Look! It's Smashville!
The blog this week revealed several new pieces of information. Probably the biggest news (which was actually revealed at Nintendo's E3 press conference), was the North American release date of December 3, 2007. Should we go get in line now? Anyway, here are the other new details.
Game Mechanics: Standard Combos
In previous versions of Smash Bros. standard combos were performed by tapping the attack button. The interesting part was that the speed at which the button was tapped didn't effect the combo in any way. This meant that the absolute best way of performing these combos was to simply tap the button as fast as possible. Things will change in Brawl as they apparently decided to just cut to the chase. Now all players will have to do is hold down the attack button to keep a combo going.
New Assist Trophy: Dr. Wright
A new assist trophy trophy was revealed and followed by a resounding “Huh?" that echoed across the Internet. Dr. Wright, of SimCity fame will be popping out of trophy cases. He'll immediately use his magical pointing device to make skyscrapers grow out of the floor, popping any unsuspecting characters high into the air. This announcement is especially interesting because it really shows just how deep into the history of Nintendo's library they will go for these Assist Trophies.
New Item: Bumper
The Bumper from the original Super Smash Bros. is making a return in this game after being left out of Melee for some reason. Inspired by bumpers in pinball games, players that run into them will be bounced away. They can be placed on the ground or in the air, which should allow from some interesting situations. It could be an entirely new method of protecting the edges of the stage from recovering players.
New Character Donkey Kong
Another classic Smash combatant gets return confirmation this week with Donkey Kong. He's sporting a nice new fur texture that brings him to life a bit more. Based on initial screenshots and the text that went along with them, his special attacks look like they will remain consistent with those that were in Melee. He'll still have the haymaker, the ground pound, and the ability to pick up and carry other characters.
New Movie
The Dojo also officially released the same clip that was shown at Nintendo's press conference on wednesday. It features shots of both the Lylat Cruise and Bridge of Eldin stages in action, some of Wario's silly animations, the Cracker Launcher being used, and the final smashes of Pikachu, Bowser, and Link in action. Overall it also shows just how smooth and fast the game will play. The overall speed seems very consistent with what was set forth in Melee. Click the picture at the right to see the video itself.
New Stage: Smashville
While we didn't get any new information on a Wii iteration of Animal Crossing at the press conference, we were treated to a brand new stage for Brawl inspired by the game as today's update. Titled Smashville, it's a simple stage that appears to involve just a single main platform with a smaller moving platform hovering above. During any match several spectators from Animal Crossing will be standing in the background. It's unknown how they may effect the battles themselves, but several characters, including Tom Nook, Tortimer, Gracie, Crazy Redd, and Sahara, were shown in screenshots. Probably the most interesting aspect of this announcement is that the stage will be effected by the time of day based on the Wii's internal clock. This is taken so far as to have Totakeke show up in the stage if it is played on a Saturday at 8pm. On one hand the addition of this stage could mean that an Animal Crossing character will in fact be playable. On the other hand, if all of the key characters in the series show up in the background, who's left to battle it out?
That's it for this week's announcements. I'm sure most of you are hoping for a late E3 announcement revealing even more info, but it's not looking like that's going to happen. We'll just have to wait until next week.
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(where he pops out loosely depends on how much the player holds a direction from the time he enters the "level" to the time he emerges (kinda like the wish star item) 
