There is no good reason for Brawl to be delayed
mario January 30th, 2008
There, I said it. I’ll even go so far as to say it again:
There is no good reason for Super Smash Bros. Brawl’s release to be delayed over a freakin’ month after the Japanese release this week.
What have we been looking at all these months on the Smash Bros. Dojo? Screenshots and videos, every single one of them containing text or spoken dialogue in English. Clearly translation has been hand in hand with game development throughout the entire process. So how come Japan gets the game in January, and we have to wait until March? I wish Nintendo would offer explanations beyond “delays in the completion”. If the game’s coming out in Japan this week, it is finished.
When Melee came out on the GameCube back in December ’01, it had been a mere two weeks since the Japanese release. Both games had the option to switch languages. I can’t understand what the holdup could possibly be getting this game stateside.
Nintendo: I was willing to put up with a several-month delay, but this latest one doesn’t even make any sense.
Also: that last statement doesn’t actually mean anything, because I’m still going to buy the game when it comes out, so obviously I’m gonna have to put up with the delays. But that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about the situation.
[…] Still disheartened by those lucky Japanese kids playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl over a month ahead o…, I thought I’d console myself with a little bit of the previous entry in the series, Super Smash Bros. Melee. This was the sparkling diamond amid a sea of GameCube coal. It came out less than a month after the ‘Cube’s stateside release, and I played it almost daily for a long time. Even after unlocking all the characters and stages and sound tests, I still kept playing. The game had an amazingly well-refined balance and complexity to it that made each experience unique. I quite literally saw something new every time I played that game. Though the occasional Super Mario Sunshine or Resident Evil 4 would momentarily attract my attention, I’d always come back to Melee. I played and loved the original N64 game, but Melee surpassed it in every way. Only in the past year have I seriously neglected the game, but it wasn’t out of lack of enjoyment. My hope was to approach Brawl from a fresh perspective, untainted by Melee’s now antiquated graphics and control scheme. I want to be on the same play level as everyone else come release day. But since release day is now as far back as March 9th, I figured there wouldn’t be much harm in a little nostalgic run-through. […]