warriors game or a WWE wrestling game or a Def Jam hip-hop-scented throwdown. All are perfectly functional, serviceable games of combat, but which one you favor depends on your milieu of preference. Take away the Nintendo-ness and just how well does Brawl stack up? As stated, it’s fast, simple fun, with enough technique (keeping yourself alive and in the ring is the greatest skill you can have here) to satisfy longtime fans, but isn’t so complex that it wanders into Virtua Fighter territory. The complexity of the move list is easy enough for anyone to grasp, and that’s what makes the multiplayer elements so arresting, regardless of whether you’re playing in any of the online modes (Brawl, Special Brawl, Rotation, and Tourney modes), or offline single-player offerings (Classic, Stadium, Training, unique events, and The Subspace Emissary modes).

As ever, the detailed stat tracking remains intact, as do the little details, like being able to shoot down the ending credits for coins. The characters themselves are a blast to play with, despite the slightly too-twitchy directional controls (which always feel somewhat off in any of the control configs). An unexpected delight is the Pokémon Trainer character, who doesn’t actually fight but stands by as his selection of three distinct Pokémon (Squirtle rules!) do the dirty work. Also great are the Fire Emblem characters, as well as Ness (of EarthBound fame), Captain Falcon (from the F-Zero franchise), and, well, just about everyone in this chaotic-yet-balanced multiplayer effort. In case you’re not interested in checking out every single character, The Subspace Emissary mode gives you a good tour of the diverse roster, which combines the classic Smash Bros. combat with light action-RPG/platforming elements. That this wordless sequence of cut-scenes and “plot” was “written” by Final Fantasy scribe Kazushige Nojima is all the more bizarre. At least he’s in good company, since Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu composed the theme song.

Purchasers of Brawl will also enjoy the erudite historical contents spread throughout, which detail — among other things — every first-party Nintendo game on every Nintendo system released in North America. While the wireless game time I sampled in the office was adequate enough, we’re running on a super high-speed connection with minimal latency. It remains to be seen how Brawl fares out in the wild of varying connection speeds and server stress. Expect the message boards to light up about the topic when the game ships.

I encountered some difficulty in putting a score on this game. Do I give it a B+ and say, “But if you’re a huge Nintendo fan, add a point?” Or do I give it an A and say, “If you’re a less committed fan, drop a point?” The answer was simple: This game was made for Nintendo fans. If you’d like to debate that fact, question whether Joe Schmo in Best Buy, who buys Madden once a year and maybe Halo cares whether or not Saki from Sin and Punishment is an unlockable trophy. As a Nintendo fan, I found great pleasure in unlocking all of the minutiae, in playing with characters that, to me, were unexpected surprises, and in reveling in what is clearly the greatest celebration of Nintendo culture around.

Other franchises have tried this formula with varying success. The Naruto: Ultimate Ninja series on PS2 is a reasonable facsimile, while Bandai’s past attempts at Smash Bros.-style action with its Digimon franchise have been horrendous. Brawl is a good game, with solid controls, a lot of options, and not-much-better-than-the-last-one-graphics. For the uninterested gamer, it’s a curious diversion. For the Nintendo fanatic, Super Smash Bros. Brawl is like manna from heaven.

Originally from 1UP