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Under lock and key, the console would stay until the weekend. My brothers and I haven’t played Super Smash Bros. competitively for a long, long time.

It was a typical night in the O’Mara family household.

Anyone who has played Super Smash Bros. probably has a story like this. A story where someone had been overly competitive, someone had hatched a mischievous plan, or someone had picked Kirby.

So it was with a little trepidation that I sat down with my brothers and played a little of Super Smash. Bros. for the Wii U.

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We’d all picked up the handheld version of the game, but decided against playing it together until we had the “real” game in our hands. And now that we do it’s easy to say the console version is superior to the handheld.

Finicky controls and the small screen were the handheld game’s downfalls, so with the Pro controller in hand and the larger screen those two issues have been solved, sort of.

The game also looks a lot better with stages feeling more dynamic and new characters like Little Mac, Palutena, and Robin showing off their details in full. However, there are differences between the two games.

The three new additions the console version has over the handheld are the 8-Man and Special Brawl, and the Smash Tour. The Special Brawl is a mode from Smash Bros. Brawl that allows you to make your character huge, on fire, or have bunny ears. It’s a mode made for fun and also great to see it return.

Smash Tour is a board game that gives players a circuit to collect power ups, items, and characters. At the end of the 20 to 30 turn match, players square off. It’s a lot like Smash Run on the 3DS in that it’s not that much fun and doesn’t really inspire competition. You kind of just groan your way through matches.

The last of the new modes is the less-than-innovative 8-Man brawl. Much like how it sounds the mode gives you eight players in a single match. The problem with the mode is how it seeps its way into everything. In the single-player Classic and All Star mode you simply can’t escape the game throwing a ton of characters at you on screen.

It’d be a lot more fun if it didn’t make you feel like a vulture waiting for the weak players to take damage, so you can swoop and go for the kill.

Other than those modes, the Wii U and the 3DS versions of the game are virtually identical. Players also have the ability to jump into matches using their handheld, so if you don’t own the console version, but your friend does, you won’t be left out.

The console version also has a lot more content including a much larger Event Match mode, an expanded soundtrack, and more trophies than ever. Break the Targets, however, is still missing being replaced by the ham-handed Angry Birds game that requires repetition over skill to complete.

However, there’s one place the game really dropped the Smash Ball.

There’s no story.

Although this is the “multiplayer” version of the game, I can’t help but feel Super Smash Bros. for Wii U would have been better with a story.

The Subspace Emissary is extremely underrated and it looks like it won’t be returning. It was a really simple story mode and gave the Wii’s incarnation something that none of the other game had even tried.