The night before Super Smash Bros. Brawl was to come out, I learned of a MIDNIGHT RELEASE PARTY that GameStop was offering; they usually tend to do this with high-profile games, and despite promising myself that I’d never put money in their registers again, I folded for the sake of convenience. I did not, in fact, hurry over to my neighborhood GameStop, shamefully harboring an embarrassing classroom-erection. No, I just didn’t, you know, feel like getting it in the morning. And silly me, I assumed that this place was a “store” who carried “products” on its shelves that a “consumer” may purchase, should they so desire.

It turns out a lot of people might have been thinking this, as they lined the walls of The Videogame World’s pawnshop in hot anticipation of the only Wii game worth buying since, God, I don’t even know… uh, Twilight Princess, I guess. These BRAWLERS, as they are known as, I’m sure, squatted next to magazine racks, embarrassing classroom-erections in full bloom, as they read the HOT TIPS that GamePro was likely offering towards the middle of the issue, which I’m sure were written by either MetalFrog35 or The Shogun Warrior Sith. I approached one of these intense characters, my hands already shifting into its natural “Wiimote grip” (this usually happens when I approach another gamer that I deem worthy of communication lol).

“So, where do I get Brawl?”

“Did you preorder it?”

“No… I assumed I’d be able to, you know, buy it from the store.”

“…you seriously didn’t preorder it? Man, I can’t even begin to know what to do with you!”

I approached the floppy-eared monkey at the register and, preorder ticket absent from my “Wiimote hand” (this is the hand that I Brawl with fyi); he gave me a good once-over, eyes flaring like he didn’t even know to address my person. Like the GamePro guy before him, he watched me in a sort of terrified bewilderment. You’d think that I had asked him to “kiss my peepee” behind “this pretty decent dumpster behind Sears.”

“…wait, wait, wait… HOLD ON. So you didn’t preorder it? You know that this is the game to own this year, right?”

I guess that I didn’t!

He turned to the Ringo Starr-looking fellow to his right and, in the most fragile, horrified tone, inquired, “What do we even do with this guy?!”

After several phone calls to virtually every GameStop in the area (and being treated as if I were the kind of person who pissed on the bathroom wall and didn’t even bother to use the hand soap afterwards), I went home and didn’t care. I picked it up at Best Buy 14 hours later with virtually no fanfare, outside of being offered a free player’s guide to a faux-fighting game starring Mario, a cartoon dinosaur, a tie-wearing ape and Solid Snake, who, of course, Kojima had begged that he be added to the roster. I made everyone who lives in my apartment gather around the television and, upon seeing the opening movie (in which the characters stand solemnly in front of a tangerine sunset on a cliff to that mind-numbingly stupid Latin theme), proceeded to kick them out immediately. With generally every review I’ve read, the author is quick to point out that Brawl is “pretty much the most badass fighting game that any Nintendo fan is sure to love!” I’ve read very few reviews, if any, that, upon petitioning their mothers to release their strangle-hold grip on their own testicles, rightfully exclaim that this is single-handedly the most embarrassing videogame that any of us have ever played.

It is safe to assume that, in a series whose sequels only aim to add more stuff, being disappointed is hardly a rational outcome. I mean, Halo 3 was just, well… it was Halo. How do you even begin to review a game like that? Presumably, a Brawl review could be written like so:

“A sequel to Super Smash Bros. Melee.”

There you go! Just slap a fresh, new synonym for “fight” on the end, throw in two or three new Mario characters and you’ve got yourself a million-seller. You know what Smash Bros. is, and if you’re familiar with its structure and gameplay elements, you’d know that the only thing they can do to “improve” upon the formula of its predecessor is add more Nintendo shit: more characters; more items; more trophies; more stickers. That’s when you know they’ve hit the bottom of the barrel, so to speak. They’re promoting goddamn stickers like it’s bottled Muhammad Ali piss. I would have given anything to be a part of the board meeting the day some asshole from the art department threw that little zinger out!

“…and…and… oh Jesus – it just came to me – the player will add stickers to the bottoms of their trophies!!”

You’d better believe that he’s getting two embroidered Brawl polo shirts for that one.

And yet Brawl just isn’t fun. It really, truly isn’t. This isn’t Nintendo’s all-star lineup, waiting impatiently inside your Wii to clash Master Swords with Bom-ombs the next time someone informs you, early on a Friday afternoon, man, John is totally getting us a bottle of vodka tonight. This is that friend who informs you to what activity he will be engaging in whilst in your bathroom. “Pause it, guys, I’ve got to go take a shit.” It’s being molested on the last train home. By Captain Falcon.

“Adventure mode” has been dubbed “The Subspace Emissary” (which, of course, makes no sense whatsoever – a telling sign of things to come!); this is basically that fun little mode from Melee sucked dry of its potential enjoyment and logic, half-baked, stripped down, reupholstered and artificially inseminated with eight and a half hours of a veritable who’s who of Nintendo idolization and self-masturbatory nonsense. Whereas we (“we” being people who want to get laid at least six more times before death) were perfectly content with the story given to us in the original Smash Bros. – wherein we see that these characters are merely Nintendo figurines being played with by a small child. I mean, what more of a reason do we need in order to rationalize why in the hell the Mario Bros. are battling Ness from Mother 2, or why Jigglypuff of Pokémon, uh, “fame” is my right-hand man against the Ice Climbers. Nevermind the fact that nobody born after 1987 knew what Ice Climber even was before snuggling up in their footed pajamas to play Animal Crossing all Easter morning. Nintendo infamously remarked, “Naaahhhh!” while pissing all over our eyelids and went on to craft some sort of “story” to better explain the existence of all our Favorite Nintendo Characters brawlin’ under one roof. The “story”, as far as I can tell, was written by a partially-retarded dolphin, who colored the inside of a brown paper bag with a Sharpie, turned it inside-out and vigorously inhaled until casting Tony Danza in the 1994 remake of Angels in the Outfield seemed like a “pretty good idea.”

