Video games had always been a massive hobby of mine, but it wasn’t until I really dug my teeth into the Super Smash Bros series that I evolved into my current form- a fully-fledged gaming nerd. Whether that’s a blessing or a curse I’m still not sure.

The reason for that is that Super Smash Bros is more than just a fighting game series. It is a labour of love, with series director Masahiro Sakurai and his team packing in details from so many Nintendo franchises that these games feel like museums of gaming. The characters, the stages, the music are all a carefully curated selection of the highlights of Nintendo’s history- Brawl even features a list of every single Nintendo game released up to that point. It was the perfect training for a future Redbrick gaming editor!

Brawl has to be my favourite of the Super Smash Bros series due to the incredible amount of single-player content. The game features a fully-fledged single player campaign, complete with lovingly animated cutscenes that add to the magic of Nintendo characters crossing over. As much as I spent many a frustrated afternoon trying to get through the horrors of The Great Maze, the mode captured the imagination and the boss fights had incredible replayability.

Complete with 544 trophies, 700 stickers, 143 music tracks and 128 challenges, attempting to 100 percent Brawl is a daunting task that, despite my childhood dreams, I have never managed to complete. As much as Brawl receives criticism for lacking the fast-paced, competitive gameplay of melee, as a single-player experience there are few, if any better choices in the franchise.

As such, I have Brawl to thank for broadening my gaming horizons and introducing me to so many franchises I would come to adore. I bought the game because it had Mario, Sonic and Pikachu on the cover, but it encouraged me to start playing The Legend of Zelda, Kirby, Fire Emblem and countless more. Solid Snake’s presence in the game even encouraged me to look into gaming on non-Nintendo systems, opening my eyes to a whole new world of gaming that I hadn’t even imagined. That’s not to overlook Brawl’s actual merits as a fun and accessible fighting game in its own right, but for everything that I have taken from this title, Brawl definitely feels much greater than the sum of its parts.

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