I'm looking at you, HAL Laboratories.

So yeah, this may sound like a broken record on this site, (especially since Chris has wrote on his love for this game just last year.) but I love Super Smash Brothers. But what I don’t get is after years and years of the three games in this series being best sellers, why in the world have we not seen any other fighting game franchises learn from its example and make their games more like this one. Well, the sad answer is that what little we have, has yielded some underwhelming and quite disappointing results. So here’s my take on spinoffs of Super Smash Bros: Bad Games That Should Have Been Great.

Digimon Rumble Arena 2

Nefertimon vs. Greymon vs. Gomamon vs. Biyomon… in Tinker Toy-Town. Why am I not excited dammit?!

Now here’s one my brother and I bought on launch day. See, we played the predecessor for this game back on the PS1, and while it wasn’t anything spectacular, for a one-on-one digimon fighter, it wasn’t too bad. The roster didn’t have everyone, but a pretty good balance of the most popular characters from the first three (all three at the time) seasons. There were very few attack variations, but they implemented the digimon’s specials in very interesting ways. When we heard that the sequel for the GameCube would implement four player brawls, it was more than enough to get our young naïve minds to fork over the money. So we get it and… I guess we liked it. We played it solid for like three months at most before going back to Melee.

In hindsight, I have a lot of problems with Rumble Arena 2. Gameplay wise, it became much easier to spam characters that got knocked down. While there were a lot more attacks, they were way more repetitive. Also it played on a health meter instead of the damage meter I love in SSB that works so well and gives a sense of weight to everything. In terms of characters selection, while there were a lot of new ones, there were also several from the first game that were taken away. Instead of having a good balance of digimon from all seasons (or going the extra mile and giving us everyone), this time they just had all the partner digimon from Season one, then just only one partner digimon from each of the following seasons. The battle maps, while all colorful and creative, were very few in total. The supposed digivolution of the series just became a digi-dud.

TMNT Smash Up

Just another half-baked shell.

Now here is something that is even more disheartening. While Digimon Rumble Arena 2 was made by some third party company that banks on making cheap licensed games, TMNT Smash Up was made by the same group of people that worked on Super Smash Bros Brawl (in fact that was the huge selling point). One of the most creative and unique comic franchises made into a fighter by the same guys that made one of the most creative and unique fighting games of all time? That’s just a recipe for amazing, right? Of course those same creators forgot one very crucial ingredient this time around:

Effort.

Seriously, what a wasted opportunity. After my experience with Digimon, I was very careful to look closely before I attempted to buy this game. I haven’t actually played it, but if Chris’ response of the game is anything, you can see how underwhelming it was for a Turtles fan. From what I can see, this game was made to cater to fans of the most recent TMNT style of the Turtles, which makes absolutely no sense to me. Why? Why would you do this? The biggest group of hardcore gamers out there right now would have grown up watching the late 80’s cartoon and played Turtles in Time. If I’m going to buy a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fighting game, then gosh darn it, I better have the opportunity to play as Bebop and Rocksteady, Baxter Stockman, The Rat King, Metalhead, Leatherhead, Tokka and Rahzar, Groundchuck and Dirtbag… who else am I forgetting? [Pranger's Note: These guys.]

Well there goes two fractions of my childhood down the drain. I’m starting to wonder if another brawler half as good as Smash Bros is even possible.

Wait? You mean this actually exists? What the hell Japan?!

Any of you still unaware of what Shonen Jump is, it’s essentially a genre of Japanese cartoons and manga that are strongly based around combat and fighting. The list includes (but is not limited to) Bleach, Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece, Rurouni Kenshin, Shaman King, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Yu-Gi-Oh (Yes, even though all the fights are children’s card games, Yu-Gi-Oh is considered Shonen). Now any one of these series alone has enough characters, locals, and move sets to have its own fighting game (of which several of them do), but to have all of them in one game with four player brawls and Super Smash Bros levels of vitality, well that’s got to be a dream come true. Turns out that dream is real and has a name: Jump Super Stars with a sequel called Jump Ultimate Stars for the DS.

I have never played this series, and probably never will. But I can tell you right here and now that it sucks. It is more than disserving of its place at Bad-Games-That-Should-Have-Been-Great for one reason and one reason only: it never got an international release. I don’t understand. Why? Does Japan really think that a game made of all Japanese manga characters won’t sell in any other place than Japan? You know, if your game has Goku, Naruto, Yugi, Ichigo, and Luffy all on the front cover, I’m pretty damn sure it’s going to sell almost anywhere.

See? That looks wicked fun. Not fair.

With that, here’s my plea to developer Ganbarion and Nintendo their publisher: If you guys plan on making a third installment to this series for the 3DS in the near future, please please PLEASE reconsider and release it here in the states. I have never really gotten into the handheld market, but if something like this was on the 3DS, I’d buy it in a heartbeat. And if you guys decide to make a console version for the Wii, Bonus Stars!

[Pranger’s Note: The reason why Jump’s awesome all-star fighter games can never come over to the US is all due to copyright laws, or specifically, international copyright laws. Reason being, while Jump owns the rights to all these series in Japan, they don’t all share a US publisher, meaning there’d have to be a lot of deals made that’d cost way too much money. Therefore, the only method of playing these games is via an import or finding it at a super awesome electronics store like Fry’s.]

