As predicted, Super Smash Brothers Brawl has been dominating nearly all of my free time since it's release on March 9th, 2008. The game is so much fun and so addicting making it impossibly hard to put down! I play Bowser and Pokemon Trainer as my main characters, mostly because Bowser and Charizard are my two most favourite Nintendo characters (actually just favourite characters period!). I'm really having a lot of enjoyment with this game, and might even go so far to say that it's even funner than Melee! I'm just gunna haveta blame Brawl for me hardly getting anything done this month!

As I stated in my last update, Super Smash Bros. Melee was my undisputed favourite game of all time. This masterpiece was so enjoyable and competitive and never got boring even years later. Speaking of competitive, another one of the reasons I enjoyed Melee so much was competing as a semi-professional "Smasher", competiting in Smash Brothers tournaments near and far (I would say semi-professional because I wasn't paid to do it). Those familiar with the professional smash community such as SmashBoards may have been curious about my alias and the way it is spelled, at least when it comes to professional Bowser players. I am indeed the pro Bowser Smasher "MagnuM", dedicatedly representing the coolest character of all time. I have had the privalege of playing the best Bowser players in the world such as Gimpyfish, CAOTIC, Arash, Captain Jack, Gojira, and Ken. If anyone is interested in checking out a few videos from a bit farther back in my Melee Bowser Career, just do a YouTube search for magnum bowser. I'll also post my signature banner I use at SmashBoards at the bottom of this page.

Unfortunately, Bowser was severely disadvantaged in Melee, something I disappointingly found out quite early. He was plagued with a lot of lag, awfully short range, weak moves compared to how powerful he is, was not as hard to KO as he should have been... and the list goes on. However, the ones faithful to Bowser were not deterred by these shortcomings, and strived to take Bowser to his limit, perhaps even becoming a tournament capable character. Techniques like Fortresshogging were introduced to try to give Bowser a competitive edge. Despite the efforts, the best Bowser has been considered on the Melee "Tier List" by general consensus of the best and most experienced Smashers was about the middle of the Low Tier. This was extremely frustrating to me because I had hoped that Smash Brothers would be a game in which you could win a tournament with your favourite character, and there wouldn't be advantaged characters and disadvantaged characters (i.e. tiers). I was practically praying Bowser would be better in Brawl

After a long 6 years of struggling with an under-privaleged Bowser in Melee, the Wii's most highly anticipated flagship title finally launches, along with an updated Bowser. After almost a month of hard play with the game, and especially with Bowser, it still seems too early to tell anything for certain. It is hard to say whether Bowser has gotten better, worse, or has remained about the same. One thing I noticed quite early is that his ground game seemed a lot better than his aerial game, which was pretty much a complete reverse in Melee. Bowser is definitely harder to KO on the sides, but he still seems to be easily KO'd off the top of the stage. Bowser's B-moves seem pretty beefed up, and his side-B snatching body slam is great for catching your opponent off guard (and even pulling a suicide KO if you can pull it off). Still though, to me the big turtle still seems pretty slow and laggy, is way too easy to juggle because of his size, and should deliver more power to his punch. It is hard to say how he'll land up on the stack, although most of the characters, amazingly enough, all seem to be pretty equal in skill and balance.

Wow I spent nearly an entire update just blabbing about Brawl! I'm sure I'll be addicted for quite a while, however my lack of progress and updates on The Bowser Shrine was definitely weighing on my conscience, as it should and constantly is. If anyone wants to play me online in Brawl using Nintendo WiFi, just e-mail me so we can coordinate friend codes.

Today's small update is just uploading the most recent Bowser screenshots that have been posted recently for Smash Brawl and Mario Kart Wii:

On the Friday before Brawl launched in North America, the The Official Super Smash Brothers Brawl Website posted a large collection of user-submitted fan screenshots. Most of them are quite funny and some of them are pretty cool. It definitely shows off Brawl's robust screenshot feature, which was quite inconvenient to do in Melee with the whole "Camera Mode". Since I'm not sure whether these screenshots would be considered "Fan Screenshots" or not since they were posted on an official site, I'll post them under the official Bowser screenies I've gotten from the Smash Dojo, at least for the time being.

The latest screenshots of Bowser in Mario Kart Wii have him showing off his in-game motorcycle. It is pretty hard not to laugh seeing Bowser burning it on a bike and going off jumps... just wait until he pulls a wheelie!

Summary:

9 screenshots added to the Bowser Screenshots section for Super Smash Bros. Brawl
3 screenshots added to the Bowser Screenshots section for Mario Kart Wii