It is what it says.

At 2 a.m., the clock on the wall looked a lot like the one that was there when we had started the party at 2 p.m. the previous afternoon. But the game that I saw in front of me looked a whole lot different. I learned a whole mess of a lot playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl with that many players and onlookers, stuff I wouldn't have been able to see without them. Hopefully, you'll all see the game in the way we did, the only way that matters: through the eyes of people who love playing it with friends.

I want to thank everyone who attended the party and played the game with me. I'm sure it was as good for you as it was for me. I'll leave everyon with my rough notes from twelve hours' worth of play, which contains some additional assessments and observations that I couldn't work into this feature.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl for Wii will be released on March 9 in North America. Can you bear the wait for it?

Wish you were here? Leave feedback or other comments in the Talkback forums thread for this feature. We want to hear from you!

Super Smash Bros. Brawl Party Notes

General Character Impressions

• Ike is a very dangerous character in the right hands, despite being slow

• Marth's combo attacks have more kick, which help make him a better character (I use him now)

• Ness is still dangerous, but a long-time Ness user picked up Lucas and liked him immediately

• Sonic's move set is very basic, but he's super fast and totally fun to use

• Snake feels like the sneaking dude he is, with annoying indirect attacks like the landmine and a better-than-you think move in the stinger rocket launcher (you control the rocket in flight but can't move or defend yourself in the process)

• Pokemon Trainer: Squirtle is awesome (more powerful than he looks), Charizard is too, still don't know about Ivysaur, though it looks like he'll be a cool character to use

• ROB the Robot: Nothing particularly special about him, which is actually kind of disappointing

• Ganondorf: More powerful, moves more slowly (hilariously slow run animation)

• Wario is solid, and his jerky animation fits the character perfectly

• Diddy Kong a nice complement to Donkey Kong, but doesn't have much going for him

• Pit and Metaknight lack powerful smashes, but are excellent at chipping away and avoiding attacks; increased mobility does not give them any real advantage due to their weak/rapid attacks and low weight

• Olimar seems kind of useless, but that may be why he could wind up being a good character eventually

• Mr. Game and Watch is a bit better than in Melee

• No one liked using Samus, everyone preferred Zero Suit Samus instead, who is faster, more agile, and has some decently potent attacks

• Falco is faster than Melee (not as fast as Fox) and kicks out his reflector when activates it

• Wolf is the slower (but still fast) variant, his blaster hits people up close when he pulls it out and has an upward angled dash instead of the fire charge for Up+B and different air attack strings

• Interesting character color outfits: "Old Man Ganondorf" (white beard/hair), Daisy Peach, Samus Fusion Suit colors, Evil Toon Link (same colors as regular Link with black/red eyes, but waaaay more creepy), Wario Mario, Mario Wario, Dixie Diddy (most confusing colors on a Nintendo character ever), Ness's alternate shirt, Snake's camo outfits, anything cream-colored (especially ugly on Bowser, Poke Trainer)

Smash Ball Impressions

• Smash ball is a fantastic addition to the game and what truly separates gameplay from Melee

• Interesting to see the strategies taking place when it appears: go straight for it? Wait for it to bounce away from everyone? Pick off people concentrating on the smash ball?

• Landing a final smash and taking out a bunch of people is more exciting than anything that ever happened in Melee

• Very easy to make comebacks (or increase leads) with a good run of smash ball kills

• Dragoon is much the same way, it feels kind of like a universal final smash attack

• Dragoon pieces easy to drop, so there is always a battle going on for the three pieces

• Targeting icon can kill multiple people if they are next to each other

Final Smashes

• Marth's final smash – hard to connect with (point-blank) insta-KO, at one point I killed three people in one blow, one after the other (FREAKING AWESOME), Marth sometimes dashes clear across the screen and will kill himself if he misses someone

• Zelda's light arrow, hit all three people at once too (big roar from the crowd)

• Ness's PK Starstorm easier to avoid than Lucas's

• Fox/Falco/Wolf landmaster tank FS one of the most powerful, as long as you have room to move

• Pikachu's Volt tackle is impossible to control and doesn't do much damage

• Super Sonic is crazy awesome

• Kirby's cooking FS is avoidable if you are far enough away, and doesn't do that much damage (best to use it when Kirby has high damage to take advantage of the food items)

• Zero Suit Samus sucks everyone in and shoots them out before getting suit back

• Captain Falcon's FS where he hops in the Blue Falcon and runs down someone is hilariously fantastic

• Game and Watch turns into Octopus, which is even better

• Olimar's FS is effective when he crash lands in the middle of the stage with his rocket; not so much when the middle of the stage is a bottomless pit (from the stage builder) and he just floats to his death

• Dedede calls out the waddle army, giving him ample time to charge up that hammer and destroy people with his devastating forward+A smash

Stages

• Pictochat is really cool, and it has great music too. Drawn items can damage or otherwise affect you (piranha plant, spikes, blowing wind). Sorry, no penises!

