Tag: Nintendo

TABLETOP GAME REVIEW: Uno: Super Mario Edition

written by David Steffen

Uno: Super Mario Edition is a special edition version of the familiar Uno game much-beloved by generations (which in itself I’m guessing is based on the existing game Crazy Eights, but with trademarks and special cards).

For those not familiar, the goal of Uno is to get rid of all of the cards in your own hand. When it’s a players turn, they want to lay down a card in their hand based on the top card on the discard pile. They can lay one down if it has the same color (equivalent to a “suit” in a regular card deck) or the same number/value. In this way it’s very similar to Crazy Eights, but instead of the number “8” being wild, there is a special Wild card just for that purpose, which can be laid at any time, and allows the person to choose the color for the next turn. And there are also additional cards like “Skip” (skip a player) and “Draw Two” which forces the next player to draw two cards. If a player can’t play a card from their existing hand they keep drawing until they can. When they get down to one card, that player has to also shout “Uno” before another player does, or they have to draw two additional.

Mario Edition has most of the same deck, albeit with new artwork on the cards based on the Super Mario series of games. It also has a couple new cards: a Super Star card that can be played to reflect a “Draw Two” or “Draw Four” card back at the one who played it, and a Blank Wild card which lets you make up your own rule for a wild card (i.e. you could make it also act as a skip, or it could let the person playing it choose someone to draw a card, or it could make every other player draw a card).

Really it’s not that much different from the regular game, though I suppose if you really love Mario the artwork on the cards would be worth picking up a different game.

Audience
Uno has a pretty broad age group, which makes it a suitable game for playing with mixed-age groups.

Challenge
It’s pretty easy to learn how to play and most of the challenge comes from sheer chance–i.e. if you have bad luck and have to draw and draw and draw it sets you back significantly.

Session Time
Hard to tell, I’ve had some games drag on when no one seems to get the right cards.

Replayability
Can play it for quite a while though it does start to feel repetitive before too long.

Originality
This edition doesn’t add much beyond the original Uno, if you have Uno already, this isn’t exactly a significant expansion.

Overall
If you already own Uno, getting this game probably won’t be that exciting of an edition. If you don’t already own Uno, you could consider this one for its game-based artwork. I’ve seen the game for about $6 retail.

VIDEO GAME REVIEW: Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle

written by David Steffen

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is a turn based combat game developed for the Nintendo Switch by Ubisoft, which is a mashup of Nintendo popular Mario Bros. franchise and Ubisoft’s Raving Rabbids franchise.

A new invention has just been completed, a visor that allows the wearer to fuse two other objects into one object. Everything is going smoothly until the Rabbids arrive in the labarotory in their Time Washing Machine and start wreaking havoc, grabbing the visor among other things and fusing random things together. The inventor is a big Mario fan, so there are lots of Mario decorations around the lab, and soon the rabbid wearing the visor has fused Mario characters like Peach and Luigi with Rabbids, and the Time Washing Machine takes them all to the Mushroom Kingdom where the Rabbids are running wild, fused with various elements and monsters of the Mushroom Kingdom. It’s up to Mario, Rabbid Peach, and Rabbid Luigi to save the kingdom.

The gameplay is turn-based, and everyone is equipped with ranged weapons unique to their character and much of the game is based around finding cover from enemy fire while trying to get around the enemy cover to fire on them. You can also move every turn to change cover spots and to tackle an enemy as you go. For most rounds, the last team standing wins (different rules may apply in individual cases). To move from area to area to try to work toward saving the kingdom, they have to fight through hordes of Rabbids fused with monsters along the way.

Maybe it’s because I’m not at all familiar with the Rabbids, but I didn’t find the premise compelling. Who are the Rabbids, why do I care? But the major issue for me was that the difficulty curve was badly designed. The first battles I found too easy; I didn’t have to try very hard, just had to persevere, follow basic rules about finding cover, try to stick to the higher ground whenever possible. For several hours of gameplay this was enough, I was able to advance and didn’t die, and not only was this part not particularly challenging, it was repetitive and dull. This continued until I reached the first mini-boss battle with a more formidable foe, at which point I got soundly beaten by the mini-boss and the hordes of Rabbid minions. The earlier battles hadn’t prepared me for whatever strategies were needed to beat that tougher foe, and I was bored enough of the earlier challenges I didn’t want to go back and try to level-grind if that’s what was needed to stand a chance. I didn’t care enough about making it further in the game to really devote myself to trying over and over again to try to beat this boss, and much of that apathy was the difficulty curve of the game, which ran low low low low high without transitioning from one to the other smoothly.

