Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a 2008 crossover fighting game created by Sora Ltd. and released by Nintendo for the Wii. It is the third game in the Super Smash Bros. series and follows Super Smash Bros. Melee. Unlike previous games, it was not mainly developed by HAL Laboratory but by a team at Sora, which included members from Nintendo and other companies. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata announced the game at a press conference before E3 2005. Masahiro Sakurai, who directed the first two games in the series, returned as director at Iwata's request. Development began in October 2005, but delays occurred due to challenges. The game was released in Japan on January 31, 2008, North America on March 9, 2008, Australia on June 26, 2008, and Europe on June 27, 2008.
Brawl includes more playable characters than Super Smash Bros. Melee, though some characters from Melee were removed. It is the first game in the series to feature characters from outside Nintendo. The goal of the game is to knock opponents off the screen, similar to earlier games. It differs from traditional fighting games by using simpler controls and focusing on knocking opponents out of bounds instead of defeating them directly. Brawl has a more detailed single-player mode called "The Subspace Emissary," which is a story-driven, side-scrolling action game with computer-generated scenes. The game supports up to four players in battles and was the first in the series to include online play through Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. It can be played with four controllers, including the Wii Remote, Wii Remote with Nunchuk, GameCube controller, and Classic Controller, at the same time.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl received high praise for its entertainment value, despite some criticism about slow loading times. The game's music, composed by 38 well-known video game composers, was noted for showing different eras of gaming history. Brawl was named "Fighting Game of the Year" by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. In 2010, it was listed in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die and is considered one of the greatest video games ever made. As of 2023, it is the eighth best-selling Wii game, with over 13 million copies sold worldwide. It was followed by Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U in 2014.
Gameplay
Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a type of fighting game where players control characters who battle on different stages. Players choose from many characters, such as Mario and Pikachu, who try to knock opponents off the screen. Unlike traditional fighting games, characters in Brawl start with 0% health, which increases as they take damage, up to a maximum of 999%. The higher a character's percentage, the farther they fly when hit. If a character is knocked off the stage, they lose a life, a point, or coins, depending on the game mode. Players can create custom profiles with personalized button settings and usernames.
Characters use a variety of attacks, including basic moves and stronger "smash attacks." Each character has four unique moves that can cause effects beyond just damaging opponents. Brawl introduces "Final Smashes," powerful moves that can be used by destroying a Smash Ball, a colorful orb with the Smash Bros. logo. Characters can also use items like projectiles or weapons, some of which return from previous games and others that are new. Items such as Assist Trophies and Poké Balls temporarily summon guest characters or Pokémon, which help the summoner but cannot be controlled.
Stages in Brawl are inspired by story elements from Super Smash Bros. games. They range from floating platforms to moving areas where players must stay within boundaries. If a character crosses a stage's edge, they are "KO'd," losing a life or point. There are 41 stages in total, 29 of which are available at the start. Some stages change during battles, such as switching between day and night or seasons. A stage based on the Animal Crossing series includes events that depend on the date and time. Features like destructible terrain and floating abilities are new to Brawl. Stages from third-party games, such as Shadow Moses Island from Metal Gear Solid, are also included.
Players can create custom stages using the "Stage Builder" mode, saving them to an SD card or the Wii console. Stages can be shared with friends or submitted to Nintendo for others to use.
Multiplayer modes include "Special Brawl," a version of the previous "Special Melee" mode with customizable rules, and "Tourney mode," where up to 32 players can compete in an elimination-style tournament. A "Rotation" feature allows up to 16 players to take turns competing.
Single-player modes include "Classic Mode," where players fight characters in a specific order, and "All Star Mode" and "Boss Battles," where players must defeat all characters or bosses with one life.
"Events" are matches with specific rules, such as defeating opponents within a time limit. Each of the 41 Events has three difficulty levels and unique high scores. A smaller set of 21 two-player Events is also included.
"Stadium mode" includes minigames with goals, such as breaking targets or hitting a Sandbag with a bat. These games can be played cooperatively or competitively.
The new "Adventure mode," called "The Subspace Emissary," features a story with side-scrolling levels, bosses, and cutscenes. Players fight a group of enemies called the Subspace Army, including characters from previous games and new enemies like the Roader and Bytan. Players can team up with others, and some characters join or leave the team as the story progresses. Collectible stickers can boost character abilities.