Emotions and INTENSE DRAMA IN THE WORLD OF NINTENDO are displayed only in grunts and moans as Mario, Yoshi, Link and other “good” Nintendo characters duke it out against Wario, Bowser, Ganon and other “bad” Nintendo characters. They are bad because Nintendo tells you that they are. Or it could be from the oversized cannons they sport, which, once fired, turn the good characters into, you guessed it, action figures! Why? Oh shit, nobody knows. But how do we get Diddy Kong to turn back into his ol’ chimpanzee self again?! Oh yeah! You touch them. It took our Nintendo heroes at least three hours game-time to figure this one out! But who is it? Who is responsible for this mayhem! This carnage!

At one point we are directed to a scene in which Ganondorf, of The Legend of Zelda fame, is shown looking over video monitors that are strategically placed all over whatever world these characters inhabit (“Nintendoland”), high above in his ominous, evil tower (he’s a bad guy) that is never seen in any Zelda game in existence. The largest of the monitors clears, revealing that our old rival, none other than Master Hand, is the one who up to no good! It was at this point that everyone playing Brawl (which is, in fact, half of the world) paused the game, opened up their wallets, reviewed their driver’s licenses and, upon realizing that they were above the age of 16-years-old, began loading a 12-gauge shotgun in preparation for one less person on God’s green earth. Time to evacuate this planet in the most readily-grisly manner available; Houston, we have liftoff: The main antagonist in Super Smash Bros. Brawl is the mascot for fucking Hamburger Helper.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

As it turns out, this scene ultimately has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the “story”, and it is later revealed that the real final boss is that dude from TRON with butterfly wings stapled to his back. During the final encounter (again, after nearly eight hours of fighting enemies pulled straight from the pages of the decidedly post-fanboy Kingdom Hearts), we are told to fight this thing with the help of everyone’s favorite BLUE BLUR, Sonic the Hedgehog! He literally appears out of the blue three seconds before fighting the largely uninteresting, winged neon-sign of a man named Tabuu. Tabuu, of course, offers no explanation as to why he has recruited the evil handiwork of Bowser and co. to turn everyone back into what they actually are to begin with: toys. He’s just so evil that hey, why not? Of course, there’s no way he can win when we’ve got the tireless devotion of Super Mario and his super friends on the case! I mean, he didn’t actually think he could “win”, did he? (Whatever he wins, I’m not entirely sure.) You sit on your couch and you wonder, “Man, has Tabuu ever even beaten a Nintendo game?”

And then it’s over. After the overdone end battle animation in slow motion fades from the screen, we’re presented with lyrics to the main theme in both Latin and English. Something about “he was my friend” and “he was so strong” or something like that. “THE END” is displayed over that same tangerine sunset, both Nintendo heroes and foes standing silently; they look onward towards the setting sun, determined to make frequent appearances in the dreams of kids who still sleep on those Mario bedsheets salvaged from a childhood of digital memories somewhere in the late eighties. Those of us who can instantly find a heartbeat by placing a palm upon our chests, vomited all over the TV and began crying uncontrollably until the tears left our eye sockets raw for reasons that we can perhaps never truly understand.

Once that is over, you can enjoy the game for what it is: a goddamn mess. It’s going to be a real winner at parties for the next four years, and it’s the only thing (if I can even say this) worthwhile you’re going to do on your Wii for the next, well… four years. Most reviewers will repeatedly make a point to note the “massive amounts of gameplay” made available to the player. What they fail to mention is how a good 75% of these “modes” are simply a big ol’ handjob in slow motion. There is literally an option from one of the menus to view all of the games that Nintendo has made. When you view the dump truck heaps of trophies and stickers (!!!) that you can collect, it displays the logo of the console that the game appeared on. When playing the “coin launcher” mini-game, which is designed to net you the trophy versions Captain Olimar’s ship or Diddy Kong’s peanut poppers, you are winning Nintendo, and the ovaries that lie dormant in every man begin to bloom. What you’re losing, well, I can’t really say for certain. Maybe your humor – your soul.

The last time I picked up a controller and played Brawl, I did so with a hope in my heart. During a heated online match between me, as Lucas, and some kid, as Captain Falcon – who was, without a doubt in my mind, sporting a strategically-placed erection in his vertically-striped boxer shorts somewhere in Indiana or maybe Texas – this guy, he latched on to me with defiant vigor. While gripping my character, who is but a mere teenage boy, if that – he initiated one of Captain Falcon’s signature moves, which began with a prolonged pelvic thrust that shot my flailing, flaming virgin corpse high through the Hyrulian air and, upon landing, barked, “SHOW ME YA MOVES!”

I went somewhere dark and quiet and have yet to return.