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Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Southeastern Ave. AU)

Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Developer(s)	Sora HAL Laboratory Game Arts Monolith Soft Paon Intelligent Systems
Publisher(s)	Nintendo Southeastern Ave. Interactive (North America only)
Designer(s)	Masahiro Sakurai (director) Kazushige Nojima (scenario writer)
Engine	Havok
Released	January 31, 2008 March 9, 2008 June 26, 2008 June 27, 2008 April 29, 2010
Genre(s)	Crossover Platform Fighter Party
Mode(s)	Single player, Multiplayer, Online multiplayer
Ratings	CERO: A ESRB: T OFLC: PG PEGI: 12+
Platform(s)	Wii
Media	Wii Optical Disc (Double-layer)
System requirements	128 free blocks of memory in the Wii System Memory
Input methods	Wii Remote, Nunchuk, Classic Controller, GameCube controller

Super Smash Bros. Brawl (大乱闘スマッシュブラザーズＸ, Great Fray Smash Brothers X), often shortened to "SSBB" or "Brawl" (スマブラＸ), is the third installment in the Super Smash Bros. series published by Nintendo and Southeastern Ave. Interactive. The game was directed by Masahiro Sakurai, who also created the two preceding Super Smash Bros. games, and was developed by an ad hoc development team consisting of Sora, Game Arts, and staff from other developers. This is the first Super Smash Bros. game to be published by Southeastern Ave. Interactive, however this is only the case for the North American release. The game released for Wii on January 31st, 2008 in Japan, March 9th, 2008 in North America, June 26th, 2008 in Australia, and June 27th, 2008 in Europe. The game requires 128 free blocks of memory in the Wii System Memory. A limited edition release of the game came with an extra cardboard sleeve depicting all of the characters available by default, and came with two postcards, providing a biopic on Zero Suit Samus and Zelda, giving a short summary of them, and showing images of their special moves.

Brawl is fundamentally similar to its predecessors Super Smash Bros. and Super Smash Bros. Melee, being a fighting game that contains characters with simple movesets and an emphasis on movement and ringouts. However, Brawl introduced many elements that would become standard in later installments, such as a stage builder and support for online play through the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. No data, except some vault data, can be copied to an SD Card or transferred onto another Wii. If the player does not create a save file when they start, they are unable to play via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, and vault data will not be saved. However, as of May 20, 2014, the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection has been shut down, therefore making it impossible for anyone to play Brawl online without hacking. While some characters were cut from Melee, many more were introduced, including third-party characters for the first time in the series.

Most of the game's musical score is made up of newly-arranged versions of pieces that originated in earlier video games starring the characters featured in Brawl, with the remainder taken directly from the original games. The new arrangements were composed in a collaboration between 38 renowned video game composers and has been critically acclaimed for its representation of different generations in gaming history.

Brawl received universal acclaim, with praise centered on its entertainment value despite issues relating to its content loading times, and its musical score was lauded for its representation of different generations in gaming history. The diverse selection of single-player content continues to be a noteworthy point of praise in comparison to both its predecessors and successors, while some of its gameplay mechanics and character balancing have been a point of criticism with fans.

See Super Smash Bros. Brawl for more information.