15 New Stages Added To 'Super Smash Bros.’

The Super Smash Bros. game for Nintendo 3DS is seen at the 2014 Electronic Entertainment Expo, known as E3, in Los Angeles, California June 11, 2014. Reuters/Kevork Djansezian

Although months have gone by, “Super Smash Bros.” continues to be – no pun intended – a smash hit. The game has achieved plenty of popularity, primarily through the Wii U version but also from the handheld 3DS iteration, which is fairly impressive.

The game’s eight player battles have proven to be one of the main factors of its popularity, but it has also been a detriment to it due to the large number of character making the game feel cramped. Thankfully that problem may have been solved with 15 new stages added to “Super Smash Bros. for the Wii U” that have eight player battles in mind.

For anyone not up to date with Nintendo related IP, “Super Smash Bros.” is a popular fighting game series featuring some of Nintendo’s most popular characters and occasionally a guest star from a different game company. Popular mainstays like Mario, Luigi, Donkey Kong and Pikachu have continued to be part of the series while facing off against characters like Solid Snake from “Metal Gear Solid” and Sonic, everyone’s favourite Hedgehog.

The 15 new “Smash Bros.” stages come with a free download as part of the new 1.02 update, which was reported by Game Informer. While players won’t be able to battle on all the stages with seven players, they will be able to face off against their seven friends in eight player versions of nine regular stages and six final destination stages.

As far as future or paid downloadable content goes, this looks to be the end of it. The developer of the game Masahiro Sakurai stated in an interview with Video Gamer that there will be no more paid DLC aside from legendary psychic Pokemon Mewtwo who comes from the first generation of the Pokemon series. Sakurai stated that he didn’t want Nintendo or the developers to get criticised for putting up characters for sale when they should have been there from the start.

This has been a common complaint with not only modern fighting games, but also modern games in general. Gamers often accuse developers of not shelling out the good stuff until DLC comes despite paying full price for a game, and it appears that Nintendo doesn’t want to follow that path.