Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a fantastic game. We gave it a 9.5 with few reservations. When Brawl was announced way back at E3 2005, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata promised it would take advantage of the Wii's online capabilities. Given Nintendo's track record with online games up to that point (it had none), this was an ambitious promise, to say the least.

It turned out Iwata's promise was one of the last times we heard about Brawl having online play for well over a year. After a while, substantial doubt built up whether the game still featured online play. When it was reconfirmed via the Smash Bros. Dojo, you could feel a sense of relief resonate throughout the Internet. Two and a half years after the game was announced, Super Smash Bros. Brawl finally saw a release across most of the world.

Brawl was easily the most ambitious online game Nintendo has ever produced at the time of its release. Sporting a litany of online modes, it seems as if the online is a real addition to an already excellent game.

However, reports of online problems have dogged Brawl since its release. Issues ranging from game crippling lag to friend codes not registering had many Nintendo fans voicing their complaints.

Mario Kart Wii is out and about across the world, and it also sports exhaustive online modes. However, unlike Brawl, Mario Kart gets many things right with its online modes. Online races are a main component of the game and it runs lag-free, with no problems finding people to play against. Extra functionality such as online leaderboards, downloadable ghost data, and the ability to accept friend requests without inputting codes put the functionality of the game light-years beyond Brawl, which some will argue is a more important game for Nintendo.

Because there have been complaints about the online aspects of Brawl, and because Mario Kart Wii doesn't have the same issues, Nintendo World Report conducted an informal survey of our readers to see what their experiences with Brawl's online modes have been like.

The overall trend seemed to be that Super Smash Bros. Brawl online has been a crap shoot.

"It is as if we are playing two different games and it makes me wonder how that possible. Most of you seem to have had a really bad on-line experience and I am the complete opposite and we all seem to be doing the same thing so how is it I can have such a positive experience, and others so craptacular?"

- TAYREL713

Some people have had a great time taking Brawl online, while others have been prevented from completing the simple task of even registering friends. Matches have ranged from smooth and fast to lag-crippled slide shows.