Brawl News!

Well, there's loads of Super Smash Brothers Brawl news, so I thought I might as well put it all in one convenient post!

First off, the Japanese 24-hour sales record was broken by Super Smash Brothers Brawl selling over 500,000 copies! Now this may not sound like a lot compared to America's record set by Halo 3, but considering Japan is 26 times smaller than the US, and the only reason that many were sold was because most gamers couldn't find a copy... It's A LOT! In fact, over 80% of copies shipped were sold, which is quite insane. It's also notable to mention that many stores sold out of Gamecube controllers as well. So, you might want to buy some before it goes on sale near you!

Actually, the game is so hard to find, that many gamers have no problem spending over $300 for the game on eBay. Of course, some of the bidders in these auctions are Americans, since import sites like Play-Asia, can't even get there hands on a copy, which is charging quite a bit for a copy of Brawl as well, not to mention the shipping rate for the US. Actually, if you order one from Play-Asia now, it would already be released in the States before you got it.

And if you were lucky enough to have both a Japanese Wii and Brawl, then you may still be out of luck. As many Japanese gamers were enraged to find the game didn't work on the their console. Nintendo says because the game is dual-layered, even the least bit of dirt on the drive could cause the game not to function properly. And so Nintendo is now cleaning Wiis for free and paying for shipping. People getting their consoles cleaned should get it back in a week, but they're only doing it for regions Brawl was released in, so importers may be disappointed to find they have a dirty little Wii!

And of course, those who did get Brawl are sacrificing play time to gloat across YouTube, and take a closer look into the game. A nice quick (well, actually not quick at all) file dump shows that eight characters originally intended for the game were scrapped at the last second. The dump also revealed 582 Trophies, 27 assist trophies, and LOADS AND LOADS of music. So much music, in fact, that nobody wants to take the time to count. And with 36 composers and developers they admit they went a bit overboard, we're all in for a hell of a game, once it releases on March 9th in the US!

PS: I'm still trying to get an American copy in advance, but it's proving to be quite the challenge. I'll let you all know how my quest for Brawl goes, as it progresses.