Last Friday was unofficially a sick day for many game importers. Super Smash Bros. Brawl finally poured in from import game shops into many Wii systems from overseas. Amongst them was a loyal friend to us, one who was kind enough to send along an invite to come over and kick some Nintendo-licensed butt with a few friends (in exchange for a six-pack – a small price to pay, we assure you).

Upon start-up, you'll find a sense of familiarity. After skipping some Japanese text screens, the controls are easy to get into, similar to the previous Smash Bros. games but with a few sophisticated touches, such as the Final Smashes. You still have a diabolical list of moves to your credit, including weak hits, strong hits, projectile attacks and more. Over the course of each fight, you're also able to pick up a wide variety of weapons, including a lightsaber-ish sword, Pokemon balls and many, many more. Some will be familiar, while others are completely mind-blowing.

Brawl supports a number of control options. Old-schoolers won't mind hooking up a GameCube controller (or better yet, a WaveBird) to move about the game field. Those without such an option, though, can easily opt for a Classic Controller, the Wii remote by itself (turned sideways) or a remote/Nunchuk combination. That last one is probably the weakest of the bunch, although it still works to a slight degree. Trust us when we say go with the WaveBird, if you can.

Graphically, Smash Bros. Brawl looks spectacular. Some of the backgrounds are simply stunning, like the Green Valley Zone stage (complete with trademark loop in the distance) and Solid Snake's winter warehouse setting. There are a bounty of others available, both classic (the island town from Super Mario Sunshine) and captivatingly new (an enormous space battle inspired by StarFox). We'll break down more of the backgrounds in a future hands-on report, as well as in the review.

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