Super Smash Bros. will be coming to 3DS this summer with a Wii U release to follow before the end of 2014, Nintendo confirmed during its latest, Smash Bros.-focused Nintendo Direct live stream. The two games share the same character roster, but they’ve each got platform-exclusive stages. No reason was given for the gap between releases.
The Nintendo Direct also revealed details of the game’s online mode, which is a feature of both versions. It splits between two separate options: “For Fun” and “For Glory” modes. The former is for casual fighting game fans, parties, and the like, with no constraints placed on which stages you play on or which power-ups are available. The latter is more pro-focused, and it’s meant to be tournament-friendly; all Pro Mode matches are restricted to the game’s “Final Destination” arena, and items are disabled. Fun tracks all of your wins while Glory tracks both your wins and your losses.
Final Destination is a unique entity among the game’s arenas. The map’s backdrop can actually draw from any of the other maps in the game, but the layout of its platforms is always the same. It’s meant to strike a balance between the aesthetic variety that you get from multiple arenas while maintaining a fixed layout to keep things fair in tournaments and other formal competition settings.
In addition to the platform-exclusive stages, the 3DS and Wii U releases also sport some differences in their core modes. On the Wii U side, the returning Adventure Mode serves as a tour through the game’s roster and characters, with a light story to tie everything together. The 3DS release ditches Adventure Mode for the new Smash Run, a four-player competitive mode in which players race one another through a dungeon filled with AI-controlled enemies, collecting power-ups as they go. After five minutes, the action switches to a more traditional Smash Bros. battle, with players using their amassed power-ups to clobber one another senseless.
That covers the key bits of what was revealed during the Nintendo Direct stream. For more, head over to YouTube to watch the whole thing right now.
