Mike Tyson- Mike Tyson’s Punch Out

Iron Mike’s legendary performance in the world of boxing is as well documented as his fall from grace and infamous tattoo, but his early appearance in the world of Nintendo has gone down as one of the moments that would define “Nintendo Hard”. In a display somewhat similar to the real life events, the AI was only able to deliver KO punches against the player character, Little Mac for the first round. His fast, hard to read movements made just surviving long enough to have a shot against Tyson difficult enough, but unless you were omnipresent, you weren’t going to last that long anyways.

Super Mario Galaxy 2

The game where Mario is the kind of person who has a vanity license plate with his own name and face on it, Super Mario Galaxy 2 takes the gravity defying mechanics and tight controls of the original title and allows the ideas to get wonderfully weird with the assumption that players tried the first Galaxy. Players dedicated enough grab all 120 stars in the game were greeted not with a final message, but the delivery of 120 Green Stars scattered across the game. Though the spirit of not just making us play though the game again as Luigi was something, the strange hidden object game they played with us by not giving hints for each star and asking you to individually locate and figure out how to collect them in the old missions got tiring very fast.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Fortune (1st Battle) – Metal Gear Solid 2

It’s not like “Lady Luck” Fortune is the toughest boss to kill in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. She possesses a portable rail gun that can rip you apart easily but damaging her initially is impossible because bullets simply don’t hit her. Chalk this up to an electromagnetic device on her person that can deflect bullets and even disable nearby explosives. Whatever the case may be, just don’t waste your bullets in the early going.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl tried something with its single player mode- in response to all the criticism that the lackluster single player offerings of Melee and the Nintendo 64 original got, Sakurai decided to give the game an epic single player story mode called the Subspace Emissary that, for the first time, tried to give some narrative context to how all these different Nintendo characters came together.

If you liked it- and most people did not- then you will be saddened to learn that it will not be returning in the next game on the Wii U. Sakurai’s reasons are telling as a game designer.

“Unfortunately, the movie scenes we worked hard to create [for Super Smash Bros. Brawl] were uploaded onto the internet.” Sakurai said in his Famitsu column. “You can only truly wow a player the first time he sees [a cutscene]. I felt if players saw the cutscenes outside of the game, they would no longer serve as rewards for playing the game, so I’ve decided against having them.”

I mean, I guess it makes sense, but he should understand that it is very hard not to have spoilers in today’s day and age. Everything gets leaked.

Regardless, I can honestly say I will not be missing the Subspace Emissary in the next game. Keep that platforming crap out of my Smash Bros.

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Nintendo’s all star mascot brawling series, Super Smash Bros. is due for a new installment. Announced last year at E3 for both the Wii U and the 3DS, the game was conspicuously missing in action this year, something that many attributed to the fact that the game probably hadn’t even begun development yet. Sakurai confirmed, however, that development on Super Smash Bros. 4 has finally begun in earnest.

‘We’ve just taken what you could call the first step of the process. This is the first time I’ve ever had my next project announced before it’s even entered development, and because of that, I fear that players will be forced to wait even longer than they expect to. Please be patient,’ he said.

The wait for Super Smash Bros. Brawl was three years from its initial announcement at E3 2005 to its eventual 2008 release (with numerous delays along the way), and seven, if you count the wait from the time Melee released in 2001. If we go by Brawl’s announcement to release timeframe, we could probably expect SSB4 in 2014, although considering that it’s being made for two systems, and not just one, and that the code will probably be have to rewritten from the ground up, considering both systems are far too different and far superior to the Wii in their capabilities, we may not see the game for quite a while now.

In any case, this will indeed be a long wait. Strap your seatbelts.

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The Super Smash Bros. series has become a mainstay of Nintendo consoles at this point. More than a decade old, and with three highly acclaimed games, the series has come to be recognized as one of Nintendo’s best, as well as some of the best multiplayer fun to be had around. No other game can act as a ‘bridge’ title between the casuals and hardcore gamers like a Super Smash Bros. game can, and with 24 million units sold so far, it’s not hard to see just how wide the series’ appeal really is.

Therefore, it’s pretty much expected that every time there is a new Nintendo console, there will also be a new Smash Bros. game to go with it. Going into Nintendo’s E3 2011 conference, everyone was eagerly hoping for at least a hint of the next game in the main series. And sure enough, Nintendo obliged by informing us that Super Smash Bros. was headed to not just the Wii U, as expected, but also to the 3DS. That’s double the action for a franchise that has had a curiously muted number of games so far.

