For years, the go-to fighting video game was Super Smash Bros., and this shouldn't come as a surprise because older Nintendo consoles and titles have been shaping entire generations of players up to this day and age. With the release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and smaller games like Brawlhalla, it seems like the genre has still plenty of room for new releases. Such is the case for the new title coming from Ludosity and Fair Play Labs, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, a fighting game that was immediately compared to Super Smash Bros. for its style and the way it handles characters coming from different shows.
As a matter of fact, Nickelodeon is a TV channel that provides a wide selection of children's cartoons, each with its own fan-favorite main characters and villains to look forward to in the new title. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is likely to feature more characters than those shared with today's trailer. Some of them include Patrick Star and SpongeBob SquarePants, as well as Leonardo and Michelangelo from the TMNT. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They make for the perfect fighting game characters to feature in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl.
How Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl Compares to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Super Smash Bros. games always included a plethora of characters from other Nintendo titles, and this culminated in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate creating debates over which characters should have been included. A perfect example of this is Waluigi, who fans desperately wanted in the game and were very vocal about it on socials, but ultimately he was never included. With Kazuya being the penultimate addition to the game, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate fans fear that rumors about the last DLC will be proved wrong with time, and characters like Dante, Master Chief, and Crash Bandicoot will never be featured.
This is a problem that Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl might end up facing as well, with the pool of available characters being limited both by resources and the fact that all of Nickelodeon characters would be hard to include in the game. Fans should keep their expectations in check because the game has just gotten its trailer, and despite the roster comprising fourteen characters from ten different shows, there is no way to know exactly how many are planned for release and how many will come after that. Regardless, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl remains a very fun game for Super Smash Bros. fans to pick up once it releases this fall, and it packs plenty of action already.
Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl will also feature 20 levels based on Nickelodeon shows, such as the Jellyfish Fields from SpongeBob SquarePants and the Technodrome from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. This too is not very different from what Super Smash Bros. games have done up to now, and then there is also a similarity in terms of what Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl has to offer with its multiplayer system, supporting both local and online games for up to four players. Speaking of online games, Ludosity already officially confirmed that Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl will feature rollback netcode, which is a system that allows the game to predict the players' actions, and that's absent from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
This is particularly useful because online matches can be frustrating when the game doesn't register inputs and moves, but rollback netcode fixes that with a preventive system. Overall, the comparisons between Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate are more than justified, but this doesn't mean it's a bad thing for either game. Instead, each game could positively influence the other, making up for a large, healthy community packed with fighting games.
Nickelodeon All-Stars Brawl releases this fall for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
