Dairantou Smash Brothers X

Description

Dairantou Smash Brothers X is the third entry in the series, and it expands the series’ central rule of damaging opponents until they can be launched off screen. The Wii release gathers Nintendo characters with guest fighters from outside Nintendo, including Snake from Metal Gear and Sonic from Sonic the Hedgehog, which made the game a broader crossover than the earlier entries. The roster includes returning fighters and new Nintendo fighters such as Pit, Wario, Diddy Kong, Ike, Lucario, King Dedede, Olimar, and Pokémon Trainer, and hidden characters unlocked through play.

The main fighting keeps the side view arena format, with items, stage hazards, damage percentages, knockback, and up to four players in the same match. New systems include the Smash Ball and each fighter’s Final Smash, which gives a temporary, character specific finishing move once the player breaks and claims the item. Assist Trophies also add non playable support characters, allowing figures such as Nintendogs or Resetti to affect the match without becoming full fighters. The game supports several Wii era control setups, including Wii Remote, Wii Remote with Nunchuk, Classic Controller, and arguably most important, the GameCube Controller.

The major single player addition is Adventure Mode: The Subspace Emissary, a side scrolling action campaign with cutscenes, boss battles, enemy stages, sticker based strengthening, and two player co operative play. This mode gives the crossover a story form, with fighters joining, separating, and returning across a sequence of stages rather than appearing only as combatants in versus matches. The package also includes collection material such as trophies, stickers, stages, items, Assist Trophies, music, replays, and challenge style unlocks, and official guidebook listings for the game describe the volume of character data, maps, stages, items, stickers, and other unlockable material as unusually large.

Contemporary reception was very strong both in Japan and globally. Famitsu awarded the game a perfect 40 out of 40. That said, the no game is truly perfect. In retrospect it can suffer from uneven character balance, online play problems, and random tripping in gameplay. Its competitive problems aside, it was vast in its scope with a wide variety of content, characters, single player campaign, and for the dense collection of music and game history.