I know everyone was believing it was a shoe-in anyway, but you never know with Nintendo.  So aside from all speculation, online gameplay has been confirmed for Smash Bros. Brawl.  There will be two modes of connection, one with friends and another with anyone.

It looks as if the friend system not only displays friends, but custom made messages as well to display in your…”gamertag”.  It looks as if the default avatar is your Mii, but you can change it to any of the Smash characters or logos or another Mii if you wish.  After inviting a friend or friends to play, you can also use the directional pad to send small messages to each other during combat.  These include “Oops” and “Want more?”.  Not a bad way to convey simple ideas without having a headset available.   You can select custom modes for the game type you wish to play (which means plenty of you will be able to enjoy no items + final destination all you wish).

The anyone system does not reveal any of the player names, which is kind of weak in case you want to get in touch with someone that played really well.  I’ve been around plenty of competitive Smash players, and I’m sure this may be a disappointment.  Further, there is no  ranking or stat tracking system.  It’s just good old random online play.  Again, I imagine this will anger a lot of people, but I agree with it.  Online ranking helps inspire cheaters to, well, cheat more than if the system weren’t there.  It also helps create that whole “dropping out of the game” garbage, too.  Those sorts of poor sportsmanship should be less of an issue in what is surely to be Wii’s biggest online title.

Any further details or images can be found over at the Dojo.  You can also enjoy discussion of this latest feature in the Smash Bros. thread over in the forums.

- Chris Cesarano (Grohdinger)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 7:09 am and is filed under Nintendo Wii. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.