Obviously, we’re excited- almost more excited for Super Smash Bros. 4 than we are for the Wii U itself. And whereas it’s been confirmed that development on the next game hasn’t even started yet- and won’t until January next year- we can still eagerly hope and make our wishlists about what we want the next game in this massive franchise to have. The list below is, what we hope, the definitive list of what Super Smash Bros. 4 needs to have, if it is to reach the same soaring heights as its predecessors did.

7. MORE CHARACTERS

This is more or less obvious. One of the more obvious ways of seeing how the series has evolved from the N64 days has been by observing the number of characters per game. Whereas the original Super Smash Bros. on the N64 started out with 14 characters, Melee upped the ante by raising that number to 25. Brawl ultimately came along and totally blew the previous games out of the water with a mind boggling 36 characters in the game. That’s a hell of a lot of characters, and it makes you wonder if there’s scope for any more, particularly seeing as how almost every single Nintendo universe has been tapped by this point.

But that’s not the case, as in spite of literally straining at the seams because of the sheer volume of characters it had, Brawl still had some glaring omissions. For instance, why is Ridley still not in the games yet? I know he appears as a non playable character, but wouldn’t it be incredible to be able to play as him too? Also, why not bring back fan favorites like Mewtwo and Dr. Mario?

And speaking of more characters, Brawl let us have a sneak peak into the series’ future by including two third party mascots in its roster- Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario’s old rival, and Solid Snake, perhaps the unlikeliest candidate for an appearance in a Nintendo game. Now that the floodgates have been opened, why can’t we have more third party characters? For instance, Megaman looks like he’d be a nice fit (although something tells me he’d play identical to Samus). Why not have Simon Belmont from Castlevania? Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden? Phoenix Wright? Professor Layton? The list of potential candidates is endless. Really, Nintendo should get onto it, and make the character count in Super Smash Bros. 4 touch fifty. It’s not impossible.

6. MORE STAGES

Barring the more characters demand, this one is probably the most obvious one that we could make.

Super Smash Bros. has seen a gradual increase in the number of stages it includes with every game. The original N64 game had nine stages, based on various locales to be found across all of Nintendo’s universes. Melee came along and more than tripled that with 29 different stages on offer. In case you think that’s a lot, Brawl had a staggering 41 stages, 31 of which were all new, and 10 of which were remixed fan favorites from the Gamecube game.

So clearly, the scope of each Smash Bros. game is huge, as the number of characters and stages per game can only attest to. With Super Smash Bros. 4, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a similar advancement in the number of stages. More stages can be created, by firstly focusing on some of the more neglected and ignored Nintendo franchises. We could also have some based on the third party characters in the game (a Megaman themed stage would be awesome).

Give us more stages, Nintendo. Pack the game with so many of them that it’s impossible to master them all. Oh, and also, while you’re at it, include a stage creator with this game. Brawl had a good start on this front, as it already featured a pretty decent stage builder. However, a more full fledged one, which also allows for co-operative building and sharing online a la ModNation Racers, would be awesome.

Of course, for that, the next Super Smash Bros. game would need online that doesn’t suck…

5. ONLINE THAT DOESN’T SUCK

Super Smash Bros. Brawl was a big step forward for the series in that it included online play. Easily its most touted feature leading up to release, fans were excited to take each other on in some high quality competitive Smash matches online. However, things went wrong- from its crippling dependence on Friend Codes to its horrible lag, from the limited options in random match ups to a complete lack of unification (there was no way to see which of our friends were online, no way to share or track statistics, no way to share our stages, no way to share our trophies and accolades) led to the game’s online being a source of frustration more than it was of fun and high caliber Smash matchups.

People might point to the Wii’s stunted online and say that the game itself wasn’t to blame, but I disagree. As maligned as the Wii’s online is, games like Mario Kart and Monster Hunter had excellent, full featured online modes. I see no reason why Nintendo’s premier, marquee title could not have had at least reasonably competitive online modes.

For the Wii U game, Nintendo needs to address every single issue that Brawl had, fix it up, and then add more. For instance, allowing extra stages to be downloaded (released weekly as free DLC, for instance) would be a great addition. Hosting tournaments online on the basis of ranked leaderboards, not dissimilar to the feature in Nintendo’s own Pokemon Black and White, would certainly add to the longevity of the title.

The new game deserves to become the premier online game of next generation. Not just because it can, but also because of the unfulfilled promises to all the fans made leading into the release of Brawl. The fact that Brawl was so gimped online only added to the frustration, because some fundamental core mechanics of the series had been messed up to make the traditionally fast gameplay of the series fit for online play. One thing that Super Smash fans would love would be to see a return to the mechanics that made Super Smash Bros. Melee so revered…