In cooperative multiplayer, if one player loses all lives, an ally can take their place. If all lives are lost, the game pauses, allowing players to restart from the last checkpoint.
During development, the game's creator, Sakurai, aimed to create a more detailed single-player experience than previous Smash Bros. games. Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto supported this goal.
Plot
In the Adventure mode called "The Subspace Emissary," Mario and Kirby compete on a stadium in the Super Smash Bros. universe. In this world, when a fighter loses, they become a trophy-like object that cannot move. However, if another active fighter touches the object's stand, the fighter can return to their normal form. Suddenly, the Halberd appears and releases purple snowflake-like particles called Shadow Bugs, which create soldiers for the Subspace Army, an evil force. The Ancient Minister, the army's cloaked leader, uses a Subspace Bomb (activated by sacrificing two R.O.B. units) to move the stadium into Subspace, an alternate dimension where the Subspace Army lives. As the army attacks, the fighters team up to stop them. Bowser and Wario, two villain fighters, try to stop the allies using powerful raygun-like weapons that turn fighters into trophies. Wario uses Shadow Bugs to create evil copies of some fighters. King Dedede collects fallen fighters and places golden brooches on them.
The Ancient Minister is shown to be working for Ganondorf, who follows orders from Master Hand to bring the world into Subspace. However, the Ancient Minister secretly plans to take control of the Subspace Army. Wario, who had kidnapped Ness, is defeated by Lucas with help from the Pokémon Trainer. Later, Wario's trophy is destroyed in a Subspace Bomb explosion. Meta Knight leaves his group to reclaim the Halberd, teaming up with Lucario and Snake to stop the source of the Shadow Bugs—Mr. Game & Watch.
The Ancient Minister is revealed to be the leading R.O.B. unit, which rebels against Ganondorf after the latter destroys the R.O.B.'s home, the Isle of the Ancients, to create a portal for the Subspace Army's ultimate weapon: a giant warship. Three groups unite and use the recovered Halberd to fight the ship. Though the Halberd is destroyed, the fighters survive. Ganondorf and Bowser retreat after Kirby uses his Dragoon to destroy the ship. Ganondorf betrays Bowser and tries to take control of the army but discovers that Master Hand is being controlled by Tabuu, the leader of the Subspace Army. Tabuu defeats Ganondorf and Master Hand.
The fighters attack Tabuu, but he destroys them with a powerful attack called "Off Waves" and scatters their trophy forms across his dimension. Dedede's brooches activate, reviving Luigi, Ness, and later Kirby. These fighters rescue Dedede and lead others through a massive maze-like structure made of areas taken into Subspace to reach Tabuu. When Tabuu tries to destroy the fighters, Sonic stops his "Off Waves." The fighters defeat Tabuu, restoring all areas affected by Subspace.
In the end, the fighters see a bright cross in the sky where the Isle of the Ancients once was. The island is gone due to the many Subspace Bombs exploded there.
Playable characters
The game Brawl lets players choose from 39 characters. Twenty-five of these are available at the start. Some characters are new, while others return from a previous game called Melee. Some have been updated or changed in appearance or fighting abilities. For example, Link and Fox have new designs from more recent games, and Samus can now change into Zero Suit Samus. Dr. Mario, Roy, Young Link, Mewtwo, and Pichu are the first five characters who did not return from earlier games.
Some game series that appeared before have more characters in Brawl. Diddy Kong from the Donkey Kong series, Ike from the Fire Emblem series, and Lucas from Mother 3 are making their first appearances in the Smash Bros. series. Other newcomers are the first to represent their series. These include Pit, who is the first character from the Kid Icarus series to appear since the 1991 Game Boy game Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters; Olimar from the Pikmin series; and Wario, as he appears in Nintendo's WarioWare. Solid Snake, the main character from Konami's Metal Gear series, and Sonic the Hedgehog from Nintendo's former competitor Sega are the first third-party characters to appear in a Super Smash Bros. game.
Development
On May 17, 2005, during a press event before E3 2005, Nintendo’s president, Satoru Iwata, announced that the next Super Smash Bros. game was being developed for Nintendo’s next console and would be a launch title with Wi-Fi support for online play. The news surprised Masahiro Sakurai, who had left HAL Laboratory in 2003. Sakurai was not told about Nintendo’s plans for a new Smash Bros. game, even though Iwata had told him after his departure from HAL that he would want Sakurai to direct the game if it were made. Iwata asked Sakurai to meet privately the day after the conference and invited him to be the director of the new game, which later became known as Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Sakurai agreed, and development began in October 2005 when Nintendo opened a new office in Tokyo. Help from studios like HAL Laboratory, Monolith Soft, and Paon was used, with Game Arts leading early development. Many Smash Bros. staff members near the new office also joined the project. About 100 people worked full-time on the game and had access to tools and materials from the previous game, Super Smash Bros. Melee, provided by HAL Laboratory.
