Collecting trophies is also really fun and rewarding. You can check out your trophies at the Trophy Museum, where there’s info about each of the characters / objects you collected. You can take pictures of them and send them to your friends; even while fighting you can pause the game and snap a photo of that awesome move! Another way to obtain trophies is to visit the “Coin Launcher.” It’s a space invaders kind of minigame where you use the coins you earned playing the game to snatch stickers and trophies. There’s also a stage builder where you can create your very own original stages; the stage builder lets you choose from a few backgrounds, and there’s a library with platforms and other elements that grows as you play the different game modes. With time, you’ll be able to create very neat stages you can use in many of the offline game modes. You can also send them to your friends. Nintendo will offer the stage of the day (it could be yours!) for online players to try out.

Another great feature in Super Smash Bros. Brawl is the "Challenges." These are actually achievements you need to obtain within the game by playing some game modes a certain amount of times, beating other modes with specific characters, brawling multiple times in certain stages, etc. When you obtain these, you unlock music, more trophies, etc. Think of it as the achievement points on the Xbox 360. These challenges are such a great idea I'm sure everyone would love to see it implemented in all of the Wii games to come. All Nintendo needs to do is add a new channel to the Wii where you can see all the achievements you've obtained and even share this data with friends. Instead of points, players could earn trophies, stickers, or whatever it may be. Come on Nintendo; go for it! We can't wait to collect all those sweet game trophies and show them with pride!

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Brawl looks amazing overall. Due to the cartoonish look of the game and the average resolution capabilities of the Wii, the game doesn't look as shiny and polished as one would expect. However, you can definitely tell Brawl is superior to Melee graphics-wise, and the characters have been reworked to make them look at their best. I especially loved the new characters like Wario and his mouth-chomping abilities, the dark, wing-fluttering Meta Knight from Kirby, and the slick-looking Pit from Kid Icarus. The carefully crafted character design makes me wish the return of some of those great classic franchises we only saw in the 8 and 16-bit days. Hopefully some of them will come true!

I observed a few and very random frame-rate issues in the game, mostly when loading a stage; choppy loading screens and variable loading times made me think the game had crashed a few times. Other than that, the gameplay is very smooth and no matter how many characters are on the screen, everything runs normally.

The soundtrack is excellent and fully customizable. The first song you'll hear when you pop in the disc is entirely epic. The opera-like music, along with beautiful cutscenes, gets you all excited and ready for the new fighting adventure. The title includes an incredible amount of tunes that will play during each fight; most of the tunes belong to Nintendo's game library. Also, the more you play the more music you unlock. The characters' voices are all authentic and great. However, you may become annoyed with the repetition; a few more sound clips would have helped to avoid the problem.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a must-buy for fans of the series. The amazing amount of features and characters included in the game plus the online gameplay make Brawl one of Nintendo's best titles to date. Even those Nintendo fans who are not interested in fighting titles will find this one appealing. It's not just a game; it's a Nintendo museum!

By Maria Montoro
CCC Site Director