Super Smash Bros. for 3DS Hands-on Preview

Excitement has naturally been at a fever pitch for the new Wii U and 3DS Smash Bros. games, but Nintendo has done its best to remain secretive about important aspects of the latest entries of the celebrity punch-up series. Roster and stages aside, we still don’t know a release date for the Wii U version, nor is it totally clear how the recently confirmed Amiibo figures will integrate across both platforms.

Super Smash Bros. for 3DS certainly took me by surprise. Being on Nintendo’s portable, I expected a reined-in version of the Wii U entry, but that’s not the case. Obvious visual disparity aside, there’s still a ton of content on offer on 3DS. The full roster is here, as are all the game modes you’d expect; including Classic, All-Star and the Stadium, home of the Home Run Challenge, a place where I’ve spent more hours than I care to admit. The menu layout doesn’t do a good job of showing all that’s on offer, but once you start poking around, you’ll soon discover the vast number of ways to kick the snot out of the likes of Link and Bowser.

There are also some new modes, including Trophy Rush. Players get a limited amount of time to smash boxes to unlock rewards; some contain loot, others are simply blockades to get to the good stuff. The more in-game coins you spend, the more time you get in the mode. Think of Street Fighter 2’s barrel-busting bonus stage and you’re almost there. The barrels fall from above and land on the single platform (like the Final Destination stage); let too many accumulate and you won’t be able to get to the boxes which actually contain a trophy, so you must be quick to dash around and keep the stage clear. It’s a fun game which is perfect for short journeys, as the longest you’ll spend per round is only a minute or so.

Seasoned veterans will find obvious familiarity in the gameplay, with many returning characters playing much like they did in previous entries. Samus is still the best, Luigi is useless (and, tragically, lacks the death stare of Mario Kart 8 that made him internet cool for all of five minutes) and it’s always fun to beat up Donkey Kong. You’ll more than likely test out the new characters in the opening few hours, before reverting to type and stick with the favourites.

Of the new characters joining the line-up, Pac-Man is an immediate favourite. His avatar is rendered in the same aesthetic as the rest of the game, but his specials revert to the classic 8-bit style, making them so adorable I don’t really care if they hit or not: I’m just happy to see them. He can be surprisingly devastating, too: Pac’s Super Smash in particular morphs the Namco mascot into a humongous version of his yellow-pellet eating self and proceeds to chomp away at any other fighters he can catch.

100 Man Smash returns, and can be played via local multiplayer on 3DS. Mii fighters replace the metal silhouettes of previous games, but if one player falls, the game is over, a lesson we learned the hard way, as my team-mate decided to jump to his death with just three Mii brawlers left, simply to ‘see what happens’.

Smash Bros for 3DS is a lot of fun, and, on the XL at least, it’s mostly apparent what’s going on throughout a match. Naturally, there’s a lot going on, and I couldn’t help but wonder how on earth a regular 3DS would cope with the chaos and keep players informed. There were many instances where, although I was able to see the characters and what they were doing, I couldn’t tell what items they were holding, and what loot fell from crates.

In single-player, the camera zooms in and out of the fight based on your proximity to the heat of the action, and it never feels off-putting or noticeable, but that can’t be done in multiplayer. You simply have to trust that the buttons being mashed are having the desired effect amongst the melee.

Ever since the announcement of two Smash Bros. games, I found it hard to justify double-dipping, but the couple of hours with the 3DS did more than enough to convert me. Owners of the standard 3DS may want to go hands-on before making a decision one way or the other. But in terms of what’s on offer, this is a fully-fledged, balls-to-the-wall offering we’ve been seeing on consoles, except you can now carry it around in your pocket.