The game was not shown during Nintendo’s Wii presentation at a press event before E3 2006. Nintendo officially announced the game as Super Smash Bros. Brawl on May 10, 2006, the next day, and showed its first trailer at the E3 After-Hours Press Conference. Sakurai said the Wii’s motion controls might not be used because his team found they could interfere with gameplay. He explained that Wi-Fi support was planned from the start because Nintendo wanted Smash Bros. to be part of online play on the Wii. However, Sakurai noted that online battles faced many challenges and that an online ranking system might not be included. During a test play with Hideo Kojima, Kojima said the game felt complete and could sell millions of copies. From May 22, 2007, to April 14, 2008, the game’s official site posted daily updates about characters, stages, items, and music.
At the Nintendo Media Conference during E3 2007, Nintendo of America’s president, Reggie Fils-Aimé, announced that Super Smash Bros. Brawl would release on December 3, 2007, in the Americas. However, the development team requested more time, and on October 10, 2007, Iwata announced a delay. George Harrison of Nintendo of America later said the game would release on February 10, 2008, in North America. The release date was pushed to January 31, 2008, in Japan and March 9, 2008, in the Americas. Nintendo of Europe confirmed the game would release on June 27, 2008, and Nintendo Australia announced June 26, 2008, for its region.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl uses a dual-layer disc because the game had a large amount of data. Nintendo of America warned that some Wii consoles might have trouble reading the disc if their laser lenses were dirty and offered free repairs for affected owners.
On May 22, 2007, Sakurai shared a list of 36 musicians who created music for the game. He asked composers like Koji Kondo, Yasunori Mitsuda, Yoko Shimomura, and Yuzo Koshiro to arrange songs from Nintendo and other games. The game’s stages have multiple musical tracks players can choose to hear using the “My Music” feature. Some tracks are directly taken from other games. Players can unlock some tracks by collecting CDs in the game’s Challenges Mode or by finding them randomly during play. Original music was composed by Takahiro Nishi, Shogo Sakai, Masaaki Iwasaki, Yutaka Iraha, Keigo Ozaki, and Kentaro Ishizaka. The main theme was composed by Nobuo Uematsu, a former Final Fantasy composer, and arranged by Sakai. The theme includes Latin lyrics that reference themes like fighting for glory and the fame of characters.
Sakurai originally wanted to avoid focusing on characters exclusive to Japan, but after seeing how the inclusion of Marth and Roy in Melee helped the Fire Emblem series reach international audiences, he became more interested in including Japanese-only characters. He said third-party characters would be limited to two, excluding Snake. Solid Snake, a character from Konami’s Metal Gear series, was included in Brawl instead of Melee because Hideo Kojima, the creator of Metal Gear, strongly requested his inclusion. Lucas from Mother 3 was planned for Melee but was not added due to delays and the cancellation of Mother 3 for the Nintendo 64.
Japanese fans were invited to submit character and music suggestions through the game’s official website. Sonic the Hedgehog, a character from Sega, was announced as part of Brawl on October 10, 2007. Yuji Naka, a co-creator of Sonic, had previously asked for Sonic to be in Melee but could not be added due to time limits.
During development, Sakurai considered adding Miis as playable fighters but decided against it because he worried they might not be interesting enough or could be used for online bullying. Miis later became playable characters in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.
Reception
Super Smash Bros. Brawl was very successful worldwide. In the United States, the game sold 874,000 copies on its first day and 1.4 million copies in its first week. This made it the fastest-selling Nintendo game in American history, according to Nintendo. The NPD Group reported that it was the best-selling game in March 2008 in Canada and the United States, selling 200,000 and 2.7 million copies, respectively. It was also the best-selling game in Canada for the entire year of 2008. The game earned $122 million in revenue during March 2008. An analyst named Jesse Divnich from Electronic Entertainment Design and Research said the game’s strong sales in the United States were due to its ability to meet the needs of casual players, social players, and those under 13 years old.
