Portal:Video games/Featured article/94

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is the third installment in the Super Smash Bros. series of crossover fighting games, developed by Sora and published by Nintendo for the Wii video game console. Game development began in October 2005 with a creative team that included collaborations with various second- and third-party Nintendo developers. The number of playable characters that players can control in Brawl has grown from that of Super Smash Bros. Melee; Brawl is the first game in the series to expand past Nintendo characters and allow players to control third-party characters. Like its predecessors, the object of Brawl is to knock an opponent off the screen. It is a departure from traditional fighting games, notably in its simplified move commands and emphasis on ring outs over knockouts. It includes a more extensive single-player mode than its predecessors, known as The Subspace Emissary. Brawl also supports multiplayer battles with up to four combatants, and is the first game of its franchise to feature online battles via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. The game received positive reviews, with critics praising the game's entertainment value, despite issues relating to Brawl's loading times. It has sold a total of 8.43 million copies worldwide as of March 2009, and it is the fifth best-selling Wii game.