Anyway, thanks Pranger for stealing that thunder…better wrap things up. While I’m sure there have been other franchises that may have tried to implement the Super Smash style into their fighter game, I just haven’t found one I truly like. Some of you might be asking why I’d even care. If Smash Bros. is such an amazing game, why would I want something like that being copy-catted all over the place? Why can’t I be happy with just that one? Well not to sound stingy for anything, but I don’t want this trend in fighting games to die once Smash Bros. is gone. And I truly believe there are tons of franchises out there that are vast enough and have plenty of variety to create some epic battle royales. But hey, I’m sure you do too. So tell me, what game/movie/comic/cartoon series do you want to see get the SSB treatment?

P.S. Dragonball and Naruto are both off limits. They have seen more than enough games for one lifetime.

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Haven't I seen this game before somewhere...?

No Ubisoft. This is not how you make a Ninja Turtles game. You had a good concept going for a while. “Take the developers from Super Smash Bros Brawl and have them make a TMNT game to celebrate the Turtles’ 25th Anniversary.” Yes, good concept. But then we get a game that fails to understand what exactly makes Brawl such a successful game: It does justice to the source material.

TMNT Smash-Up for the Nitendo Wii will make you want to play Brawl, pure and simple. You’ll think you’re watching Brawl with new characters whenever you watch footage of gameplay. You’ll wonder when the Smash Ball comes out and what Leonardo will do when he picks it up. Do yourself a favor and just go play Brawl, because there isn’t much to offer fans of either Smash Bros-style gameplay or those in love with the Ninja Turtles. I fit into both categories and I wasn’t satisfied by either aspect.

It’s All About The Characters

Simply put, a game touting a concept like Brawl and the claim that it’s celebrating 25 years of Turtle Power dang well better include exactly one metric ton of characters. Instead we get…16, and three of those are Rabbids. What is a Rabbid? They are Ubisoft’s shovelware mascots, and what they’re doing in my Turtle game is beyond me. One, that’s understandable, but three? When you only have 16 total characters? And you have 25 years of Turtle history to pick from? What, did you get lazy? Did you forget about the entire 80′s cartoon? The movies before the CGI TMNT? The ACTION FIGURES?!

No seriously, I'm sure I've seen this game before?

Playable characters: The four Turtles, Splinter, Shredder, April, Casey Jones, a Foot Ninja, Karai, (Shredder’s daughter for those not watching the current show), Nightwatcher, (Raphael’s alter ego from the new movie), Fugitoid, (from the original comic, the new show, and action figures, so YAY), and Utrominator, (based somewhat off of Krang and his species, the Utroms). And that’s it save for the three Rabbids. No, I don’t consider that a spoiler.

The spoiler is the characters not included by Ubisoft, including Usagi Yojimbo, Bebop, Rocksteady, Baxter Stockman, The Rat King, Leatherhead, Tokka, Rahzar, Ace Duck, Genghis Frog, Ray Fillet, Slash, Hun, Super Shredder, or a Triceraton. And that’s just off the top of my head. That comprises a nice grouping from the original cartoon, the new cartoon, the movies, and the action figures. Ubisoft dropped the ball there, or better yet, they dropped the Smash Ball there.

Plays Like a More Popular Game

So gameplay, let’s talk about it. Gameplay isn’t too pitiful. You will feel a bit like the characters can float too much, but otherwise combat is solid and play control works well. You are able use the Wiimote, the Nunchuk attachment, or just a GameCube controller. Basically, you can use Brawl’s control-scheme. Just like Brawl, “smashing” the control stick with a button press will result in a stronger attack, but the goal in Smash-Up isn’t to knock players out of the ring but rather to whittle their health down to a KO, so a heavy attack will just stun your opponent and knock them to the ground. When you’re knocked down, you’ll stay on the ground a lot longer than you’d like.

Crocodile hazards are never cool, unless they happen to someone other than myself.

Stages are fairly well done. It is impressive to see what every stage does as most stages don’t just have the one area but actually break away to new sections of the same stage, so fights aren’t exactly stagnant in that regard. The only downside is that the stages have borderline nothing to do with the Ninja Turtles. There is a rooftop stage and a sewer stage, a stage with the Technodrome in the background, a stage in a jungle similar to some scenes in the CG TMNT…uh…a Japanese pagoda stage? And that’s about all that connects to the Turtles. Everything else is just…there. Cool stages, like a sinking ship or a train, but what does this have to do with the Turtles? It all came down to Ubisoft once again not using the property to the fullest regard.

I’m surprised Ubisoft didn’t just pick other characters from their popular franchises and throw them in, just to make a Ubisoft-themed brawler instead. Altair from Assassin’s Creed, Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell, the Prince from Prince of Persia, and Rayman from the Rayman series all would have been cool to add. They might as well if they’re going to just toss in three Rabbids for the heck of it.

Yeah I'm sick of this image, too.

If you couldn’t guess, I was extremely disappointed with TMNT Smash-Up. For kids, yeah, they’ll probably enjoy it. For fans of Brawl, don’t worry; this won’t overshadow Brawl in any way. For Turtle fans, sorry, your game still hasn’t been made. This is strictly a free rental game. Don’t even pay $8 to rent it. Make someone else rent it for you if you need to play it, but I warned you, you’ll just want to play Brawl.