Great news! The first handheld installment of the excellent Super Smash Bros. series lives up to incredibly high standards. Like its console siblings, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS elegantly packages decades of Nintendo’s best video game mascots into a pick-up-and-play portable game. But the real surprise here is the diverse modes of play that’ve kept me playing feverishly for days.

Smash 3DS builds a fast and fun four-player brawler out of prolific video game characters and universes. Each one uses the same inputs to activate their unique moves, so once you’ve learned one, you can play all 48 of them. Winning is about knowing the right time to use Mario’s fireball , which is different from Marth’s Dancing Blade , in effort to knock everyone else out of the ring with a perfectly timed Smash attack. items , and assist trophies pull inspiration from a diverse selection of games and showcase lots tiny details that highlight each one’s special qualities.From the start, the variety of the 36-character roster impressed me, and 12 more fighters are unlocked over time . Newcomers like Robin from Fire Emblem Awakening, Rosalina & Luma from Super Mario Galaxy, Little Mac from Punch Out!!!, and more join the battle alongside mainstays like Mario, Link Pikachu , and Samus . Even non-Nintendo characters like Pac-Man and Mega Man are embraced with genuine reverence to their source material. Wii Fit Trainer is a great example of the humor: This silly callout to the massively popular Wii Fit series transforms the peaceful art of Yoga into a fun fighting style. I love how she doles out helpful advice in between all the hits. That same attention to detail in all the characters meant I was constantly finding something new and fun for dozens of hours.All of the action in Smash 3DS moves at a solid 60 frames per second. I noticed that characters appear a little chunkier than their console counterparts, but that has the effect of making them easier to see. A helpful red or blue outline communicates which side you’re playing for in Team versus mode, which is a big help in a crazy brawl.However, Nintendo hasn’t managed to solve one significant issue when bringing Smash Bros. to the 3DS: Namely, it’s difficult to keep track of characters whenever the camera zooms out in heated four-player matches. They’re just too tiny! A targeting box activated via the 3DS touch screen helped a little, but it feels like a band-aid solution for a larger problem. Scaling down to three player free-for-alls makes things much easier to follow, but one-on-one play shows off this handheld version in the best environment possible. Building custom fighters is an easy process, too. It lets you define layers of equipment that affect easy-to-understand parameters of power, defense, and speed. Improving one area decreases the value of another, so I could weigh out several options and settle on the fighter that works for me. Mii Fighter special moves are, thankfully, all unlocked from the start, but custom moves for main roster need to be unlocked.Menus feel a little scattered, but once I learned where everything is, it was easy to jump into solo, local, or online play. I can easily switch up rules before a match, and select from several different stage variations. There’s even a helpful lobby to practice in before a host launches a local match. Online play is carefully separated, so you can jump between ranked matches, smashing with friends, spectating online bouts, or even a custom replay channel where you can watch one character to learn what attack combinations people are using.Of the eight modes Smash 3DS gives you to choose from, I spent a lot of time switching between regular matches, variations of Multi-man Smash, and online one-vs-one play the most. All-Star mode took me through a chronological history of Smash Bros. that started in the early ‘80s and ended in 2013. Classic mode resembles the single-player mode in GameCube’s Smash Melee, but with a twist: I could choose my next challenge on a map and pick up trophies and gold to unlock even more stuff.Sadly, the random nature behind the exclusive 3DS mode, called Smash Run , make it the one part of Smash 3DS I had trouble enjoying. The core idea itself is a gluttonous stat grab where you have to spend five minutes at a time collecting power ups that increase speed, jump, attack, special, arms, and defense to prepare for a final battle or a randomized competition like a race. The AI enemies in Smash Run’s generic sprawling area are unrelenting, which is fine, but the randomly selected final match could be something I’m completely unprepared for because I didn’t have the right stats needed to win that type of challenge. Being the slowest runner in a race just isn’t fun. If Smash Run leveraged some insight into the final fight, it could be a lot more memorable than what it currently is.