the Smash Bros. Diaries – Week 6: Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii)

Alright, new week, new game! Melee is done, now onto Brawl on the Wii.

I started off the week trying various SDCards seeing if I could find my old save data for Brawl with no luck. I think when I migrated my Wii data to my WiiU I must have lost all Brawl data.

A little background on my experience with Brawl. In the lead-up to it, I was so hyped. Reading articles on the internet, listening to podcasts on it, I was sure that this was the Smash Bros. I was going to get into. You were going to be able to build Custom Stages and websites were popping up so people could share their Custom levels! And then the game came out, and I hardly ever played it. I played online maybe once or twice with friends, but we hardly ever played local multiplayer. This was sort of the forgotten Smash game.

So, since all my data was lost (I doubt I had much anyway) nothing was unlocked at the beginning of the week. Again I’m going to try to unlock every playable character and every tournament legal stage.

First I started the single-player campaign Subspace Emissary on Normal difficulty. All characters can be unlocked in this mode, but I’m guessing you have to go all the way through it. But since beating the main Single Player experience is also one of my goals, going through this first will knock out two things at once. I going to try to avoid using stickers (which buff stats) and avoid using Easy mode. But if I get stuck, I will do those things.

The Subspace Emissary is an even bigger version of the Adventure mode from Melee. Like that it’s a mixture of fighting and platforming. Also, like that, it’s not great at either. The platforming again is pretty sub-par and boring and the fighting feels very slow, especially compared to VS matches in Melee. At least it doesn’t seem like this will be a long mode, on the first night I had finished 15% and unlocked Marth.

One thing I will say about this mode is, it’s very good at silent storytelling. The cutscenes have no real lines of dialogue instead they just show what’s going on and the different characters’ reactions. But they manage to convey the story effectively that way.

On Night Two, I continued on Subspace Emissary mode and got it up to 25%. At this point, completing a stage started to only be 1% progress. On Night Three I got up to 30% and unlocked Falco. On Night Three was the first time I ever had to continue any levels. I died mostly to lame platforming elements but had to replay two of the mini-boss fights twice.

On Night Three I continued Subspace Emissary mode until I got stuck at the Research Facility 2 stage – I kept dying trying to get on the moving platforms.

On Night Four, I wasn’t able to play.

On Night Five, I started out going back to Ultimate and playing online. Still going through every character one more time to decide my secondary. I’m on a killer of a losing streak but at least I’m not getting 3-0’d most of the time. Then I went back to Subspace Emissary and finally defeated Research Facility 2. And I beat a few levels after that, and by the end of the night had unlocked Captain Falcon.

Also, on Night Five I signed up for Super Smash Con! I registered for the Ultimate and Super Smash Bros. Singles, so I’m going to be practicing those a lot more. And will probably get that N64 back out!

On Night Six, I continued Ultimate online play and my long losing streak. I’m playing every character again and have played Ness multiple times, so if this keeps up I’ll have lost more than 70 times in a row. Oh well, we learn more from our failures than our triumphs.

On Night Seven, I continued to play Subspace Emissary and got close to 50% completed. I unlocked Mr. Game & Watch, Snake, and the stage Flat Zone 2. I’m hoping I can unlock all the characters in the Subspace Emissary. Then I continued my Ultimate online losing streak. I feel like Brawl is making worse at Ultimate.

The Subspace Emissary mode is not good practice for actual Smash. There is even more sub-par platforming in this than in Melee‘s Adventure mode. Each level has points where you have to stop and fight multiple enemies on a platform and some levels are just fight a giant version of a character. Those aren’t great practice for actual VS matches either. And fighting multiple small and weak enemies doesn’t even simulate a Free-for-All match with Items on. When you fight the giant characters you have to come up with a strategy around their giant size. Strategies that don’t transfer over to true one-on-one.

I tried Online, it’s no longer active

On a eparate note, I ordered a used official Nintendo GameCube Controller Super Smash Bros. Edition and it came this week! Next week, I’ll start using it in Ultimate.

I’m not sure yet, but I guess there was a reason I never played this game 11 years agao, and a reason we always gravitaed to other Smash games for multi-player. Right now it’s third out of the three I’ve marathoned so far.