Last night, I headed out to Eagan, Minnesota, to participate in the first round of GameStop’s national Super Smash Bros. Brawl tournament. This spurned a tale of surviving bitter environments, fierce competition, and being assigned an extremely unfamiliar new character to play as. If you’re only interested in my preview, however, scroll down to the bold text.

We got to the GameStop at around 8, then shortly after were told that we needed to wait in a line outside if we wanted to participate in the tournament, since they were only admitting the first 32 participants. After much grumbling and waiting outside, another employee came to the store, bringing along common sense and a sign-up sheet so we could get in without having to freeze. After heading to Chipotle for dinner, we came back at 9 or so, after the store had closed, under the impression that they’d let us in at 9:30, as they said. This was not to be the case.

At 10pm, when the tourney actually started, we now were equipped with three vital pieces of knowledge: 1) we were not to choose our own characters, 2) we were only to play with the Wiimote + nunchuk control scheme, and 3) we couldn’t all fit in the store so we were going to wait outside. Two by two, names of opponents were called out, and they would go inside to do battle. Each time they came out, everyone would crowd around to try and figure out who won, and how to play with those controls. Once I figured out that C was jump, I figured I would be alright. And indeed, I was given Bowser to play against Olimar; despite much skill from my opponent, I managed to advance to the next round, and was awarded the prize of being let inside.

(Actual gameplay impressions begin here.)

Before the second round began, though, there was a complication, and we were assigned new characters; I managed to be landed with Captain Olimar when my turn came by. Truth be told, he controls a lot like any other character, with the key difference being that without an army of Pikmin by your side, you won’t be doing much. I unfortunately forgot about that part in my second match, but still managed to barely scrape by with a victory. In later matches I always made sure I had a full army of Pikmin.

The Wiimote + nunchuk controls aren’t very bad at all, they’re just unfamiliar. Luckily, I knew how to jump from information previously gathered, and that was one of the only things I needed, since I do a lot of Smash Attacks when I play. The absence of one-button grabs bothered a lot of people, but since I always used Z+A before I didn’t think I’d have a problem. Whenever I tried to grab, though, I ended up doing a rolling dodge instead. I’m not sure if that was my fault or not. In any case, though I had to adjust to my other hand doing the jumping, I generally had a good grip on the controls from the get-go and could battle competently, though not quite to my full potential.