Dojo Day: TDB Edition

Sorry everybody, but this Dojo Day article is taking a while to write, so we have to delay it. You know, adding the name Sonic to the text requires another week of preparation. But hey, at least you'll be able to be able to read a half-finished version of this article at this year's E For All! You can take pictures of the article too! And at least for now you can settle for J-Vision, right? Welcome to Dojo Day.

Zero Suit Samus-Special Moves: Her moves are--sadly--100% paralyzer based, unlike normal Samus' diverse moveset. Special is a short range paralyzer shot, Side Special is a Plasma Whip, and Up Special is an enemy-grabbing Plasma Wire. The paralyzer can also grab onto ledges.

Kirby-Final Smash: As seen in the first Brawl trailer, Kirby's Final Smash involves him placing all of his enemies in a pot and boiling them into some horrible mass of burnt video game franchises and kirby-related items. Way to go Sakurai. Nobody noticed that your character gets to cook everybody else like they're nothing more than food!

WarioWare-Ashley’s Theme: This is the catchy little tune for WarioWare character Ashley, as seen in WarioWare Touched. While I liked the original on DS, I feel that the desire of the developers to remix it for Brawl has created a very inferior and artificial version.

Sonic: ZOMGZZZZ!11111!!!!1111!!!oneone! SONICIS IN BRAWL!!! I never would have expected THIS one! So there you go, fanboys. Now maybe you can stop playing Sonic Adventure 2: Battle long enough to play Brawl and realize that the former is, in fact, not the best game on the Gamecube. That title clearly belongs to Bratz: Rock Angels. Also, there's a video in here introducing Sonic. It's pretty cool, though we have to hear more of his horrible voice actor, and constantly be reminded that SEGA killed Sonic years ago.

Nintendo Conference Fall 2007 Movie: It's a pretty cool promotional video for the game that was shown at Nintendo's Fall Press Conference. This one's got our first footage of confirmed gameplay, as we can see damage counters on the bottom. There's a few unmentioned Pokemon in the video, as well as some nice footage of characters we haven't seen yet in video form. (i.e. Ike, Lucas)

Sonic: Special Moves: Guess what everybody! Sonic special moves...involve rolling...and SPINNING! So many surprises this week, I don't know what to do with myself. Side Special is a generic spinning dash, complete with aerial combos. Down Special is an apparently similar move which involves charging up a presumably horizontal-only (no combos) spin attack. Up Special is a spring jump that creates a spring for Sonic to jump off of. It will stay for a short time, allowing other players to use it.

New Launch and E for All: In classic guilty schoolboy fashion, they give us bad news coupled with an attempt to keep us happy. Brawl's new North American release date is on Febuary 10th, 2008. Sakurai cites a need for more development time, in order to "make the game the best it can be." As for the (kind of) good news, Brawl will be playable at the E for All Expo, the new public-attended replacement for E3. It will be held in the Los Angeles Convention Center beginning October 18.

Taking Snapshots: Remember all those times when you paused Melee during a funny scene (much to the chagrin of your friends) and wished you could take a picture? Well, now the underused Snapshot feature from Melee will be built into the pause screen of Brawl, allowing you to take pictures at any time and save them either to your Wii or an SD card. You can then send these images to friends over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. There is a blurred out feature that, according to the blog, is "still in development."

Well, this was sure an action-packed week. Even so, the end of this article will have to wait. I need some more development time to add buttons to my screenshot editor. You know, making a game is hard. And Sonic. Boy, is he hard to deal with. His agents want everything: cereal brands, billboard campaigns, McDonalds Happy Meal toys, you name it. The next thing you know, he'll be running Nintendo, and Iwata'll be out on the streets.

Sonic and the delay are obviously the big talks of the week, but let me put these two things out here. For one, Sonic was nearly guaranteed to be in the game. You can't have Snake from Konami, and not have Sonic from SEGA. Second, the delay is also not a huge surprise. Nintendo is notorious for delaying their games in order to spend more time for development. Anybody remember the nearly 2-year delay for Twilight Princess? So all you newcomers to the world of video games, wake up. Nintendo does this all the time. It's not some crime against humanity to delay Brawl so that they can make it a better game. If Nintendo released their games on time, you'd never play them--they'd all suck.

This delay is actually good for some gamers who aren't totally Brawl-obsessed. You see, now I have one less game to buy this holiday season, taking my already saturated list (BioShock, Super Mario Galaxy, Battalion Wars II, Oblivion) down. Believe me, when you have these games spread out, you'll feel better than having all of them condensed into the same spot. The only reason the delay bothers me is... well, I'll have to keep writing this column till February. The concept still makes me shudder.

Finally, I'd just like to say I'm loving the idea of screenshots. That was one of the most sorely needed (and rarely noticed in its absence) features of Melee. As for that mysterious button, I'm thinking something like an image editor or option to turn it into a sticker.

[via Smash Bros. Dojo]