Super Smash Bros. Brawl

If he's so good, why did I keep beating you with Marth?

The Final Smash is no worse than the hammer. You can turn it off in the items menu if you really hate it, too.

Frankly, it's WAY less "luck based" than other items (like some of the assist trophies). You have to hit the thing multiple times while it zooms about the stage... plus if someone grabs it you can hit them before they use it and knock it into the air again. With most items if it drops next to you, you pretty much get to use it. And I'd say depending on the stage and the assist trophy you happen to get, they can easily be more powerful than Final Smashes.

Falco, Capt. Falcon, and Jigglypuff can. The rest can't.

Mewtwo has been replaced by Lucario (plays very similarly). Roy has been replaced by Ike, as he was a more popular character in Japan and he also existed in the US Fire Emblem games.

Falco and Capt. Falcon can be unlocked by just playing "The Subspace Emissary" (they join about halfway through).

Alternate method for getting Capt. Falcon: Beat classic mode in under 12 combined minutes. (You have to beat him in a fight to unlock him.)

Alternate method for Falco: Beat 100-man brawl. (You have to beat him in a fight to unlock him.)

Jigglypuff is also unlocked in SSE mode. After you beat the swamp, go back to it and when you get to the area with the barrels that fire you through the area (donkey kong style), avoid the barrels instead of riding them (remember, you can swim). Then, go into the first door you see. You will fight Jigglypuff. If you beat her, you get her added to your team.

Alternate method for unlocking ANY character: Play enough Brawl matches and they will challenge you to a fight. Some characters take up to 450 games though, so it is generally easier to just unlock them using other methods... although there is one other cheap way to unlock all the characters if you don't want to play SSE mode:

Go to special brawl, set the options for Flower on the head (does dmg constantly to players), and stamina mode. Then, at the character select screen, set 1 or more characters to 1 stamina. Then, as soon as the match starts, that player will die and the game will be over. You can sit there tapping start while you watch TV or browse the web to rack up games extremely fast. I read that someone got all the characters in 1 hour and 15 minutes using this method. Keep in mind that you still have to pay enough attention to fight the characters (and win) when they challenge you.

Note: there are 35 total characters.

Is the Wind Waker Link any different from the Twilight Princess Link?

Yeah, but not much. Pretty much, his mechanics are mostly the same, just tweaked a bit.

Biggest differences I can tell (besides looks) are that his arrow arcs down less than Link's (meaning it goes farther with less charge time), his upward smash is one attack rather than a triple hit, and his spin attack (up + special) seems to hold enemies in (for more hits) rather than smash them out (for more launch distance). Note that the spin only does this less on the ground. In the air, it seems to be pretty much the same as Links. He seems to jump a bit higher too (and get launched farther), but that could be an illusion since he is shorter.

I think I like toon link better. Too bad he isn't cel shaded like he was in Wind Waker. Although, his bomb does still have those cool swirly explosion sprites like the explosions in Wind Waker.

Gotta say that Nintendo WFC is pretty shoddy.

I mean, it's not only technical problems. It's just that Nintendo has such concern over their image that they have purposely left out many communication abilities.

Furthermore, they seem much more concerned about making sure people can't play together rather than being concerned with what matters: making it easy to play with your friends.

Lets say you have a friend you want to play with. You go online and he is hosting a brawl. If another one of his friends (who isn't on your list) joins the game, you cannot join it. Is it really so crazy to assume that I'd find friends of my friends acceptable to play with?

Also, when you add a friend to your list, they don't get a notification or anything. They must add you to their list on their own. It would be REALLY nice if they just gave a simple notification like "Hey, ____ has added you to their list, do you want to add them and allow them to play with you?". Of course, Nintendo is more concerned with the fact that someone might use a dirty word for their name, find out a little kids Smash # randomly, and damage their poor little psyches.

To fix this issue more simply and less restrictively, they could have simply tied in the consoles BUILT IN parental control system to disable such things for those people who have parent locks in place.

Also, joining a game in progress never seems to work (its supposed to let the people in the game have the option to allow you in after the round ends).

Furthermore, the status of a game is really terrible. When you try to play with your friends, there are only two statuses. One that means "just started a game, but didn't play yet" (aka, the time when joining actually has a chance to work). And another that means "some other status".

It'd be nice if they let you see when the game was in-between rounds, as I suspect this is the only time you can actually join your friends game that was in-progress.

Furthermore, the status of friends (online, offline, seeking brawl, brawling) doesn't always update correctly.

Playing with one friend is pretty easy. Playing with 2 is a bit tougher, but with 3 others its a pain. Seems like it takes 4-5 tries to finally get a game hosted where someone isn't dropped randomly before it starts. The lack of communication and sometimes-incorrect status notifications make this problem much worse than it should be.

It's exacerbated by the fact that "joining" a game that was really closed/cancelled (but didn't update) leaves you stuck in a very long phase of connection attempts, and usually results in disconnection from WFC. Of course, theres no "cancel" button (actually, there is one, it just doesn't work once you get to these situations).

The only saving grace is that once you get 1 match to start (finally), it's generally pretty much smooth sailing from there, you can keep playing tons of games with the people in the game with no problems.

Some of us have lives that take place somewhere other than in front of the Wii during the week.

I tried out sonic and I didn't really like him. His Final Smash is great, but other than that he just seemed to control too akwardly. Plus he seemed pretty weak and had far too short a hit reach. I was really excited at the prospect of the little blue guy, but I definitely feel underwhelmed.

Mr. Game & Watch is so much better now than he was in SSBM. The fishbowl and the turtle are badass.

Really? I thought the up b sucked because it shot more or less straight up and left him in a paralyzed spin until he touched the ground. Also, his other special attacks moved to quickly and were hard to keep under control, at least for me.

I really like Ike. My friend who owns the game played Meta Knight against me on the pirate ship level and considering the amount of practice he had versus the amount I have I did a damn good job with Ike. His final smash is pretty cool too.

King Dedede sucks balls, but I figure most people can tell without having to play as him.

I used to think the same thing until I got a series of vicious beat downs from one of my friends who uses him. My friend is shamefully good at smash though. At his dorm, a lot of the people get together regularly and play smash tournaments. They've been playing original, melee, and brawl for all this time. He likes to "figure out" characters that people think suck, then beat your ass with them.

Really, Dedede is a beast of a character. At first I didn't think he was great, but I've played him more recently and I really like him. Basically he's a heavyweight with powerful smashes, an extemely high jump range + very high up+special (rare combo). He also has his various hammer spins that do rapid, small hits to rack up damage rather than knock people around. Few heavyweights have that ability.

As for Meta Knight, I don't really like him. He's really fast and he was actually the character I wanted to play the most before the game came out. He just doesn't seem to have enough of an ability to send enemies flying. You have to rely on small hits over and over until you get their percentage really high.