Super Smash Bros. Brawl is the third game in the series to come from Nintendo, and the premise of the series is both simple and unique. Pick one of the many well-known Nintendo characters and knock around other well-known Nintendo characters until they fall off the platform in the stage and can’t make it back.

In just a few ways, the game-play is like any standard fighting game: Select a character, pick a stage, move your character back and forth on that stage while jumping, ducking, blocking, avoiding attacks from your opponent and throwing attacks to damage him. But those similarities to fighting games are few enough that, when set next to the unique qualities of the game, Super Smash Bros. only vaguely resembles a standard fighting game.

Where Super Smash Bros. games differ from other fighting games is in the purpose of each match. Normally in a fighting game you’re supposed to hit your opponent until his health bar reaches zero, at which point he falls down and you win. In the Super Smash Bros. games, up to four players try to knock each other off platforms in the center of each stage. When competitors knock their opponents off the stage, they get a point added to their score. Their opponent is then brought back, and they continue the fight until the time is up or all but one of them runs out of lives.

The control of your character is closer to a side-scrolling platform jumper like Mega Man or Castlevania than it is to a fighting game like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. You can run around and jump from platform to platform and throwing different types of attacks is as simple as pointing the control stick and pressing one of two attack buttons. Every character is allotted at least three jumps to help that character recover after being knocked away from the platform: one jump from the ground, at least one mid-air jump, and at least one attack that also moves the character through the air.

To play the game, you can use any of the following: Wii Remote, Wii Remote and Nunchuk, Classic Controller or GameCube Controller. The learning curve on any one of those is minimal, but the GameCube controller is a personal favorite.

The game offers a ton of content over its predecessors. While the previous Smash Bros. offered 26 characters after every character had been unlocked, Smash Bros. Brawl has 23 characters to choose from even before unlocking any of the hidden characters. Mario, Pikachu, Donkey Kong and Kirby are some of the veteran fighters returning to the fray. Newcomers include Wario, Pokemon Trainer and Diddy Kong.

There is a “Home-Run Contest” in which you beat up a punching bag and then send it flying as far as you can; a “Target Smash” in which you break all the targets on a number of levels as quickly as possible; and a “Multi-Man Brawl,” which allows you to fight a constant stream of opponents. These three modes were in the previous Smash Bros., but in this one you are allowed to play them cooperatively with a friend.

There is an adventure mode called “The Subspace Emissary” that can be played single player or cooperatively with a friend also. This mode has side-scrolling action reminiscent of Streets of Rage or Ninja Turtles, and bunch of cool cut scenes; it takes hours to finish, and there are a ton of collectibles, some of which you can use to increase your character’s stats.

The “Brawl” section, which lets you fight your friends with your favorite video game characters, is well-balanced and simple to get into, but it allows for a huge amount of strategy. Knowing what actions you can take and which you should take in different situations could mean the difference between victory and defeat. One might even liken Smash Bros. Brawl to a sport.

The most important aspect of this is that there is not a single mode that isn’t worth spending hours in. Most games don’t try to include so much content because they’re afraid of not being able to deliver the quality along with that content – they’re afraid of biting off more than they can chew. Super Smash Bros. Brawl has bitten off a huge mouthful, and has chewed it impressively. This is one of the best games on the Wii and one of the best games on the current generation of video game consoles.

Jesse Fernandez can be reached at [email protected]