Dojo Day: Teletubbies with Flowers

Happy New Year everyone, and welcome back to the traditional Dojo Day format! Today I'll be talking about Teletubbies Pikmin, Solid Snake, and (possibly) Animal Crossing. What do they all have to do with each other? Why, they're all animals, or people with names like animals, or plantish-animal creature things. It made sense when I first wrote it. Welcome to Dojo Day

Melee Stages: Part 2: The thrill known by Joystiq's Chris Grant as the "trickle strategy" doesn't get any better than this! Guess what! There's more Melee stages in the game! In case your hands are shaking too much to check it yourself, the confirmed ones are Yoshi's Island, Corneria, Onett, Brinstar, and Rainbow Ride. </sarcasm>

STADIUM: Multi-Man Brawl: Multi-Man battles are back as expected, but this time the different characters you fight are "Alloys" instead of "Wireframes." There is the "Red" male Alloy, the "Blue" female one, a conspicuously-horned short "Yellow" one, and a "Green" Kirby-esque one. In addition to single-player mode, hardcore nerds can also play co-op Multi-Man, either local or online. Dang, with all these awesome online modes, you'd think they would give us a little more freedom.

Pikmin & Olimar: Wow, spot-on there, Oracle! Captain Olimar and five colored PIkmin join the fight, further rubbing in the face of fans the fact that there is still no info on a potential Pikmin Wii. Even though they're just Teletubbies with flowers on their heads, I'm pretty interested in this character. I never played the original game, but this looks like a great, unique addition to the roster (similar to Pokemon Trainer).

Pikmin: World Map: The epic score for Pikmin makes its debut with the World Map music. I'm loving the sound of this fun song, even without having played the game.

Snake: Final Smash: Snake calls in a helicopter, jumps onto its drop-down ladder, and takes out a grenade launcher. Floating in the foreground with the stage in the background, Snake shoots 12 shots at his enemies before returning to normal. I'm interested in the new items and attacks that take characters to the foreground of the battle, but I think a much more unique Final Smash could have been developed for Snake.

Pikmin & Olimar: Special Moves: One of Olimar's special attacks is to pull up Pikmin from the ground, and he can have up to six of them following him at one time. The five types are red, yellow, blue, purple, and white, each with elemental powers (fire, electricity, etc.) and different features (arcs when thrown, weight, durability, etc.). If Olimar runs out of Pikmin, he has to either pull more up, or fight with his insufficient individual attacks. This mode of play is so radically different that I just might consider him among my new favorite characters.

First off, let's get past OMGZORSPIKMIN. I'm really hoping that the inclusion of Captain Olimar shows that Nintendo is willing to create a new Pikmin for the Wii, which would help satiate clamoring hardcore fans. HAL is also (refreshingly) breaking into new turf with the series, adding two characters already (Pokemon Trainer, Captain Olimar) with unique, "backseat" fighting styles as they send others to attack for them.

As I mentioned above, the "Yellow Alloy" in Multi-Man Brawl has some very familiar horns. Remember a little game called Animal Crossing, in which every human character had the same odd-shaped horns? With an Animal Crossing stage, Pitfall, and this character included, I believe that an Animal Crossing human is a completely plausible, and in fact extremely likely addition. Who knows, maybe his attacks will use his shovel, axe, and other items, and one of his costumes could be the femal AC character model. This would also coincide well as promotion for the planned Animal Crossing Wii game.

Only time will tell, but expect that Animal Crossing announcement in the next week or two, as it has now been almost totally confirmed. In closing, I'm sorry about posting this on Sunday again, but I had that Gundam SEED review to write. Vampt Vo, signing out!

[via Smash Bros. Dojo]