Visuals
A mixture of standard 3-D Mario design with weird Rabbid looks.

Audio
Nothing remarkable.

Challenge
Very uneven challenge curve, starts out so easy that it’s boring, then ramps steeply up very suddenly.

Story
The story does not make a ton of sense, and seems to be a lot of work to justify a game mashup.

Session Time
The nice thing about the switch is you can put it to sleep at will no matter what part of the game it’s in.

Playability
Easy enough that the early battles are pretty easy to pick up. But could use some more difficulty ramp-up to prep for tougher battles.

Replayability
Even playing through the first time got boring very quickly.

Originality
While game mashups bring their own kind of originality, the gameplay itself is nothing particular original

Playtime
Unknown, didn’t get all the way through, I played for a few hours so far.

Overall
Maybe a fan of the Rabbids would be more into the game than I was, but I found the challenge progression of the game very uneven, not challenging enough at the beginning and then suddenly very challenging. I’m sure someone will find the game fun, but it’s not for me.  You can find it for $60 at major retailers

GAME REVIEW: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

written by David Steffen

Image result for super smash bros ultimate

Super Smash Bros is the fifth entry in a multi/single player fighting game starring famous characters from Nintendo games and games by other companies, this one for the Nintendo Switch. In typical fashion, only a limited number of characters is available from the beginning, the twelve playable characters from the original Super Smash Bros. But this game includes all playable characters from all previous Super Smash Bros games, and with additional playable characters, for a total of 76 playable characters that can be unlocked. This is not including DLC, which will add additional characters, the first couple of which have already been announced: the Piranha Plant from Mario games, and Joker from the Persona series.

Many of the characters are ones you’d expect from a Nintendo cross-game mixup, like Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Peach, Link, Zelda, Samus Aran. There are also quite a few characters from the Pokemon franchise, including Pikachu, Mewtwo, Lucario, and the Pokemon Trainer who can cycle between Charizard, Ivysaur, and Squirtle within the same fight. The cast includes Solid Snake from the Metal Gear series with various explosives, Ken and Ryu from Street Fighter games, a bunch of characters from the Fire Emblem series, as well as quite a few oddball references like Mr Game & Watch and R.O.B. and the Wii Fit Trainer.

The series has a huge following, you can find anything you could want to know out there by searching, profiles of all the fighters including how to best use their special moves and what specific games individual special moves reference, videos of gameplay, tournaments, lots of gameplay tips.

The controls are easy enough to pick up that someone can become basically competent pretty quickly–movement with the joystick, jump with the joystick or jump buttons. Basic attacks are a single button which can be modified by tilting, holding, or “smashing” the joystick in one of the major directions or by performing attacks in mid-air (these tend to be punches/kickes of various kinds). Special attacks are a different button and tend to be more varied and have to do with this particular character’s abilities, like Bowser’s fire breath or Solid Snake’s land mines, or Pikachu’s lightning bolts, which have variations based on holding the joystick in different directions. Then there is dodging and blocking (which beginners tend not to use, in my experience).

To be an expert, there is a lot to learn about what moves are superior to other moves, what moves will pack extra punch if timed or spaced just perfectly, how to time dodges and blocks to become a very elusive target. I am not an expert, and I doubt I will ever be, a lot of these details are incredibly hard to master. But there is a lot of middle ground between being easy to pick up and extremely hard to master, and if you think a brawling game with famous video game characters sounds fine, give it a try if you haven’t tried the series yet! If you have tried the series, it is a solid entry with the major benefit of having ALL of the previous characters (some characters were in one game but not in the next, so if you’d missed that one game you’d missed that character entirely, but this one is all-inclusive).

Challenge
It’s as challenging as you want it to be, as you can set the challenge level. As far as, like, historical street fighter type games go, it’s easier to pick up the controls, because you don’t have to memorize special move key combinations for each character. But there are complexities to which moves can work against which other moves, the timing of hits and the timing of dodging or shields, that to become an expert at the game you would have to spend a lot of time learning and honing your reflexes.

