I was so excited for Brawl. I followed the Dojo and discussed the updates daily, speculating on what characters would be added and admiring the shiny new graphics.

Then it released. And it was… ultimately pretty disappointing. The overall slowness of the gameplay, the tripping mechanic, the brownish graphics which have since fallen well out of fashion — these all contribute to the fact that Brawl is seen as the black sheep of the Smash games. So much so that there was a proliferation of mods to “fix” Brawl in various ways (mostly by making it play more like Melee, while retaining the new characters).

Still, Brawl gave us many things, including a whole new group of beloved characters and the popular My Music feature. It certainly wasn’t all bad, and I had many hours of fun with it regardless.

So let’s get to voting on stages. There were more stages than characters so they get an extra round at the beginning. Based on your posts in the Melee results thread, Pirate Ship has been granted a bye.