In the year 1999 Nintendo released a game in Japan that Nintendo and fighting game fans had been waiting for since the advent of the original Nintendo Entertainment System. That game was called Nintendo All-Star Dai-Rantou Smash Brothers, better known as Super Smash Bros. in the US. The game pitted Nintendo's classic mascot characters against one another in an all out brawl. When the GameCube launched in 2001, Super Smash Bros. Melee, the sequel, was unleashed on the world. It quickly became one of the best selling games on the console and remained so for years.

In no time Smash Brothers became a series that rivaled the selling power of Mario and Zelda titles. With the relatively short time span between the release of the first Smash and information on Melee to start surfacing, fans of the series were growing impatient for a new Smash by E3 2005. The GameCube and Smash Melee had been available for nearly four years, but there had been no word on a third installment in the Smash series. By this time, most fans assumed that the inevitable third title would launch on Nintendo's next console, then called the Revolution.

At E3 2005 Nintendo pulled the cover off of the Revolution, and Satoru Iwata confirmed that the next Super Smash Bros. would release on the Revolution as a launch title with online play. No other information was unveiled, and while message boards across the internet blew up with the announcement, the buzz quickly died down in the wake of zero information following E3 2005.

Fast forward one year later to E3 2006 and the anticipation for more information on the new Smash title was at a fever pitch. As a huge Smash fan in the past, I personally wanted Nintendo to call the new title Wii Smash and had no doubt the game would show up at Nintendo's pre-E3 press event. My hopes were smashed when, by the end of the press conference, nothing at all was said about a new Smash Brothers. Where was the new game? Was it delayed? Tears were shed as I began to raise a flag of E3 victory for Microsoft.

Out of nowhere Nintendo reinstated my confidence when they finally unveiled the new Smash Brothers at a special press session after the first day of the show. The unveiling gave us the first official trailer for the title and its official name, Super Smash Bros. Brawl. It wasn't Wii Smash like I had hoped, but it didn't matter, the game was coming and I had a trailer to drool over for the next month or so.

Very little official information has been released concerning Smash Brawl. What we know for sure is that the game will not be a Wii launch title, and will instead hit sometime in 2007. There will be several new characters, with Wario, Pit (Kid Icarus), Metaknight (Kirby), Zero Suit Samus (Metroid: Zero Mission) and Solid Snake (Metal Gear Solid) confirmed in the trailer. Other new characters will make an appearance, but exactly who we can expect is still unknown. Given Sega and Hudson's partnership with Nintendo's WiiConnect24 it seems very possible that Sonic and/or Bonk could make an appearance, but nothing is confirmed at this time.

One of my main worries about the new Smash was how it would play with the Wii-mote. Third party companies had indicated to me that all Wii titles had to make use of the Wii-mote as a base control scheme. Thoughts of how this would affect the gameplay of Smash made me question Nintendo's decision to do away with a standard controller. However, when Bawl was announced Nintendo made it very clear that the game would utilize the standard GameCube controller (there are ports for the controller built into the Wii). It's good to see that Nintendo recognizes that not every game will work with the Wii-mote, especially a game as popular and important to Nintendo as Smash Brothers.

While many Smash players simply play the game for fun and don't really break down the game mechanics to become tournament caliber players, there is a large tournament scene for Smash Bros. Melee. Tournaments across the US are held nearly every month with prizes reaching in the thousands. The game is also included in the Major League Gaming tournament season right alongside Halo 2. These tournament level players have taken the game apart on a Virtua Fighter-like level, revealing extremely advanced techniques that are virtually invisible to the common Smash player.

The trailer for Smash Brawl shows us a brief glimpse at a few of the new gameplay changes to the series (which I'll get into in a moment), but it doesn't tell us how these tournament level players will be affected. Development on Smash Brawl is not being handled by the same team who handled the first two titles. While Brawl will use the fighting engine from Melee as a base for development, fighting games are very delicate pieces of software. The slightest miscalculation in character balancing can completely ruin the game for tournament level players.

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