Story
There is a story mode, but story is certainly the weakest point of any Smash Bros game, more or less just an excuse for a series of battles but without being particularly interesting or compelling on its own.

Session Time
Most battles will take a maximum of a few minutes win or lose, and in certain modes you can even put a strict time limit on it if you want to be done more quickly, so it’s a very easy game to pick up and set down.

Replayability
With a total of 78 playable characters in the game, not including DLC, there is a lot of variety just in variations of moves and play styles. Combine that in the various single player modes, and then multiple player modes, and there is a lot of potential for replay.

Originality
The first Super Smash Bros was very original, I hadn’t seen a cross-game-universe fighting game on that scale before. At this point it’s the fifth entry in the franchise, and working from a proven formula, always increasing the scale and tweaking the rules, though I wouldn’t say this entry is any more original.

Playtime
As much or as little as you want, really. If you want to unlock all of the playable characters and you want to unlock all of the achievements, you could spend a long, long time at it.

Overall
I have been a fan of this franchise since its launch on the Nintendo 64 in 1999, and they would have to seriously screw it up to not get my recommendation. The controls are easier to pick up than a lot of fighting games and it is just fun and goofy to face favorites by Nintendo against each other, like Bowser vs Samus Aran or Pikachu vs Ganandorf or King K. Rool against Ryu from Street Fighter. You can buy it digitally directly from Nintendo, or buy it on a cartridge from various retailers for $60.

GAME REVIEW: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

written by David Steffen

I thought it was fun to discover the circumstances of the world and Link’s situation in-game with no foreknowledge, so I don’t want to talk too much about the plot so you can discover it for yourself.  Unsurprisingly it does fit into the series’ long-term trend of using incarnations of the same three characters and building new stories around them.

As you can tell from even that brief introduction, this game does verge more into the science fictional than past entries in the series.  Ancient Sheikah devices might be powered by magic but they are more like what we would call technology, and have a fun anachronistic design that mixes the feel of old temple relics with advanced tech.

You discover the main plot of the game as you finish the first several objectives, to save a world that’s already been devastated from a continuing threat.  There are a handful of major objectives you need to do to be able to do that, which are marked on your map early on.  If you wanted to just power through the game you could aim specifically for those right away, but there’s also a wide world out there for you to explore, varied landscapes from frozen tundra to burning hot volcano.  Exploring will help you find equipment and other enhancements that will make it easier to survive your various challenges, by increasing your hearts, or finding better weapons, or better protective clothing that has special effects such as being fireproof for exploring volcanic regions.

One of the main frustrations I had early on was that the weapons are very impermanent.  I’m used to Link finding a sword and then using it forever.  But the weapons you find in this game are not very durable–odds are if you get in a fight with a few enemies you’ll probably break at least one weapon in the middle of the fight.  Early on I always thought I was going to run out of weapons in the middle of a fight, but I managed to get just enough from scavenging fallen enemies to keep going.

Much of the challenge of the game happens early on between fragile weapons and extreme temperatures that Link doesn’t have the equipment to handle.  One piece of goods news is that you get the ability early on to teleport to travel points that you have visited, so if you do get in trouble you can poof to somewhere safe instead of being stuck to meet your doom.

One of the major ongoing tasks with the biggest payoff is to find Sheikah shrines.  Foremost because each one comes with one of these waypoints for teleporting and they are scattered all over the map.  To find each one you actually have to travel on foot, but once you find them you can then teleport to that specific location at will.  So you get a major payoff for each one you find, because your practical travel time to any given point on the map shrinks because every shrine is zero travel time from anywhere else you go.  Finding all of the shrines is also one of the major extra things you can do–you don’t have to find more than a few to finish the game, but the game would be a lot harder and take a lot longer if you didn’t have them.

Many of the interesting sidequests involve collecting resources, herbs or stones or small animals, for the use in crafting equipment or elixirs.  This encourages you to explore different regions more thoroughly where you may find these, and you can just keep an eye out for them while you’re looking for more major quest things too.

The exploration and sidequests are the best part of the game.  If I had any complaints at all it would be that the main quest is kind of disappointing in comparison.  I finished it and I was like “oh, that’s it?” but then I happily went back to find more sidequests.

I haven’t found everything there is in the game yet and I plan to go back and play more.  I also plan to pick up the downloadable content with some extra quests and equipment.

