‘Is it more like Melee or Brawl?’ Your Smash Bros. questions answered

Impressions from the fans at Best Buy’s big event

[Photo by Zalno]

Six years ago, I shot my first video for Destructoid at the Worcester Polytechnical Institute’s Smash Bros. Brawl Pre-release tournament. Things have come full circle. My how I’ve changed.

What hasn’t changed is the fact that the Smash Bros. fans (including the developer of the Katamari fan-prequel cat simulator Catlateral Damage!) have the most trustworthy, meaningful opinions on how the next game in the series is coming together. We talked about what characters they were most excited to use, which they were afraid will be cut, how the game compared to past Smash Bros. games, and a lot more. The general consensus seemed to be that characters with fast, powerful normals and less hang-time while in mid-air like Little Mac and the Wii Fit Trainer often had the advantage to characters with wider mobility and flashier moves, though that may have been due to the fact that they were more effective for beginners. As for the marketing effectiveness of the event, about a third of the people I talked to at the event didn’t have a Wii U yet, but after playing Smash Bros. for the Wii U, they all said they were planning on getting one.

We also saw a lot of the 3DS-specific Smash Run mode. It felt like the Zelda-stage of Melee‘s Adventure mode, but much more densely packed with enemies. We saw Robotnik robots, Rios from Metroid, Bullet Bills, 16-bit Cuckoos taken straight out of A Link to the Past, Mites from Subspace Emissary, and tons of other enemies. It didn’t seem like more than a few seconds would go by before a new group of enemies was filling the screen, only to be cleared fairly quickly. If Subspace Emissary suffered from spreading the good parts too thin across a large, inconsistent world, Smash Run looks to make up for that by packing every inch of the game with action and and an all-star cast of Nintendo enemies.

We’re hoping to get someone from the Nintendo Treehouse on for Sup Holmes (which airs live today at 4pm EST right here) to talk about what’s next for Smash Bros., so stay tuned!