• Karts going on the underpass on the Mario Kart stage can be knocked to the sides and into people trying to avoid them on the bottom level

• Wario Ware stage is freakin' sweet, clearing microgames that spring up during battle will grant usually invincibility, healing items or a mushroom to the winners

• New Pork City's size works for and against it; it's a big stage that's actually possible to die on (unlike Hyrule Temple), but it takes a lot of damage and a potent smash to do it. Plus, you can get into some interesting chase/keep-away scenarios that are not possible on other stages

• Green Hill Zone is kind of boring

• Flat Zone 2 has stage obstacles that will do more damage to you than your opponents, and there are times when you simply can't avoid getting bounced around (part of the fun, though)

• DK Rumble Falls (auto-scrolling stage) just as dumb and pointless as Icicle Mountain in Melee

• Players can float off the edges of stages with water around them (Wind Waker stage, Isle Delfino, The Summit)

• The Summit (Ice Climber stage) has sequence where glacier battlefield slides down the mountain, and you fall with it, creating very floaty jumps (really cool)

• Luigi's Mansion is cool, but it's even better when playing it with Tetris Type-A orchestrated music

• Other stages I don't have yet but have seen: Electroplankton, Classic Mario Bros.

• New stages (and music) more impressive than new characters

General Gameplay / Items / Cool Stuff

• There is always something going on, which leads to the more up-tempo pace of the game

• Most people who played the game said it felt slower than Melee to them, but you won't see that when watching it

• Much, much easier to grab items while moving, while jumping through platforms, and to catch items in mid-air

• Regular hammer not as intimidating as it used to be, but it can still cause major damage

• Bumpers have a shit-ton of kickback to them. Avoid!

• Pitfalls can insta-ko people if they hit you over the edge of a stage (send you straight down)

• Mid-air dodges no longer have direction to them, they just happen in place

• You can recover from a mid-air dodge while still in the air and do something else (dodge again, attack, jump, etc.)

• Screw Attack item no longer throwable (it's a badge now instead), still only works for two jumps on multi-jumping characters

• Springboard still works when on its side (bounces you away from it)

• Possible to ukemi (quick recover) off of walls and ceilings

• Assist trophies can be knocked away from someone if they don't raise it over their head in time

• Shadow (Sonic) and Raiden (Snake) are assist trophies; Tails is a regular trophy

• Dedede does the hammer animation with his own hammer, alternating, when he picks up a hammer/golden hammer (awesome)

• Pit has the two-frame classic up-down hammer attack

• Issac from Golden Sun an assist trophy (seeing him in 3D makes me want a Golden Sun game on consoles even more)

Modes/Misc.

• Tournament (32 people) and rotation (16 people) easy to setup and implement, players can grab any controller to use their character instead of needing to find the right one

• Home run contest just as addicting as in Melee, even more so with two people (especially now that you can save replays and play online with friends)

• Boss battle mode pulled straight from the Kirby games (Super Star in particular), complete with best times and optional recovery hearts between fights

• Trophy list is much easier to navigate, with more sorting options

• God knows how many stickers are in the game, you can get them from all over

• Coin launcher is fun, but kind of boring after a while. Thankfully trophies can be easily acquired from elsewhere (home run contest, Subspace Emissary, hammer wall, doing well in other modes)

• Watching online matches good place to make money: 100 coins max bet returns 180 coins, more coins for successive wins ("Always bet on Ness")

Issues/Annoyances

• Apparent suicides are scored as kills to the last person that hit you

• Characters seemingly trip or stumble randomly

• Action is so frantic and levels are so visually busy that it is easy to lose track of your character, even after getting used to things

• Despite 35 character roster, it doesn't feel that much different than Melee and feels lacking

• Though clones feel much different from each other, they are still clones

• Why add Wolf but bring back Falco? 3 characters have same set of moves!

• Lucario = Mewtwo; Toon Link = Young Link (though they have variations, they feel the same overall)

• Only 10 characters truly feel "new," others feel like Melee with slight variations

• Music CD pickups that appear during multiplayer disappear REALLY quickly