Bitching About Brawl
July 28, 2007
Smack your ugly face hard, because it's time for Bitching About Brawl! I'm feeling much better this week (my black out this week was only for twenty four hours), so I'm hoping whatever was apparently wrong with me has passed. Your countless cards, flowers, cheap Canadian pills, and tequila were much appreciated. So, are you ready for some freaky-ass bitching?
This Week In Characters
1. Yoshi
Hey, look at that. Yoshi. Now we finally have confirmation for the entirity of the "original eight." Fantastic. Only 14 months after the game was announced. Here's betting that when the Smash 4 (Smash Bros. Duke-a-roo) hype starts up, we'll have only had confirmation of Mario by this point. Because, really, knowing that your favorite character from a past game will certainly make the cut is nothing but a enjoyment-wrecking spoiler. This applies to any form of entertainment. When I discovered that Luke, Han, and Leia were all back for The Empire Strikes Back, I flat-out refused to see it. When I heard that Sherlock Holmes was starring in The Sign of the Four, I burned my copy before I could read it. I certainly didn't want to know that U2 was the band behind The Joshua Tree, that's for sure.
You get the idea.
This Week In Items
NO NEW ITEMS REVEALED THIS WEEK!
For the second mother-loving week in the row! At this rate, the last three months of lol teh homogay updates will be nothing but Homerun Bats, hammers, and plates of food. When this comes to pass, I don't know where I'll muster the energy to continue this column, so expect me to commit suicide in grand ritualistic fashion. And when I do, I'll pin the crime on you, dear reader. Serves you right for reading my hackey thoughts anyway.
This Week In Assist Trophies
1. Knuckle Joe
Oh my. Peach and Zelda better not wear a dress in this game, or else I'd recommend that they begin taking yoga classes immediately.
I think "Shocker Pete" would be slightly classier.
This Week In Stages
1. Rumble Falls
No comment needed.
2. Skyworld
That filthy fundamentalist Pit gets his own stage profiled this week too. The home of Strom Thurmond and Jerry Falwell, Skyworld is where all good, lily-white Christians go when they die. Presumably, if you're thrown off of the edge of the screen in this arena, you descend to Earth and are forced to spend eternity as a ghost. Hopefully we'll get cameos from such classic deceased Nintendo characters as Wrinkly Kong, and, uh... has anyone else ever died in a Nintendo game?
Scratch that. An even better gimmick would be for your character to reincarnate whenever you're defeated here. That way, Nintendo could get all of their prized "baby" characters into the game without clogging up character spots. Wario can temporarily become Baby Wario, DK can become DK Jr. (lest they want the mighty dkvine.com to have a shit fit), and Baby Mario and Luigi can become the Super Sperm Bros.
This Week In Moves
Here's the "I've got a huge fucking editorial to write after this and I don't have time to wax poetic about a move in the game" version: You can jump on airbone fighters, knocking them downwards. Hey, walking all over people? I guess that means my ex-girlfriends will be in the game! Goddammit Sakurai! Didn't you read my bitchfest about how only Nintendo characters belonged here?
Last week, an ambiguously-worded update closed out the five-day barrage of garbage that's usually passed off as news on the Brawl site. This update was glommed onto by the usual bitter league of nitwits who like to piss in the cornflakes of the very cereal bowl they can't help but eat out of every morning. What am I referring to? The July 20th entry that showed images from the opening cinema scene of Brawl.
Toy imagery has always been used in these Smash Bros. movies. The entire thematic idea behind Master Hand, the main villain of the series, is that he's the archetypal video game player. That's why he's a giant hand to begin with; he's the very thing that controls the game characters from the real world. What common element do versatile and varying characters like Mario, Donkey Kong, Link, and Samus all have in common? They're all slaves to the hand of the player. Naturally, in the one game where all Nintendo franchises can come together, the common enemy would therefore be a hand. This is illustrated in the opening movies, in the original with Master Hand playing with dolls of the characters, and in Melee with the more fanciful trophies or statues.
Unfortunately, video games really do seem to make people stupid. Apparently, this little bit of post-modern third-wall breaking (which is a tad unusual for Nintendo in the first place, not seen on a regular basis since Rare's Donkey Kong games) flies over the head of a band of online literalists who take a certain kind on anarchist glee in holding the "living toy" imagery seen in these opening movies as the verbatim canon of the Smash series. Therefore, according to these dour ass-faces, none of the actual video game characters actually appear in these games. The dream Nintendo fighting game is rendered invalid because these are nothing more than Master Hand's golems.
This theory is nothing new. It's often been bandied about by the less creative (i.e. "slow") members of online video game fandoms who would rather not figure out a way that their favorite series could co-exist with another that's very different in style (such as Zelda fans not wanting to share the stage with Pikachu and Jigglypuff). These intellectual dwarfs need every aspect of their universes spoon-fed to them by the creative teams or else they're lost like a blind Zod in the Phantom Zone. "Waah waah! It's too hard to come up with a logical storyline for Smash Bros., so let's write them off and get back to covering the daft continuity of the Zelda series which is illogical even with seven different Links and Zeldas!"
So why is this now a more-pressing issue than ever before? The recent Brawl cinema preview showed familiar-looking clips of a Mario trophy and a Kirby trophy coming to life before fighting, complimented by Sakurai's usual flowery captions.
"In this world, trophies fight."
"They know nothing but fighting. Fighting is the sole reason for their existence."
"Being turned back into a trophy, being unable to fight, is much like death."
So obviously this is the gospel truth. Oh no! Smash Bros. is not part of the Donkey Kong Universe! It's not the "real" Donkey Kong, but a plastic figure! Well, yes... despite the fact that every other update on this site refers to the characters as the real deals. Despite the fact that the in-game bios in both the original and Melee talked of both their past histories and their roles in the fighting game interchangeably. Despite the fact that, in the scenic locales used as arenas, we see other characters and monuments straight out of the various series. Despite the fact that Master and Crazy Hand both appeared in a relatively-recent Kirby GBA game.
How hard is it to accept that Master Hand, within the context of the fictional universe, is a powerful entity who likes to gather together a multitude of heroes and villains from across time and space and pit them against one another? Apparently it's very hard for the angry child-molesters (it's true, because I've seen some of these people on Dateline) who perpetuate this garbage in order to put a damper on the enthusiasm some have for the prospect of Smash Bros. enriching the series that they're a fan of.
"But wait Bob, you beautiful bastard! This July 20th update was filed under Game Modes, with question marks suspiciously above the entry! That must mean there's a story mode in this game, and that it's canonically true that these are nothing but trophies! The opening cinema will have relevance to the actual game this time around!" Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps this will be a particular game mode where you do control living trophies, without influencing the rest of the game. For all we know this could be a "Trophy Mode" and is a streamlined way to collect them in Brawl as opposed to them being scattered in every nook and cranny as in Melee. Maybe you have to fight and defeat a character in this mode in order to win their trophy.
The fact is, we don't know. We don't know anything yet. Even if the above does turn out to be a story mode, why does this preclude the characters from being brought into the world Indian In The Cupboard-style (as one of the fucks on the DKU Forum recalled from elementary school reading assignments)? It doesn't, and until we know any more details, I will do nothing but wish death on all of the sour assholes who try to take the true joy of Smash Bros. away from us.
That's right. Death. After which you eat the shit from when your bowels empty.
Love,
Bob O. Friend
Write to Bob O. Friend.
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