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Smash Bros. Gets Story-Driven Single Player Campaign
If you were wondering how they could make the upcoming Smash Bros. Brawl even better than its predecessors, the official Dojo site has some great news for Nintendo fans. Via Game|Life comes the news that Brawl will feature a fully-fleshed out single-player sidescrolling campaign. Called 'The Subspace Emissary', it appears to explore the stories of the individual characters and their interactions with each other. "This time, though, we've managed to create a complete side-scrolling action game. It's storyline isn't overwrought--it's hastened along by a bunch of quick movies ... The Adventure mode also emphasizes character development. You'll see many famous characters persevering under the weight of their personal histories, shouldering their unique burdens... It's really something you won't see anywhere else." While obviously folks like Link and Mario will feature heavily, it's worth pointing out that this will be the first time in more than 15 years that Kid Icarus' Pit will get any sort of 'plot development' in a videogame.
I thought what destroyed Street Fighter was all the ridiculous pseudo-sequels. You had SF 2, then SF 2: Championship Edition, then SF 2: Turbo, then Street Fighter Alpha Championship Turbo Hyper EX II Deluxe Edition, etc...
You might want to actually visit the website once, just so you can read the part where you can use any of 4 different control schemes - Gamecube controller, Wii Classic Controller, Wiimote & Nunchuck or Wiimote.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Someone got the idea that 2D fighters (along with 2D everything else) was unpopular. Everyone started clamoring to make their own 3D fighting game with mixed results. Some good, some not so much. 2D fighters also suffered a period of "Madden"ing where a new game would come out once a year with the big upgrade being the roster. Fortunately a roster change was a much bigger deal because it added whole new playstyles to the game, but it didn't help the public image.
Nothing really destroyed the Street Fighter franchise. Capcom could, and will, release a new SF game and the fans will buy it. The problem is garnering new fans to expand the franchise. I commend them for their (3D) Street Fighter EX which while not being that great of a game, kept true to the playstyle of the 2D games.
Mortal Kombat did have a "story driven side scroller" game that tanked pretty bad. It was a complete departure to the style of play of the other games. MK also made the jump from 2D to 3D prematurely and unfortunately lost many things that fans liked about the series such as the digitized characters and the sheer manicness of the gameplay. The game evolved over the years to be better but it never received as much attention that it did when it was 2D. The franchise isn't dead, it's just not as popular as before.
2D fighters aren't dead. There are still Guilty Gear and a few others. One could argue that Super Smash Bros. is the current leader in the 2D fighting arena despite the fact that everything is 3D and Brawl is only the third game in the series.
Please note that this new story driven mode will be in addition to the standard fighting modes. For people that liked the other two games, this will be just another diversion that you can try once you're bored of kicking your friends' off of the arena.
The cube version plays completely different from the original, they made all characters handle looser (they slide more), stages were made much smaller and the whole thing plays like the N64 version with a broken joystick. I think the number 1 complaint among my friends is that they gave up a lot of control for Melee, which changed it from a fist fight to an art of dodging and countering as it is in Melee.
We haven't seen enough Brawl to judge yet, but I think a lot of us are hoping they will go back to the heavier more controlled playing style of the original with some larger fighting grounds which can fit on 4 people unlike the ones in Melee.
But in short, Melee is faster paced but it's looser, Original was heavier and required more face to face fighting than being nimble and taking cheap shots until you could finish them off with a heavy attack.
I like muppets.
I've been following the site for a while, and they've cleared up some questions in the last teaser update about the story: It takes place in an alternate universe, the characters aren't the "real" canon characters, they're trophies of those characters. It's always been implied in the opening cinematic that Smash Brothers was just a kid playing with toys (which is why the final boss is a hand--kids have their action figures fight their hand when they finally run out of other toys for it to fight), but it was explicitly stated in the last update that all the characters are simply toys, and not part of the canon. When they die, they turn back into toys. They exist in an alternate universe where trophies exist to fight in tournaments, and this lifestyle has been maintained for the past two games, but now Metaknight has broken the tradition by storming the tournament and dropping some evil-looking goo that turns into evil-looking monsters, and somehow requires the trophies to stop him. Keep in mind, Smash is primarily made by the people who make Kirby, so the villain is probably going to be Dark Matter or something. Metaknight is traditionally a red herring villain that turns into a helpful rival in the end. It's not "a series of fights with motivations for the fights" in between, it's a full on side scrolling game, like the first level of the last game's Adventure Mode. It's probably punctuated with actual fights, but it's mainly side scrolling, fighting enemies (which also appear in the main game as "assist trophy" summons, like, Hammer Brothers are enemies in the side scrolling game, but you can also summon them to aid you in the multiplayer game). It also says the plot wont be bloated, just quick-paced cutscenes between action. I doubt there's going to even be text boxes.