by Michael Fiscaletti, staff reporter
Super Smash Brothers has been an extremely profitable franchise for Nintendo, selling 490,000 copies of Super Smash Brothers WiiU within the first 3 days of its availability. From the Nintendo 64 console in 1999 to the 3DS and WiiU in 2014, this series has made quite the journey, and gone through many changes.
Many potential customers have been wondering what the difference is between Super Smash Bros. 3DS and Super Smash Bros. WiiU in order to determine what the best purchase may be. Each game has its own aspects to appeal to fans with.
To begin, Super Smash Bros. for the 3DS has the availability and convenience of being on a portable system that you can take anywhere, and play anytime. The WiiU is a home/television-bound console; players are not expected to be carrying it around with them. But handheld size and portability comes with cons of its own.
The 3DS version of the game has a slightly different graphical style than that of the WiiU, and is also at a smaller, less detailed resolution of 800×240. Some sprites run at a lower framerate of 30 frames per second(fps) instead of 60 fps, which means that players will see less of the overall animation because there will be less frames. The WiiU on the other hand runs at a consistent 60fps and 1080p resolution, the graphics are also more finely animated and detailed.
Both Super Smash Bros. 3DS and Super Smash Bros. WiiU have the same characters, or at least the capability of having the same characters. With the announcement of Mewtwo (a pokemon which was available in Super Smash Bros Melee, was taken out in Super Smash Bros Brawl, and has now been re-added to the series) being a part of the game, it’s been discovered that players are required to have both versions, and therefore both systems, in order to play as him. Without both versions, it’s currently believed that owners of only a single game will have the opportunity to purchase Mewtwo as a DLC (downloadable content).
Although both games have access to all characters in some way or another, they do not have access to the same stages, or “levels”. A few stages will be exclusive to their own respective games and consoles. Some exceptions are Palutena’s Temple and Kalos Pokémon League.
One of the Smash WiiU’s points of advertising and potential profit boost is the introduction of Amiibo to the game. Amiibo is a Nintendo-made series of figurines that can interact with certain games for the WiiU and 3DS. In the case of Super Smash Bros. it allows owners to make their own customizable AI (artificial intelligence) characters. Players will be able to use them to get upgrades, challenge themselves, challenge their friends, and pit AI against AI. The Amiibo are in no way essential to the game, but are there as an option if players are interested.
The final gameplay differences between Super Smash Brothers for the WiiU and Super Smash Brothers 3DS are the game modes. Smash 3DS has Smash Run; a game mode in which up to four players run around beating up enemies for power-ups which, after the timer runs out, are used to buff their characters against a boss. Due to space limitations, some mini-games did not fit onto the 3ds version though. These games- such as Target Practice- are still available for the WiiU version of the game.
Both games have received a positive rating from IGN with the WiiU game scoring a 9.8 and the 3DS version scoring an 8.8.