Visuals
Lovely, especially large scale scenery shots which this game does extroardinarily well, giving a sense of huge scale even though in-game you can traverse it much faster than in real life.  It’s a lot of fun to explore Hyrule on a larger scale than ever.

Audio
Great music in a series known for it.

Challenge
Highly variable depending on exactly what you’re trying to do and how quickly you want to make it through the main quest.  I found the first part of the game the most challenging because I had only a few hearts to work with and subpar weapons and armor didn’t have the materials or know-how to properly make food or potions to compensate for my handicaps and was still figuring out how to survive cold temperatures and that sort of thing.  The rest of the gameplay was challenging enough to be fun, but that very early part was where it was the hardest, probably because I hadn’t caught up to the learning curve yet.

Story
Plenty of story, much of it told in the form of legends about yourself.  As with most/all of Zelda games it works on a repeating cycle of incarnations of Zelda and Link and Ganon facing off against each other, always interesting to see how the timeline works, particularly since Ocarina of Time branched it.

Session Time
The nicest thing about the Nintendo Switch is that all games have a short session time, because you can put the console to sleep or wake it at any point, even during cut scenes.  So blissfully short because of excellent console design.

Playability
Reasonably simple controls, much of them similar to the control scheme that’s been used since Ocarina of Time, with the Z button used to focus on enemies so you can pivot around them easily.  There are probably less things to keep track of because Link doesn’t have the big inventory of usable tools he unlocks as in other games, though there are plenty of functionality between various weaponry and especially in being able to climb almost anything and to paraglide.  There are multiple ways to reach many goals, which makes it fun to find one that fits your playing style.

Replayability
Plenty of replayability, whether you just want to explore, or if you’re a completionist who wants to find all of the shrines.  Many of them you’ll just stumble across, but to find every single one is quite a challenge (which I haven’t managed yet, I’ve still got about 15 of 120 to go).  There are also some unique armor sets that you need to complete specific missions to find to get their special powers.

There is also downloadable content to expand the game with extra quests, extra items, for another $20.  I have enjoyed the main game so much I am definitely going to download that at some point.

Originality
Of course it’s part of a long and beloved series of games, so in a lot of ways it’s familiar, but this does mark a very new direction for a Zelda game in the wide-open gameplay.  It keeps a lot of the same feel with the different fantastical races and familiar regions, but with much more emphasis on wide open exploration.  The addition of the ability to climb almost anything and to paraglide make exploring particularly fun because those open up new ways of thinking about moving around a huge map.

Playtime
I finished the main quest of the game in over 100 hours (mostly in 15 minute increments).  If I had been determined to finish the main quest as fast as possible, I could certainly have done so in less time, probably half of that at most, and if someone has an idea where they’re going could probably finish it in significantly less than even that.  But the biggest strength of the game is wide world exploration, so if you’re rushing to finish it I think you’ll be disappointed.

Overall
Excellent new addition to a new longstanding popular game series that has already set a high bar.  This game is very familiar to fans of the series, but also very new in that it’s much more like an “Elder Scrolls, but in Hyrule” game (albeit without the complicated character leveling system etc).  If you’re looking for a game that will take a lot of time to fully explore for your buck, this is a great choice.  Lots of action, lots of side quests and crafting stuff, and just the fun of setting out across a completely unknown landscape to find whatever you can find.

Highly recommended, my favorite game in years. $60 for digital download from Nintendo or physical cartridge from various retailers.

 

GAME REVIEW: Kill the Plumber

written by David Steffen

plumbertitle
Many gamers (especially those from the age of 30-40) grew up with Super Mario Bros. as their big introduction to games.  The music, the visuals, the enemies, the plot are all engrained deep in your heart with a lot of loving nostalgia.

Kill the Plumber is a 2016 platformer parody of Super Mario Bros. developed by Keybol that turns the tables on the classic original.  A psychotic plumber has invaded your kingdom and he is massacring your citizens to pursue the princess who wants nothing more than to get away from her stalker.  So you mobilize your forces to fight this invader.  The plumber is fast and agile, and sometimes has extra powers like fireballs or invincibility, but you have numbers, and you can try each level as many times as you need to.

Each level is very very short, with the goal of killing the plumber.  The creatures you are control are mostly direct analogs to enemies found in the Super Mario Bros. series of games–creatures like goombas, koopas, thwomps, boos, as well as some boss characters.  The goal in each You get extra stars for completing levels faster, which you can use to unlock bonus levels.