When the game was released in PAL regions, it reached the top of sales charts in Europe and Australia. By August 2008, the NPD Group, GfK Chart-Track, and Enterbrain reported that the game had sold 3.539 million copies in the United States, 213,000 in the United Kingdom, and 1.681 million in Japan, totaling 5.433 million copies. It received a "Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), which means it sold at least 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom. The game was the fifth best-selling game in Japan in 2008, selling 1,747,113 copies. It was also the fourth best-selling game in the United States in 2008, selling over 4.17 million copies. By March 31, 2020, the game had sold 13.32 million copies worldwide, according to Nintendo.
Japanese game magazine Famitsu gave the game a perfect score, praising its variety of single-player content, the unpredictability of Final Smashes, and the dynamic fighting styles of characters. Chris Slate from Nintendo Power also gave the game a perfect score in the March 2008 issue, calling it "one of the very best games that Nintendo has ever produced." GameSpot editor Lark Anderson said the game’s "simple controls and gameplay make it easy for beginners to learn, while still being fun for experienced players." GameTrailers noted the large amount of content that helps the game stay enjoyable for a long time. Eurogamer praised the game’s ability to be fun in both single-player and multiplayer modes. Game Revolution called the game’s soundtrack "spectacular," noting it covers a wide range of gaming history. Game Informer highlighted the game’s "well-balanced gameplay, core fighting mechanics, and local multiplayer modes." Edge concluded that, while Smash Bros. games are sometimes criticized for being too simple, Brawl has "one of the most innovative and deep fighting systems of any game."
IGN editor Matt Casamassina said the game is "very engaging and fun" but noted problems with "long loading times" and "uninspired enemies and settings" in the Subspace Emissary adventure mode. He also said the graphics are "similar to Melee," with some areas lacking detail. GameSpy compared the graphics quality to those of the GameCube. Mitchell Saltzman from Gameworld Network was disappointed that the online mode lacked "stat tracking, voice chat, and a mostly lag-free environment." NGamer’s Matthew Castle said the franchise has not been very innovative, noting, "Smash Bros risks growing too familiar. It never causes dislike, but it doesn’t quite reach the same level of excitement as previous games." Jeff Gerstmann gave the game 4 out of 5 stars on Giant Bomb, saying players who are not interested in Nintendo’s history or multiplayer might not understand why it is so popular. However, 1UP.com said the game is not only for serious gamers, as it also offers "a fun distraction for those who are not interested in serious games."
Super Smash Bros. Brawl won several Wii-specific awards in IGN’s 2008 video game awards, including "Best Fighting Game," "Best Local Multiplayer Game," and "Best Original Score." It was also nominated for other awards, such as "Best Graphics Technology," "Best Use of Sound," "Best Online Multiplayer Game," and "Game of the Year." The game also won "Best Fighting Game" in GameSpot’s Game of the Year awards for 2008. During the 12th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences gave Super Smash Bros. Brawl the award for "Fighting Game of the Year." The game placed 15th in Official Nintendo Magazine’s list of the 100 greatest Nintendo games of all time.
Nintendo Power ranked Super Smash Bros. Brawl as the fifth best game of the 2000s released on a Nintendo system.
Legacy
Brawl is unusual because it is easy to modify for a console game, thanks to an issue called the "Smash Stack" exploit found in the game's built-in stage builder when loading stages from an SD card. Instead of using stage data, a special program can be placed on the SD card that stops the stage builder from working while the program is present. However, this allows the game to load fan-made changes from the card, which are added to the game's original data. These changes include simple things like character skins and balance fixes, as well as more complex additions such as new characters and stages that are more detailed than those created by the internal stage builder.
In 2011, a group of competitive Super Smash Bros. players, called the Project M Back Room (PMBR), started making a mod for Brawl called Project M. The mod was created to change Brawl so it played more like its earlier version, Super Smash Bros. Melee, because many players disliked Brawl's physics, slower gameplay, use of random elements, and attack mechanics compared to Melee. The mod adjusted the balance of all playable characters in Brawl, added new costumes and game modes, and included characters Mewtwo and Roy, who were in Melee but not in Brawl. The mod was well-received by many reviewers and fans, and the "Version 3.0" demo had more than 300,000 downloads by February 2014. Development stopped on December 1, 2015.
In 2019, a new team of developers created a project called Project+, described as a "spiritual successor" to Project M.