By now you should all be familiar with the Super Smash Bros. formula: Mix basic platforming action with old-school, button-pressing, arcade-style combat while adding copious amounts of, oh, every Nintendo game ever made. With Super Smash Bros. Brawl, it's a fan-service smorgasbord at its glorious best, folding in not only all of the goodies that made it into the series' two previous iterations (Super Smash Bros. and Super Smash Bros. Melee), but just about every bit of Nintendo lore that's surfaced between Melee's 2001 release and now. This includes appearances of hardcore, obscure stuff like Electroplankton and Sin and Punishment paraphernalia, Captain Olimar and his Pikmin, and just about any first-party Nintendo tidbit you can think of. For Nintendo fans, that's great stuff. The more the merrier. But how does the game balance out between the die-hard fans and the less committed?
