Warning: There are spoilers ahead.

Queen Sigrun – God of War

In the newest God of War game we find Queen Sigurn, Queen of the Valkyries, as an incredibly difficult foe to defeat. She is only available to fight after defeating the other eight Valkyries, itself an optional sidequest. Expect a long struggle when fighting aginst Sigrun, and the mastery of game mechanics including parrying and dodging will be essential for victory! She keeps herself at range. In winning this fight, pattern recognition will be key, as she also retains attack patterns from the previous Valkyries.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. In response to queries from fans (including the folks over at popular YouTube channel Easy Allies, nèe GameTrailers), the NPD Group’s Mat Piscatela has shared a list of the highest selling GameCube games of all time in the United States.

What will surprise no one is the games that are the most notable performers on Nintendo’s once beleaguered, now beloved console—Super Smash Bros. Melee, Mario Kart Double Dash, Super Mario Sunshine, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker are the top selling games on the GameCube, echoing the dominance of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and now Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on the Switch.

It’s also remarkable how poorly third party games appear to have done on the GameCube. Resident Evil 4 is one of the greatest games ever made, and launched as a GameCube exclusive. It shows up on the list at number 18, for example.

You can see the full list for yourself below.

Since the folks at @EasyAllies asked about it in their recent podcast, here's the list of the top 10 best-selling games in the U.S. for the Nintendo GameCube. Fun list, led by Smash, Kart, Mario and Zelda. The more things change… pic.twitter.com/JRJTz3GLDY

— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) December 10, 2018

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is due to launch later this year, with many players and series fans desperately hoping that it lives up to its moniker- which will involve, among other things, it being treated as better by the Smash community than Super Smash Bros. Melee. Melee launched back in 2001 for the GameCube, and the legendary game is widely regarded as the greatest Smash game.

That’s not where it ends, either- the game has such an enduring community that it’s basically caused a schism in Smash play, with fighting game tournaments like EVO effectively having to cater to Melee, as well as Smash 4 (for now, at least- presumably this one is superseded by Ultimate) simultaneously. Where Street Fighter players always move on to the newest entry, Melee fans have refused to do so- because, they maintain, correctly so, there is no other game like it in the series.

They’re not wrong. See, Melee was a technically nuanced and deep game, and Masahiro Sakurai, the creator and director of the franchise, has sought to not make one as technically layered as it since. This is because, according to him, Melee‘s technical depth scared more casual players away.

“I think a lot of Melee players love Melee. But at the same time, I think a lot of players, on the other hand, gave up on Melee because it’s too technical, because they can’t keep up with it,” he said in an interview with Washington Post. “And I know there were players who got tendinitis from playing, and messing with the controller so much… that really is hard on the player and I feel like a game should really focus on what the target audience is.”

This is also the reason that while the competitive audience will always be accommodated – and indeed, Smash Ultimate makes many concessions to competitive play – they will never be the focus at the expense of all else.

“When you talk about audience, I don’t really think too much about the audience per se. I feel like a game, at the end of the day, is about playing the game. But if we focus too much on the top level players — or the audience — then the game skews a little bit too much on the technical side,” Sakurai said.

It is what it is, then- what this might end up implying is that Smash Ultimate, while more nuanced than Brawl or Smash 4, will not end up as the “successor to Melee” that never came. Whether or not it will be layered enough in its own right, and enough to get the Melee community to move on to it, is something that remains to be seen.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate launches on the Nintendo Switch exclusively, on December 7.

EVO 2015 is almost here- the world’s premier fighting game tournament, and also one of the showcases for eSports, has record participation this year, across a full range of games, covering everything from anime based fighters like Guilty Gear and Persona, western fighters like Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct, technical and exacting ones like Street Fighter and Marvel vs Capcom, and Nintendo’s Smash Bros., of course.

If you were planning on following this event at all, in any capacity, then you are in luck- EVO has gone ahead and released the full schedule for the tournament for this year, which you can see above by clicking on the image. The last two days appear to be especially exciting, with Smash 4, Melee, Street Figter, and Guilty Gear finals all being held in that period.

Which games are you planning on following at EVO this year? Personally, I’m excited for Persona and the two Smash games. What about you? Let us know in the comments.

It should not come as a surprise to anybody, but the games with the most entrants at the world’s biggest and most prestigious fighting game tournament, EVO, also happen to be the two most popular fighting games on the market. The numbers are in, and it appears that Ultra Street Fighter IV and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U are the two most popular games at EVO this year, in terms of numbers of participants.

The third game is Super Smash Bros. Melee, which, in an incredible feat for a fourteen year old game, saw its total participation rise, while also beating many, much newer, constantly updated games. Collectively, it appears as though Smash Bros. is the biggest attraction at EVO this year (though of course, Street Fighter remains the largest individual one).

The full numbers are:

• Ultra Street Fighter IV – 2,227
• Super Smash Bros. for Wii U – 1,926
• Super Smash Bros. Melee – 1,869
• Mortal Kombat X – 1,162
• Guilty Gear Xrd – 968
• Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 – 816
• Tekken 7 – 458
• Persona 4 Arena Ultimax – 437
• Killer Instinct – 397

Personally, this is a good lineup, and I am glad to see that all of these games got so much love. And I cannot wait to see some higher level play for the sublime Super Smash Bros. for Wii U.

Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more coverage and information on EVO 2015.

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.

SOURCE

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…