Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a crossover Nintendo fighting game released on Wii in March 2008, developed by Masahiro Sakurai. An immensely anticipated title by any standard, Brawl features a plethora of playable characters hailing from all manner of famous Nintendo franchises, such as Mario, Pokemon, and Fire Emblem, as well as third-party franchise characters like Sonic the Hedgehog and Solid Snake from the Metal Gear series, and features a very out-of-the-ordinary fighting system that allows for the usage of items, stage hazards, and what not. The game is major to the Golden Sun community because some Golden Sun-themed content has been included as cameo material, and this is the first instance of Golden Sun officially appearing in any form of media since the 2003 release of Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

General
Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a brawling, action-packed fighting-genre video game for the Wii that features a varied roster of famous characters from all sorts of video games primarily by (but not limited to) Nintendo for two-to-four-player simultaneous melees. This fighting game has competing characters in a variety of stage types attack each other with assaults both standard and unique to that character, and they have a go at each other with a wide amount of maneuverability available (each character can jump in midair multiple times). When you hit an opponent, his or her damage meter builds up, and attacks will send them flying away farther than if they have less damage. If they are sent offscreen with enough force that they reach any of the four bounds that lie off each side of screen, whether by being sent straight into it or unable to recover back onto the stage using double and triple jump moves, they lose a life or point. This is the basic gameplay system at the core of the game and all its various modes (of which there are a tremendous amount).

The game is compatible with four separate contoller types and setups: The Wii Remote held horizontally, the Wii Remote with the Nunchuk, the Wii Classic Controller, and the standard GameCube controller. The GameCube controller is the most recommended one for a traditional gameplay experience, complete with rumble. The ability to create personal name profiles return from Melee, and the controller setups players assign themselves can be saved to their name profiles so that they can easily load it up at a moment's notice.

All characters' attacks can be accessed with a button press and a direction, at maximum. Standard attacks are accessed with the A button and special attacks especially unique to each character are accessed with the B button. How hard you press in a certain direction while pressing/holding A dictates the power of your Smash attacks, and flurries of smaller attacks can be executed either by pressing A rapidly or merely holding down A. All characters can also jump a second time in midair after jumping off the ground, and generally each character's up-special move counts as a third jump. Each character has one unique super-strong special move named a Final Smash, provided by floating items named Smash Balls. When a character gains a Smash Ball, that character has a fiery aura and can unleash a single Final Smash at any time.

Many game modes exist in the game, both for single-player and multi-player action, and central to the game's single-player content is a story mode named Adventure Mode: The Subspace Emissary, which is described by Sakurai as a "robust side-scrolling action game". Of course, Super Smash Bros. games have long been famous for their multiplayer content, and Brawl is no different. Matches take place in "arenas" of all shapes, sizes, and configurations, such as the top of a mountain that breaks off and slides down into the ocean, or both the rooftop and the interior portion of a medieval castle under siege by catapult fire. A Stage Builder mode exists within the game as well.

A large yet optional aspect to the overall experience are items that can be picked up and used by characters during battle. Items have a wide variety of effects, such as being wieldable as weapons (ranged or close-up), healing damage, increasing mobility, and so on and so forth. Many of the items are thematically based on the video game franchises that contribute to the fighting game, and there are items that randomly summon a computer-controlled character from an available pool of game characters not major enough to make it as playable characters themselves to perform an attack or some other action that influences the gameplay of the match briefly. These items are the Poke Ball, the famous tool from the Pokemon media franchise that summons a Pokemon specie, and the Assist Trophy, which summons a minor character from any non-Pokemon franchise for exactly the same style of purpose.

Smash Bros. games are known for featuring huge amounts of unlockable content that players can take weeks to fully acquire. Brawl takes this concept several steps further by having several classes of collectible items, such as trophies of characters and items and stickers of them as well, and anything you collect is added to several categories of galleries and listings for you to view and scrutinize at any time. Needless to say, this is one piece of software that has a large influence on much of the video game industry.

Golden Sun-related content
Super Smash Bros. Brawl is the first appearance of anything Golden Sun-themed in any official media since the 2003 release of Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Golden Sun is not a major game franchise like the famous game series whose characters are playable fighters like Mario, Zelda, and Kirby, and this is reflected in the appearance of Golden Sun in non-playable roles that are less major than other series in the game. However, it is worth noting that Golden Sun is at least as popular as such series as Fire Emblem, Mother, and games portraying the Ice Climbers. As the Fire Emblem and Mother series both have two playable characters, it is not unfeasible that Golden Sun characters could be playable in future Smash games, should any be developed.



Isaac as an Assist Trophy
Isaac is confirmed to be one of the "helper characters" that will randomly appear if a fighting character uses the summoning item called the Assist Trophy. In this first 3D appearance in a console game, Isaac appears and casts the Move Psynergy three times, each time conjuring a giant hand that pushes any opponents of the summoner off the stage. He will automatically turn around to face the direction of valid targets in between his castings based on whether there are more opponents to his left or his right.

Isaac as a collectible trophy
All characters and items that have to do with gameplay in Brawl are featured as inanimate 3D models on collectibles called trophies, which you can amass through many methods, and each trophy comes with a general description of what it depicts. This provides historical context to every Nintendo character and property that appears in Brawl. Isaac is no different since he is already an Assist Trophy character, so he appears as a collectible figurine as well.

This is the Japanese version of his trophy's description:

"A strong-willed Psynergy adept of the bloodline of an ancient race thought to have been lost with the downfall of civilization. He can manipulate earth-based forces and is also a highly skilled swordsman. He sets out to protect a lighthouse that can release the sealed powers of alchemy. In Smash Bros., he uses "Move" energy, which creates an energy field that pushes foes away."

Battle music
A heavy progressive rock remix and medley of battle music from Golden Sun: The Lost Age, using all of Felix's normal battle theme as the song's introductory portion, and then cycling through the full Doom Dragon final boss theme infinitely afterward, is an unlockable song in the game. It is not yet known under which circumstances this song will play or how it is unlocked.