PlumberIt’s fun to get to try out the other side of the gameplay, although it’s certainly not an exact reversal–though the plumber is fast and agile, he’s also very predictable–always reacting to you in exactly the same way, and so the key to most of the levels to figure out that pattern and exploit it–if he automatically jumps over you, then try to place yourself so he will jump off a cliff, and that sort of thing.

Some of the levels are fun–I particularly liked the boss battles, as well as the levels where you are a thwomp (with the enhanced ability to also move right and left).  Many of the other levels are very frustrating, especially when you are a goomba, given the extremely limited abilities, or when you’re a hammer brother (which despite how powerful they are, it’s really annoying to try to hit anything that’s running with those arcing hammers).  But mostly, the game feels like a lot of repetition–once you figure out the tricks, alot of the levels are almost identical to each other, and it started to feel rather tedious–this despite my total gameplay time to get through the whole thing only being about a half hour.  For me, at least, the game didn’t sustain my interest as long as I felt it could have.

Visuals
Simple, but appropriate, given the source material.

Audio
Again, simple but appropriate.

Challenge
There are levels of the game that took me quite a few tries to finish, and a few of the levels were what I would call genuinely challenging, but more often the levels were just based on fiddling with timing to an irritating degree that was neither particularly challenging nor fun.

Story
The story is slight, but amusing, recasting the familiar Super Mario Bros. series standard plot of “plumber going to save the princess from monsters who have kidnapped her” to “monsters defending the princess from the plumber who just won’t leave her alone”.

Session Time
One try at each level usually takes a maximum of, like, a minute.  You can retry any level as many times as you like and move on to the next level.  So it’s easy to just close the window at any time and it will save your progress.  The game shuts down lightning quick and starts up lightning quick, so it’s very easy to just play for a few minutes if that’s all you’ve got.

Playability
There aren’t a lot of controls, depending on the creature you are in control of at the moment.  Sometimes just walking, sometimes also with jumping and attack buttons.  It gets the most tricky when there are multiple creatures onscreen and every button press moves them all, but it’s still simple understand even if somewhat tricky to execute.

Replayability
There is some attempt at replayability built into the game, in terms of getting from 0-3 stars based on the time it takes to complete a level.  If you get more stars you can unlock extra levels as well.

Originality
It’s premise and many of the creatures are based on parodying a well-known game, so in that respect I guess it’s not hugely original, though the reversal of the Mario story I haven’t seen before.

Playtime
With no particular proficiency at the game, I finished the main levels in about 34 minutes.  It honestly seemed like longer because a few of the levels took a ton of tries, but when each try might only take 30 seconds I guess it didn’t build up too much.  If you wanted to get perfect scores on everything, that would certainly take longer–I have no idea how 3 stars would be possible on quite a few of those levels.

Overall
If you’re amused by the idea, you might want to give it a try for the novelty (that’s what I did), but a lot of the level designs are repetitive and some of the levels become tedious in trying to accomplish something with really unfit tools.  Probably not something I’d recommend.

Funny idea that’s a parody of a classic game that most gamers of a certain age will have played, but often becomes tedious and annoying in its challenges.  Might be worthwhile for you if you like the novelty.  $5 on Steam.

 

Niche Game: Super Smash Bros.

Niche games: Âwe’ve all played them. ÂThey’re the games that you remember for a long time because they’re so unique. ÂSometimes they’re the only ones ever made like them. ÂOther times they were trailblazers for their kind of gameplay. ÂBut what they have in common is the bravery to try something new, allowing them to rise above the imitators. ÂEven though there might be newer games with shinier graphics, these games are still worth playing mecause they’re something different, something special.

If you’re like me, you got sick of playing those old tournament fighter games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat whose main difficulty was based around the user memorizing long strings of button combinations to trigger special moves. Like in Mortal Kombat, I still remember that Scorpion’s spear move was Back, Back, B. So anyone who has taken the time memorize dozens of these moves has a major advantage over someone who is a good player but hasn’t memorized.

Enter Super Smash Bros. (SSB), released for the Nintendo 64 by HAL Laboratory in 1999. The most unique feature of the game is immediately obvious: the fighters are all Nintendo-licensed characters from other games. Mario throws punches and fireballs. Samus Aran fires charged-up plasma shots, missiles, and drops bombs from her morph-ball form. And others, including several that characters that you can unlock. If you’re a Nintendo lover like me, it’s a lot of fun sending Donkey Kong in for a wind-up punch against Fox McCloud.

