GDC speakers received a special deck of cards with last year's "top rated" speakers on them. See who's in it. Read more...

It's been a year since Nintendo's beloved fighting game was released. Our intern reminisces. Read more...

Since the last entry I re-downloaded "N+" (more on that in another entry. And I waded through a couple more levels of "Super Smash Bros. Brawl"'s Subspace Emissary.

Waded through.

I like it for nostalgia. I don't like it for gameplay. Is there anyone who feels differently? I enjoy bringing "Fire Emblem" heroes Ike and Marth into a team-up with Metaknight to fight... puppets? I do wish they were fighting enemies I also had nostalgia for. Anything but puppets, really. But it never gets old arming them with a "Donkey Kong" hammer or a "Metroid" screw attack.

I enjoy the Subspace Emissary until I think about what I'm doing: playing my favorite characters in something other than their best games. It's like wearing your favorite sweater to the beach or bringing a good book to a rollercoaster. Why am I doing this again?

But I still haven't gotten to Sonic and Snake, and I'm eager to have them team-up. I need to see that. So I will press on.

Next: I will press on. And I will face the likely disappointment of having no new handheld games to bring with me on my Sunday flight to E3.

While I was walking around in Paris on break from the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational, I noticed a lot of advertisements for "Super Smash Bros. Brawl."

Why? Because it was just released across Europe on Friday. When I walked into a Virgin Megastore earlier today, I saw that they had plenty of copies.

European readers, I'm curious. Did you already get your copy of "Super Smash Bros. Brawl"? Was it torturous waiting this long? Or has the release lost its thunder by coming out in Japan and North America a few months ago?

Since the last entry, I...

*Played a ridiculous amount of games.

*At Friday's PlayStation event alone I played "Resistance 2," "Killzone 2," "Little Big Planet," "SOCOM: Confrontation," "Linger In Shadows," "PixelJunk Eden," "MotorStorm: Pacific Rim," "Siren: Blood Curse," and "Buzz" for PS3 and PSP. I'll write blog posts about many of those games throughout the week, but I should record here that two games brought me back for a second-helping: "Linger" and "Eden." The first one because I wanted to understand it more. The second because it's the most fun I had with a co-op game this year.

*Also played some "Secret Agent Clank" on the flight home.

Then, over the weekend, I binged. Scary details follow...

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Nintendo's biggest attempt at radical transparency came to an end earlier this week.

On Monday, the "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" Dojo posted its final entry. Was it worth it?

With more than 300 entries, the game's lead developer Masahiro Sakurai covered every inch of "Brawl." Since last May readers have been frantically checking the site every weekday updates, hoping that it would reveal a new character or stage that would be included in the game. Each new post brought gamers closer to the release of the Wii's crowning achievement.

But now the game is out, the Dojo is nothing more than an archive of content and, in retrospect, a resounding success. (It's likely to keep doing well, considering that the cheats page for the GameCube's "Super Smash Bros. Melee," has continually topped Gamespot's most popular pages list since its release.)

At its peak, the Dojo topped out at over seven million page views in one week - which is astounding for a video game website. Those numbers, coupled with the sales of the game, prove that gamers appreciated the level of transparency.

So why isn't Nintendo doing more stuff like this?

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Do you think Nintendo's recent releases are lacking something … like new characters?

"Super Smash Bros. Brawl" director Masahiro Sakurai seems to. At the end of today's post on his game's official Dojo site he had this to say about the past twelve years of Nintendo-developed games:

It’s an incredible number of characters and a group of really well-known series. And to think that they all had their beginnings in Japan...wow!

When they’re all lined up like this, it becomes obvious that there is roughly 6-year blank before and after Pikmin. While there have been big series since then like "Animal Crossing," "Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day," and "Wii Sports" it does seem that coming up with a completely new character-driven series has gotten more difficult recently.

Is he right? Have the gaps that surround "Pikmin" upset any gamers out there? It doesn't appear to have effected Nintendo's business too much, at least as of late.

I know… I thought my achievement quest was over once I hit 25,000 Achievement points, and "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" was released.

I was wrong.

I've developed the same unlocking fervor for "Smash Bros" challenges that I once had for Xbox Achievements. I didn’t see this coming, even though I knew full well that I have no problems performing arbitrary tasks to unlock virtually meaningless content. In fact, I have six months' proof in case I ever forget again.

At least I've been unlocking some fun stuff while playing through "Smash Bros." I've been rewarded with characters, levels, trophies, classic game demos, music and stickers for performing the same futile tasks that I had during my Achievements quest. For example, I received a Super Scope trophy for clearing Target Smash Level 1 with all the characters, which, in terms of "Smash Bros." is awesome, but in the grand scheme of life… it's not so much.

Here I am chasing trivial rewards all over again. I really think it's a personality flaw.

There are 128 challenges in "Smash Bros. Brawl" to unlock, and after almost two weeks I've unlocked 75. That's pretty good progress, in my opinion. But it still leaves me 53 to go. I'm certain there are some I won't ever get around to, like collecting Final Smash trophies for all characters. The Final Smash trophies are awarded for completing All-Star mode, and this means I literally need to beat every character with every other character.

It's just never going to happen, but every day I'm chipping away at the easier ones.

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"Wii Sports" was the first video game my mom played after obsessing, years earlier, over "Tetris" on the original, green-tinted Game Boy. It was the first time we'd shared a game experience together since then.

According to Nintendo, the upcoming "Mario Kart Wii" should allow us to have another. In a press release late yesterday touting sales of "Super Smash Bros. Brawl," Nintendo classified "Wii Sports" and the next "Mario Kart" as a new type of kind of experience: "bridge games."

"Bridge games," reads the release, "let video game novices and veterans play and have fun together."

A few weeks ago, "BioShock"'s Ken Levine called "Wii Bowling" "the ultimate gateway drug."

But is it? Bridging casual and hardcore gamers implies each is approaching a game from opposite directions -- but having fun on a common ground. That doesn't mean the "novice" will ever end up crossing to the other side. "Gateway games" and "bridge games" may not be one and the same.

Nintendo's announced definition of a "bridge" game isn't necessarily Wii specific, either. Does a "bridge" game mean another player has to be a part of the action? I had several friends watch me play through "Resident Evil," simply because the game was so immersive, even to a viewer. They never played it, but they experienced it.

So far, the gameplay of "bridge games" falls on the simpler side. Could Nintendo make a "bridge game" out of "Pikmin"? And how would you make a more accessible version of "The Legend of Zelda?" without scaring off the hardcore?

Do they need to?

Readers, I need advice.

My girlfriend is wiping the floor with me at "Super Smash Bros. Brawl."

I've been able to convert my girlfriend into digging most of my nerdy habits, be it "X-Files," "Lost," or comic books (she just finished Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns") -- but not games. Yet she has an obsession with the "Super Smash Bros." series. I had no idea this passion existed, but she counts the brawlers among her favorite games of all-time, right next to "Tetris."

When I was in middle school, none of my friends were much into "Smash Bros." "GoldenEye 007" always dominated our time, so the N64 and GameCube "Smash" games mostly passed me by. Thanks to my girlfriend's surprise interest, that's changed with the Wii's "Brawl."

My girlfriend is a formidable opponent with the pink puffball of doom, also known as Kirby. Most of the time it seems like she doesn't know what she's actually doing, but there's a method to her button smashing madness.

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