True story: I had to win a fight for the right to review this game.

The fight took place at our annual staff meetup last month, and it was fought not with fists or swords but with copies of Super Smash Bros. For Nintendo 3DS. I beat both Senior Gaming Editor Kyle Orland and Technology Reporter Sam Machkovech, and they were the only ones who were surprised.

Super Smash Bros. Wii U is unique among Smash games in that we've already had a pretty good version of it for almost two months—the recent 3DS release. The portable version doesn't have quite the same feel, being squeezed onto a small screen and all, but all the characters and most of the new gameplay elements and modes are known quantities at this point.

So for our review of the console version, we'll focus on highlighting differences between it and the portable iteration, re-explaining the most important bits of the 3DS review along the way. Smash on the 3DS sometimes felt like a preview of the console version, but rest assured—now that the "real" one is here, there's a lot to like.

What's new: Game modes

Game Details Developer: Sora Ltd., Bandai Namco Games

Publisher: Nintendo

Platform: Nintendo Wii U

Release Date: November 21, 2014

Price: $59.99 for game, $99.99 for game with GameCube adapter and controller

Links: Official website Sora Ltd., Bandai Namco Games: Nintendo: Nintendo Wii UNovember 21, 2014: $59.99 for game, $99.99 for game with GameCube adapter and controller

By necessity, Smash on the 3DS put a fair amount of emphasis on single-player game modes. The most prominent example was the 3DS-exclusive Smash Run mode, a race across a huge stage to gather power-ups to use in a final battle against your opponents.

On the Wii U, Smash Run is gone, replaced by something called "Smash Tour." It's not the easiest thing in the world to explain, but the most reductive explanation is that it's Smash Bros. by way of Mario Party.

Four players (three of which can be human- or CPU-controlled) are plunked down on a game board and randomly assigned a couple of characters to fight with. Each turn, you roll the virtual dice and move around the board the specified number of spaces, collecting more characters, power-ups, trophies, and items.

If any two players run into each other on the board, it triggers a battle that you fight with one of the characters you've picked up by traversing the game board. Win, and you get the character used by the player in second place. Lose, and you might give up a character to the winner (though oddly, only the second place finisher has to sacrifice in this way; those finishing third or fourth have no penalty). If you lose after bumping into someone else, you get launched across the board. This can screw up your long game and even knock power-ups and characters out of you and spread them back out across the board.

Hazards like boss characters and stat-sucking Metroids occasionally show up on the board to mix things up and give Smash Tour a dose of that infuriating Mario Party randomness, and the random item drops that happen at the beginning of every turn similarly throw unexpected twists into the proceedings. Some items are used in battle and others can be used on the board, and they can often be the difference between winning and losing.

If this sounds a little bewildering, good! That's exactly what it feels like to play it the first couple of times. A few tutorial slides attempt to lay out the rules for you initially, but like so much of Smash it's easier to learn by doing than by looking. If there's one problem with the series in general at this point, it's that the gigantic shotgun blast of fighters, stages, moves, unlockables, and customization options make it hard to approach for new players. Smash Tour typifies that problem in one chaotic, sometimes strange, and occasionally entertaining board game.

The last major new game modes to talk about are "Master Orders" and "Crazy Orders," named for the Master Hand and Crazy Hand boss characters that served as the "kid playing with his toys" framing device since the N64 days. In Master Orders mode, you pick a fighter and buy a single "ticket" with some in-game currency. Each ticket sets rules for the ensuing battle and gives you a hint about what kind of reward you'll get for it. In Crazy Orders mode, you either hand in a large amount of in-game currency or a (relatively rare) pass to play, and you can do as many challenges as you want until you lose. You'll eventually need to cash out by beating the Crazy Hand boss, though—get knocked out before you do that, and you'll lose some of the prizes you've won.

Most of the other various objective-based modes from previous Smash games return in single- and multiplayer iterations. "Stadium" challenges like the 100-Man Smash and Home Run contest are here, the Classic and All-Star modes are here, and one-shot single- and multiplayer "event matches" from Melee and Brawl make a return after disappearing in the 3DS version. The latter are usually quick challenges with specific parameters (beat Bowser and Donkey Kong as Mario, and so on) and additional rewards are given for achieving extra objectives (beat Bowser and Donkey Kong as Mario... and don't take any damage).

Console-specific features

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Smash on the 3DS was graphically simple by necessity, given the 3DS' less-powerful hardware and the need to generate four fighters, an animated battleground, and various items at a constant 60 frames per second. Smash on the Wii U bumps things all the way up to 1080p HD, giving the game a nice layer of detail over the textured characters of Brawl. The general level of graphical detail is a huge leap up from the 3DS, but the extra power also means that the Wii U version of Smash can do things that would be technical impossibilities on the 3DS.

First, eight-player Smash mode is just what it sounds like—two-to-eight human or computer players fighting at once instead of two-to-four. The added chaos of this mode means only a subset of stages are available, and most of them are big sprawling ones that make even the Temple stage from Melee and Brawl (and yes, it's back in the new one too) look tiny. A couple of smaller stages are available for eight-player Smash as well, and they're a ton of fun if you're in the mood for crowded, hilarious-inadvertent-entropy Smash instead of spacious, serious-competitive-face-off Smash.

Finally, just as the 3DS version used stages mostly inspired by portable games, the Wii U version includes stages inspired by console games (including some that aren't even out yet, like the one based on 2015's Yoshi's Wooly World). We've got to say, we did miss some of the stages that were introduced on the 3DS, and we're hoping that the newly DLC-tolerant Nintendo ports them over in some kind of stage pack later on to give the Wii U version a more "comprehensive" feel.