The online features of Brawl have also been getting mixed reviews, according to our readers. The game does sport many online features, and it's clear that a lot of thought went into them. However, our polling showed there is a distinct desire for things that were not present. One feature in particular would have had made Brawling with friends a lot easier.

"What pisses me off the most is that you can't play solo games while your Wii is online in the background. That is, you can't be playing through Subspace, and then a message pops up saying 'Hey, So-and-So is online! He wants to play!' No, there's none of that."

Zachary Miller, NWR Staff Writer

For the record, this functionality is possible on the Wii: Activision's Guitar Hero III has just this functionality.

Many of our readers agreed that the ability to find non-friend matches could have been improved by implementing a lobby system of some kind.

"Smash Brothers is a great game, but not online. I wish they had added an online feature like Medal of Honor Heroes [for Wii] where you can find people or rooms with good connections. The 'with anyone' feature rarely connects to others and when it does, it is mostly laggy."

- jllr30

Friend matches allow players to use an on-screen alias and assign short messages to each of the four available taunts. When executing a taunt, your character says the message in a speech bubble.

Yes, we do want more.

However, the game does not allow for voice chat, a feature that was available with friends in Metroid Prime: Hunters for the Nintendo DS.

"I wish they had the option for voice chat. Calling my friend on the phone every couple matches is lame."

- Armak88

Sakurai noted his dissatisfaction with the lack of voice and keyboard chat in an interview with IGN.

"There are all sorts of rules and regulations regarding communication on the Wii platform and so it was apparent to me that it just wouldn't come together," he said. "We weren't going to be able to do it, so we decided to cancel that feature."

His word choice, "rules and regulations," is peculiar. Metroid Prime: Hunters, a game developed by a Nintendo studio, had voice chat on the Nintendo DS. So why not Brawl on the Wii? Granted, there are no official peripherals for online voice communications (i.e., headset and microphone), but Nintendo has had well over a year to think about it. In addition, those USB ports in the back of the console don't seem to be getting much use. PlayStation 2 online voice communication uses the console's USB connections to do the trick. So why not the Wii, especially with its most important game?

Nintendo is usually quick to point out that it wants to protect players from offensive material online. To "With Anyone" matches have user names and custom taunts turned off.

"I find it stupid that you can't even use customized taunts during public matches. And I have no idea as to why you can't even see the names of your opponents. There are no ranking or user boards either, so really there is pretty much no reason at all to be playing Brawl online in public matches."

- vashkey

Nintendo relaxed this with Mario Kart Wii, where you can see your opponents' Mii characters, complete with Mii names, in addition to their location. You still can't communicate with random online players, but now you at least know you're not playing against a faceless drone.

As for the lack of leaderboards in Brawl, that was a conscious decision made by Sakurai.

"It's really a game in my mind that has been designed to be played with a smaller group of people and not really worrying about winning and losing so much as the process that gets you there," he said during the IGN interview. "It can also be kind of trying and painful for some people who want to be at the top and think that they're really good at Smash and they look at their online ranking and they're the one-hundred-thousandth best Smash Bros. player -- those are some of the reasons I've decided not to go with leaderboards."

Fair reasoning, but again we point to other consoles. Microsoft requires that Xbox Live-enabled games (in other words, all of them) on the Xbox 360 have various kinds of leaderboards, including one that only lists your friends. Would a win-loss leaderboard showing your record against only your friends been so hard to implement?

Apparently not. Mario Kart throws Sakurai's thinking out the window and embraces online leaderboards and tournaments. Even if Sakurai didn't want them in the game, Nintendo could have easily asked him to do it as a gesture of goodwill toward the more dedicated Nintendo fans looking forward to them. Alas.

Are you still having issues playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl online? Do you even bother anymore? Or maybe your experiences have been nothing but positive? Let us know in the Talkback thread in the NWR Forums!