What if Gunpei Yokoi, creator of Samus of Metroid Prime fame, hooked up with Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario of Donkey Kong fame, and agreed there should be a knock-down, drag-out fight to the finish to see who the toughest imaginary video game character would be?

Enter Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

In this arena, Nintendo has created a place where the gamer can compare all of their favorite characters from the Nintendo franchise and put them in head-to-head match-ups and see how they'd fare.

Imagine Kirby taking on Princess Peach, or Link vs. Pikachu.

And they get to keep their special powers to use against their foes.  Magic mushrooms, laser rifles, flame-throwing flowers.  Its all in there.

If you're already familiar with Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo GameCube, you'll find this product on the Wii platform evolutionary and not revolutionary.  In fact, one disappointment of this new entry into the fray of Fight Club for Cartoons is that the motion features afforded the gamer  using the Wii controller go mostly ignored by the game developers.  The game is designed to use the old-school GameCube controllers.  The only 'feature' that exploits any new Wii controller capabilities is the brief 'hello' and 'taunt' noises uttered by the characters when selected and played through the Wii's handheld speaker.

The Nintendo WiFi Connection is supported, and is of course a new feature over the GameCube version, allowing gamers to play head-to-head against total strangers anywhere in the world.  Sounds cool in the book, but this reviewer was disappointed with the WFC gameplay, as the flow was frequently disrupted by sluggish internet response.  The manual even mentions this - not a good sign.

One improvement Brawl brings to the battlefield is a much-enhanced Adventure mode, where a player (or now, two players co-operatively) can go on an extended adventure and play different characters as the plot evolves.  Cooperative Gameplay in Adventure mode can be tedious at times, though, as the two players are tethered by what seems to be an invisible yardstick; the players cannot separate, or player 2 is automatically teleported back to player 1's position, which can be awkward in the heat of battle.

Completion of a section in the adventure is frequently rewarded by short videos with cameo appearances by some of Nintendo's more famous characters, teasing the story along and giving a glimpse as to what dangers await on the adventure.

Game progress is a bit easier to manage in Brawl, saving progress in adventure mode as a map, so resuming an adventure is far less tedious than Melee. Players collect and unlock other characters during most modes of gameplay, just like Melee.  Aside from raw score numbers, progress is measured by small trophies representing each character in the game, and they can be arranged in a virtual trophy room.  Virtual coins are collected during play, and can be used to acquire more trophies from a virtual vending machine in the trophy room.

Setup features and customizations abound in Brawl, much like Melee.  You can set the depth of play, skill levels, select characters to compete (up to four, CPU or human), and even use the stage builder to create your own arenas of combat.  Be careful letting your kids customize too much; getting the game language back from Japanese to English requires a Kanji translator at the ready.  I'm just sayin'...

When it comes right down to it, this game is best as a one-on-one beat-the-snot-out-of-the-other-guy 2D fighting game.  There is something truly rewarding about seeing Zelda pick up a giant black mallet and begin swinging it frantically about the stage, sending the likes of Donkey Kong and Wario flying off into oblivion.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is rated T for Teen, but the violence is all cartoon-on-cartoon, and when a player is defeated, he or she simply flies offstage and disappears in a flash of light.  But moms and dads, don't be fooled: This is a FIGHTING GAME - that's why it says BRAWL in the title.  The object is to beat up the other guy, so this may not be for your young'n, if cartoon violence isn't your thing.

I played it first and let my 7-yr-old son play it as well, since there is no carnage or bloodshed.  It's more like Wile E. Coyote meets Anime.  My son sees more violence watching the cartoons that have been spun-off from the game franchises on Saturday mornings, like a Y7-rated TV show.

So if you're looking for a game to take away some of the daily stresses of life and project them onto an imaginary character and have him do all the dirty work, this game is for you.  You can even do like I do: Pretend Yoshi is your boss and send him flyin' with your ion cannon!