Do you remember running around on the playground as a kid, pretending to be different superheroes and pop culture characters all to determine who would win in a fight, KITT from Knight Rider or Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man? If so, then this is the game for you. With an impressive roster of video game characters, copious game play modes and customization options and more fun than a barrel full of Diddy Kongs, even the glitches brought about by the inclusion of online play can’t take away from Super Smash Bros. Brawl the title of “Most Fun You Can Have on the Wii”.

If you never played the previous games in the series, the Smash Bros. games have always been about taking control of your favorite Nintendo character and beating the snot out of your friends. With items from Nintendo games liberally sprinkled throughout matches, Smash Bros. matches are fast and frenetic affairs, where fortunes can change on a dime, or the drop of the Donkey Kong hammer. The joy lies in the simplicity of the controls, with no long, complicated combos to master, simply a stick to move with, two attack buttons, a shield and a grab button. The controls allow for casual gamers to feel right at home in the game, as well as give those willing to invest the time, plenty to work with to come up with devastating strategies.

The simplicity of the controls also lends itself to multiple controllers, and if you can plug it into your Wii and use it to move pixels, chances are you can use it with Brawl. Players can use just the Wiimote, the Wiimote and Nunchuck combination, classic controller, or Gamecube controllers including the fantastic Wavebird controller. With four schemes at your fingertips, the hardest thing about finding a control scheme that works is getting your hands on a used Gamecube controller. The controls are as tight and responsive as ever with zero lag or slowdown on local games.

As matches are very fast affairs, having even the slightest bit of stutter would cause certain doom, yet the Wii is able to keep an impressive frame rate, while showing off some of the prettiest graphics to grace the console yet. The fighting stages all have different amounts of activity ranging from destructive terrain to ever changing camera angles, requiring you to not only fend off attackers, but keep moving with the camera lest you fall off the stage. Some stages have environmental hazards such as the Mario Kart racers which move through different parts of the stage, catching combatants unaware and mowing them down mid-fight. Even the least interactive of the stages are still beautiful to look at and convey the right amount of atmosphere, evoking memories of playing Nintendo games of yore.

While the stages are great, without a good roster of characters, they’re nothing but pretty background pictures, and in this area, Brawl continues to impress. 35 characters, 14 of which need to be unlocked, are ready to be put through their paces ranging from the extremely fast and agile Zero Suit Samus to the heavy and powerful Bowser. With so many characters, including third party appearances by Solid Snake and Sonic the Hedgehog, it’s next to impossible to not find a character that fits your fighting style.

The impressive number of in-game items is also back, this time augmented by the Smash Ball, the love child of a piñata and a disco ball, which, when beat upon sufficiently, confers a Final Smash attack to whoever broke the ball open. These attacks are not only devastating when pulled off correctly, but are a blast to watch, even when you’re on the receiving end of them. For those that enjoy a straight up skills match, all game items can have their appearance frequency lowered, or items can be turned off completely for tournament style matches.

Along with setting item frequency, you can customize pretty much every aspect of how matches are played, including the gravity, how much damage players start with, how much they do, whether or not they constantly spew fire, etc. If you can think of it, chances are you can adjust it. Setting up tournaments is a breeze with up to 32 people able to compete, and the ability to set win conditions based on last man standing, or most number of knockouts. As much as the game is when played solo, getting three or more other people in the same room for a match is an absolute blast and must be experienced to really appreciate just how much fun this game can be.