The damage system in SSB is one of a kind. Instead of having a health meter that signals how close to death you are, you have a damage percentage on the bottom of the screen. I’m not really sure why it’s expressed as a percentage, because it doesn’t stop at 100%, it just keeps going. The higher the damage level, the farther you fly when you’re hit, and the longer it takes you to recover. An enemy attack doesn’t kill you directly; to die, you have to leave the edge of the screen on any side. But the higher your damage meter goes, the more likely you will fly off the screen. This means that anybody can still have a chance to win even if their damage percentage is very high. A character with 0% damage can die by slipping off the edge, and a character with 400% damage can keep fighting (though he’ll have to be very careful not to get hit too hard).

Besides the obvious appeal of the Nintendo characters, the big appeal of this game for me is the simple play control. Regular moves, like punches and kicks, all involve the A button and some direction on the direction pad. Down+A might be a sweep kick, for instance, and forward+A might be a punch. Smash attacks are also easy to perform, and are more powerful (though often slower). These are done by “tapping” the direction pad in a direction at the same moment that you press the A button. These really pack a wallop, and are often the best way to send an enemy flying off the screen once you’ve brought up their damage level.

The special moves are no harder to perform than the regular moves, they are just combinations of the direction pad and the B button. so each character has 4 special moves. As an example, Pikachu:
B: Shoots a bolt of static that hops along the ground in front of you. It also climbs walls until it runs out.
Up+B:Â Pikachu jumps super-fast, no damage, but good for recovery
Forward+B:Â Pikachu charges up then fires himself forward like a cannonball
Down+B: Pikachu’s best move, and the easiest move in the game to spam. Calls a powerful lightning bolt down from the sky, striking Pikachu directly. Anyone in the path of the bolt or touching Pikachu himself takes heavy damage and gets thrown a long way.

Each character is lots of fun to play, each with their own special traits. Zelda is one of the most unique because she is two characters in one. Zelda has powerful magic bursts for her regular moves and has some nice long range and short range special attacks, but she’s pretty slow to move around. With her Down+B move, she transforms into Sheik, her ninja-like alter-ego. Sheik’s attack are weak but super-quick. In the hands of the right player, Sheik can run circles around her enemies.

Up to four players fight at a time in arenas themed around Nintendo games, and random items drop down. Food items allow fighters to heal their damage. The home run bat has medium reach and a decent damage when swung, but when swung in a smash attack it has devestating knockback ability. Also, there are pokeballs which summon a random pokemon to damage your enemies.

The original game was followed up by Super Smash Bros. Melee in 2001 for Gamecube and Super Smash Bros. Brawl in 2008 for Wii. Each has some new mini-games and lots of new characters. Most of the appeal is the improved graphics, new characters, more and more each time. In Melee, Bowser and Peach (Princess Toadstool), as well as Ganondorf are major additions. In Brawl, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Solid Snake become some of the first non-Nintendo created characters to be added. Brawl also has the addition of a single-player quest style game, involving all of the characters. It’s a fun diversion in it’s own right. Most of the enemies in that section are unique to that, and the only way you can collect trophies for them is to use the “trophy stand” item against them. The stand appears randomly, and if you throw it and connect with a sufficiently weakened enemy they will turn into a trophy. The stand will appear more frequently the higher the difficulty, but you also have to survive the rest of the level without losing your lives or you will lose your trophy as well.

A lot of fan groups on the internet cry out for Mega Man as an addition in future games. I think he would be a good character. Between all the special moves he’s gained in all of his franchise games, he would have plenty of special ability opportunities. But there’s one character that I’d like to see even more than Mega Man: Earthworm Jim. He could use the worm whip for one special move, his blaster gun for another, maybe Snott for a recovery move. It would be so much fun to pit Earthworm Jim against Asmus Aran! Well, I can always hope, for SSB 4.

Finding a copy of this game shouldn’t be too difficult. A quick eBay search comes up with quite a few hits for around 20 dollars. But, really, you might be better off just getting one of the newer versions. All of the characters in the original game are present in both of the other two games anyway, plus the newer games have better graphics and are playable on the Wii. Check the series out. Enjoy!