Nintendo Announces 3DS “Super Smash Bros.”

Ryan Smythe ‘15 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

Ask and ye shall receive. Nintendo has been looking for a way to counter the incredible PS4 sales and the Super Smash Direct very well may have the answer. Besides highlighting many of the changes to the game, the 39-minute video showed off just how incredibly exciting it’ll be.

The first big news is that the 3DS version of Super Smash Bros. will be released in the summer, followed by the Wii U version in the winter. A word of caution: summer means until Sept. 20, so gamers may very well have to wait until around then to get their hands on a copy. Though, here’s hoping to a late May or early June release.

All characters will be in both versions, but the stages will vary drastically. As it has been previously stated, 3DS stages will emphasize handheld game origins, while the Wii U versions will draw from console games. The character news is exciting since Zelda/Sheik and Samus/Zero Suit Samus will become separate characters, joining Charizard and Greninja in the new character spaces. Mega Evolutions will also make an appearance with Mega Lucario and Mega Charizard X presumably becoming Final Smashes.

Several characters will have revamped stats, with Kirby gaining a new charged hammer attack, much like Roy and Marth’s B attacks, and Zero Suit Samus will have a much needed power boost. These new abilities will play very well in the 3DS-exclusive game Smash Run, where players will have five minutes to beat as many NPC enemies to collect stat boosts before going head-to-head with each other to see who picked up the best boosts. Masahiro Sakurai stated that this mode draws its influence from Kirby’s Air Ride.

One new feature that will be in both versions is the ability to customize certain moves in offline play. Not much detail was given here, but it looks like at least certain ranged attacks, like Mario’s fireballs and Pit’s arrows, can be modified quite a bit to shoot in different ways. It seems like each character will have a move that can be modified, but this will be made clear at a later date.

A feature that will be returning from Brawl’s Subspace Emissary is boss fights. The only one shown was Yellow Devil from the Mega Man series. Players will still fight each other, but whoever delivers the final blow to the boss will set off a huge explosion that affects anyone not on their team. The only other boss possibly hinted at was Ridley from the Metroid games, shown as a giant winged shadow.

The other big highlight was online play. As competition is at the heart of Smash Bros., refining online play was an absolute must for Nintendo. It’s impossible to tell if they succeeded at this point in time, but the confidence Sakurai had while talking about it is a very good sign. There will be two modes, For Fun and For Glory. For Fun places players on a random stage, with all items turned on, and only victories recorded. For Glory is only on Final Destination, with all items off, and both wins and losses recorded. Individual rankings will be tracked by the Global Smash Power, where the number given is the number of other players that you are better than (ie. score of 12 means that you are better than 12 other players, score of 300,000 means that you are better than 300,000 players).

For future updates on the new Super Smash Bros. and all things video games, keep checking in with Emertainment Monthly.