Nickelodeon Super Brawl

***Nickelodeon Super Brawl*** is a 2001 crossover fighting game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega for the Sega Dreamcast. It was first released in Japan in November 2001, in the Americas in December 2001, and in Europe and Australia in May 2002. It was the final Nickelodeon-related game for a Sega console, released in the months after Sega discontinued the Dreamcast and transitioned to third-party development. The first installment in the *Super Brawl/All Star Brawl* series, it is a crossover between several different Nickelodeon franchises, including SpongeBob, The Wild Thornberry's, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Invader Zim, Rugrats, The Fairly OddParents, Sonic the Hedgehog, Ren & Stimpy and Dora the Explorer. It presents a cast of characters and locations from these franchises and allows players to use each character's unique skills and the stage's hazards to inflict damage, recover health, and ultimately knock opponents off the stage.

*Nickelodeon Super Brawl* received mostly positive reviews upon its release. It was a commercial success, selling over five million copies worldwide by 2003, with 2.93 million sold in the United States and 1.97 million sold in Japan. It was given an Editors' Choice award from IGN for the "Best Fighting Game", and also one of the first Nickelodeon games to feature characters from The Fairly OddParents, Invader Zim, and Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius. The game spawned a series of sequels for each successive Nintendo console, starting with *Nickelodeon Super Brawl XL: Good Vs. Evil* which was released for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, PC and Game Boy Advance in 2004.

## Gameplay

Much like the Super Smash Bros. series, The *Nickelodeon Super Brawl/All Star Brawl* series is a departure from the general genre of fighting games; instead of depleting an opponent's life bar, Smash Bros. players seek to knock opposing characters off a stage. Each player has a damage total, represented by a percentage, which rises as the damage is taken and can reach maximum damage of 999%. As this percentage rises, the character is knocked progressively farther by attacks. To knock out (KO) an opponent, the player must send that character flying off the edge of the stage, which is not an enclosed arena but rather an area with open boundaries. When knocked off the stage, a character may use jumping moves in an attempt to return; some characters have longer-ranged jumps and may have an easier time "recovering" than others. Additionally, characters have different weights, making it harder for heavier opponents to be knocked off the edge, but harder for them to recover once sent flying.

While games such as *Street Fighter* and *Tekken* require players to memorize complicated button-input combinations, Games such as *Nickelodeon Super Brawl* and *Super Smash Bros.* (which Super Brawl takes inspiration from) uses the same control combinations to access all moves for all characters. Characters are additionally not limited to only facing opponents, instead being allowed to move freely. The game focuses more on aerial and platforming skills than other fighting games, with larger, more dynamic stages rather than a simple flat platform. Smash Bros. also implements blocking and dodging mechanics. Grabbing and throwing other characters is also possible.

Various weapons and power-ups can be used in battle to inflict damage, recover health, or dispense additional items. They fall randomly onto the stage in the form of items from Nintendo franchises. The nine multiplayer stages are locations taken from or in the style of Nickelodeon franchises, such as New York, Bikini Bottom and Green Hill Zone. Although stages are rendered in three dimensions, players move within a two-dimensional plane. Stages are dynamic, ranging from simple moving platforms to dramatic alterations of the entire stage. Each stage offers unique gameplay and strategic motives, making the chosen stage an additional factor in the fight.

In the game's single-player mode, the player battles a series of computer-controlled opponents in a specific order, attempting to defeat them with a limited number of lives in a limited amount of time. While the player can determine the difficulty level and the number of lives, the series of opponents never changes. If the player loses all of their lives or runs out of time, they can continue at the cost of a loss of overall points. This mode is referred to as Classic Mode in later games. The single-player mode also includes two minigames, "Break the Targets" and "Board the Platforms", in which the objective is to break each target or board multiple special platforms, respectively. A "Training Mode" is also available in which players can manipulate the environment and experiment against computer opponents without the restrictions of a standard match.

Up to four people can play in multiplayer mode, which has specific rules predetermined by the players. Stock and timed matches are two of the multiplayer modes of play. This gives each player a certain number of lives or a selected time limit, before beginning the match with a countdown. Free-for-all or team battles are also a choice during matches using stock or time. A winner is declared once time runs out, or if all players except one or a team have lost all of their lives. A multiplayer game may also end in a tie if two or more players have the same score when the timer expires, which causes the match to end in sudden death. During sudden death, all fighters are given 300% damage and the last fighter standing will win the match.

## Characters

The game includes twelve playable characters from popular Nintendo franchises. Characters have a symbol appearing behind their damage meter corresponding to the series to which they belong. Furthermore, characters have recognizable moves derived from their original series. Eight characters are initially playable, and four additional characters can be unlocked by meeting specific criteria.

The character art featured on the game's box art and instruction manual is in the style of a comic book, and the characters are portrayed as toy dolls that come to life to fight. This style has since been omitted in later games, which feature trophies instead of dolls and in-game models rather than hand-drawn art.

* SpongeBob SquarePants (SpongeBob SquarePants)
* Nigel Thornberry (The Wild Thornberry's)
* Leonardo (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)
* Zim (Invader Zim)
* Reptar (Rugrats)
* Timmy Turner (The Fairly OddParents)
* Sonic (Sonic the Hedgehog)
* Patrick Star (SpongeBob SquarePants)
* Powdered Toast Man (The Ren & Stimpy Show)
* Dora Marquez (Dora The Explorer)
* Miles "Tails" Prower (Sonic The Hedgehog)