At around 5 p.m., three hours into the once-around-the-clock event, someone suggested we got a tournament going. At this point, thirteen people were in attendance and chomping at the bit to play for a purpose, so we started setting up a tournament. Planning ahead, I had asked everyone to register their names to keep track of everyone, which was cake to do from the character selection screen. Setting the tournament up was pretty easy with everyone's name already registered. The game asked me how large of a bracket I wanted, and in the case of our sixteen-person tournament, whether or not I wanted the second round to be one-on-one semifinals or a single four-person final. We settled on the three-round format, assigned characters to names, and got underway.
Or not. Somehow, we had selected almost all of the human entrants to be computer-controlled. We realized this when we had three CPU players in the first match instead of one CPU that was there to fill out the tournament bracket. I found it odd that you could assign a name to a computer character, and so did a lot of other people. In any event, I skillfully navigated the Japanese menus (hit the reset button) and eventually made my way back to the tournament setup screen, where we made sure humans were controlling their own characters.
In a rather nice turn of events, everyone participating chose a unique character, including newbies like Pit, Ike, Zero Suit Samus, Sonic, Snake, and Wario. With less than three hours of playtime with those characters, those people had to have felt pretty confident about their mastery to want to bring them to a tournament. To appease the minority of people in attendance that wanted to play stock matches instead of the (superior!) time matches, we pissed off everyone and used coin match rules. (Ha, just kidding!) We set up stock matches with four lives each, and after the first batch of names were called out on the screen, things got started for real.
The tournament begins.
There was some initial confusion in the first round, seeing as all of the controllers were wireless and people were losing track of which controller needed to go to which player between rounds. It took us a while to realize that we didn't need to worry about controllers; the game will simply wait for confirmation from a highlighted player on the screen from any connected controller—even if there are more than four with the different Wii/GameCube control options. That's very handy.
Throughout the tournament, the random stages we were dealt were very unfriendly to us. The opening match took place at Hyrule Temple, a returning stage from Melee. This was no problem by itself, but because the stage is large and it has nooks and crannies that make it very difficult to finish someone off, it can take a long time to kill someone. But then everyone realized we had to kill each other off four times. I don't remember how long the match took, but I do know that it definitely wasn't the longest one of the tournament.
Later in the first round, one of the pre-built custom stages popped up. This was a very small stage featuring a lone, wide platform very high up in the stage and a walled bottomless pit in the middle. It was a struggle to stay on the platform, and an even greater challenge for the Captain Olimar player to inflict meaningful damage due to the small floor area to pull up or recover Pikmin. We thought he was ready to make a comeback when he collected a smash ball. Everyone was pumped as Olimar's ship came crashing down ... right into the stage's central pit, costing him one of his remaining lives. Needless to say, he got screwed on that one. The second time he did it, maybe not so much. But still, bad break, dude!
After the first round was completed, four contenders emerged from the initial thirteen. Round two pitted Ness against Kirby and Ike against Marth. (I was using Marth, making quick work of my feeble round one competition. They totally thought they were winning when the last man was leading by an extra stock!) The unkind stage draw reared its ugly head again when New Pork City appeared, making ants out of Ness and Kirby. If a stock match on Hyrule Castle with four players takes a long time, a stock match with two players on New Pork City takes forever. We were hoping someone would fall into the jaws of the Ultimate Chimera just so the end would come sooner, but alas. Eventually Ness won the day, but at that point it was pretty clear to me why I don't like playing stock matches.
After the sham that was the other semifinal, we regrettably saw Ike (grrrr) and Kirby duke it out for the title ... on the biggest stage yet. It was a super-huge-large pre-built custom stage. It took everyone five minutes to realize that there was a section below where all of the fighting had been going on up until that point, which was a maze-like area surrounded by stone walls. Down below there were lazily moving platforms and a tree, which agonizingly helped to extend the length of the match. Despite this, the competition was entertaining and nerve-wracking throughout, with the competitors eventually working each other up to critical damage on their last lives. A smash ball appeared, and in the mad scramble for it, Ike broke it open and nailed Kirby with his final smash with a brilliant piece of quick footwork, sending him flying and winning the tournament. The crowd erupted in cheers as the winner was crowned. The prize was bragging rights and a swanky DK foam tie, which made it worth all the while.
The runner-up congratulates the winner (center) after a hard-fought final. Not pictured: That loser of a party host/site director.
People had come and gone during the night, so as we were settling back into free-for-all mode again I decided to try out the game's other mass-multiplayer option, Rotation mode. Here, up to sixteen players are placed into a queue. There are options for one, two, three, or four losers or winners to drop out after a game and fall to the back of the line. It was a straightforward setup that made it easy to see who was next to play (after we figured out the snaky way the game rotates names around), but at that point in the evening people were starting to leave and others were starting to come in. There weren't any options to change or add names to the list once it gets going, and there is no way to skip or postpone your turn in case you're busy with something else (you gotta go potty eventually, even with Brawl in the house).
While waiting for a person to wash their hands and claim their turn, someone else who wasn't on the list jumped on in, and eventually the whole matter turned into a free-for-all with an extra step of confirming controllers (like in tournament mode) in between. The mode wasn't making it easier to keep track of playing with multiple people at this point. We soon decided to just exit Rotation mode and go back to straight multiplayer after that.
