Super Smash Bros Brawl

FROM THE IGN REVIEW ign.com

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a brawling, battling, action-packed video game that features a varied roster of characters for four-player simultaneous melees! Use your Wii Remote and Nunchuck controls to deal serious damage to your opponents and win the game! This Wii entry in the popular series features a number of new additions, including an Adventure Mode (with co-op play), a wealth of new characters and stages, and online combat for multiple players to face off against each other from anywhere!

Assist Trophy Characters

Fans of farflung, no-chance Nintendo characters from yesteryear might have shed a tear at the announcement of Assist Trophies, items that work like Poke Balls but summon – instead of Pocket Monsters – classic old-school Nintendo mascots. Not every hero or villain in the Big N's past is appropriate to become a full-on playable Smash Brother, so many are appearing in this capacity instead. They'll show up on stage for just a short while, perform one or two attacks, and then disappear. But they'll be adding a ton to the nostalgic appeal of the game, and to the chaos of each fight.

Classic Mode

The Game Modes page is already overflowing, but Sakurai just keeps adding on new ways to play – and today, that way is an old one. Classic Mode is the single-player mode from the original Super Smash Bros. game, given a visual makeover and tweaked a bit to include copious amounts of coins. You earn yourself a mound of the money when you successfully clear a Classic stage – which is usually just a straight-up fight against another character, but sometimes includes special rules like Giant or Metal enemies – and you use that cash for some secret purpose that the Dojo has yet to reveal. What could the coins be for, if you're not buying things in a shop with them? I suppose we'll find out soon enough.

Stage Editor

Brawl's replay value, if it wasn't already going to be huge enough, just spiked through the roof – daily downloadable levels were confirmed in the October 29 update. The feature comes by way of Brawl's Stage Editor mode, which will allow players to engineer the fighting arenas of their dreams, then save and submit them to Nintendo's Wii Connect 24. There, one lucky user will have his or her stage selected as the daily winner and sent out to all other Brawl players who have chosen to receive them.

Levels can be crafted with a fair amount of creativity, it seems, with a variety of sizes, backgrounds and visual styles available – and you'll be able to pick any track you've unlocked in the game's My Music mode to be the background music for your masterpiece. In addition to the random level-per-day available for download, too, you can save your own creations to exchange on a smaller scale with those friends you've registered on your Wii, or store them on a SD card to take over to a friends' house. This feature could also be huge for the competitive community, as tournament judges can create simple, straightforward battlefields with no frills at all to be the official stages for their competitions.

The Subspace Emissary

Since the beginning of the series, Smash Bros. game director Masahiro Sakurai has always wanted to include a robust single-player experience in Smash – but Shigeru Miyamoto rightly advised him to focus first on making the multiplayer the best it could be. For both the first Smash on the N64 and the last Smash on the Cube, the single-player adventure mode was fairly straightforward and uncomplicated. Now, not any more. Sakurai's finally decided to go against the current of Miyamoto's suggestions, and has dreamed up a full-fledged side-scrolling action game to serve as Brawl's single-player experience. It's the Subspace Emissary.