Super Smash Bros. Brawl

SUMMARY

Samus returns in the third installment of Nintendo’s best-selling Smash Brothers series, this time being able to fight without her suit! Long-time fans will also be pleased to note the reappearance of Pit from the Metroid series’ forgotten sibling, Kid Icarus.

(Japanese title: Dai Rantou Smash Brothers X)

Instruction Manual (US)

Instruction Manual (EU)

Instruction Manual (JP)

MDb Reviews

Release Date

For Super Smash Bros. Brawl, series director Masahiro Sakurai chose to allow game music composers from many different companies arrange Nintendo tracks. The best of these by far is Kenji Yamamoto's rocking guitar arrange of "Brinstar", first seen in Metroid Prime Pinball. This is the extended version of the track, which has higher quality guitars, and an awesome break to NES synths halfway through the loop. Yamamoto-san also composed an arrangement of the Metroid Prime "Title" and "Menu" themes, which has remastered synths.Minako Hamano also created a slick parasitic arrange of "Sector 1" from Metroid Fusion.

 

On the list of guest composers is the legendary Yuzo Koshiro (ShinobiStreets of Rage), who produced an offbeat Carribean electro-funk "Norfair" arrange that nods heavily to Hirokazu Tanaka's style. Tsukusa Masuko (Heroes of Mana) gives us an epic arrange of the ending theme to Metroid, which can be squarely compared with the arrangement from Super Metroid: Sound in Action. Yusuke Takahama (Bad Dudes) gives us an intense, Phazon-infused industrial rock arrange of "VS. Ridley". Lastly, we have Masato Kouda's (Devil May Cry) arrange, "Theme of Samus Aran, Space Warrior" is oddly named (as it is more clearly the ending theme to Super Metroid. It, too, has similarities to the SIA arrangement.

 

The selection is rounded off by some cleaned versions of the Metroid Prime and Echoes tracks, as well as copies of the Melee tracks. Oddly though, two of the Metroid tracks contain some rather annoying narration. The Metroid tracks are the only ones in the game to feature such narration, which is doubly strange. Thankfully, these are also played without the narration in their Subspace Emissary versions.