Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a 2008 crossover fighting game developed by Sora Ltd. and published by Nintendo for the Wii. It is the third installment in the Super Smash Bros. series and the successor to Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001). It follows up on the gameplay style of its predecessors; to damage opponents and knock them out of the arena. Brawl implements several new aspects to the franchise, including the first Smash game to feature third-party playable characters, online play via through a now-defunct Nintendo WiFi Connection, and a plot-driven adventure mode with computer-generated cutscenes, dubbed "The Subspace Emissary". In total, Brawl features 35 playable characters with several being omitted from its predecessor.

Game development began in October 2005; Brawl is the first game in the series not to be developed primarily by HAL Laboratory, being co-developed by a creative team under Sora that included members from several Nintendo and third-party development teams. It was announced at a pre-E3 2005 press conference by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. Masahiro Sakurai, director of the previous two games in the series, assumed the role of director at Iwata's request. The game can be played with four different controllers, including the Wii Remote, Wii Remote with Nunchuk, GameCube controller and Classic Controller, simultaneously.

After delays due to development problems, the game was released in Japan on January 31, 2008, North America on March 9, 2008, Australia on June 26, 2008, and Europe on June 27, 2008. Super Smash Bros. Brawl received widespread acclaim, with praise centered on its gameplay, innovation, musical score, and entertainment value with its load times, online mode, and aspects of single-player receiving criticism. The game was also a commercial success, selling over thirteen million copies as of 2023, being the eighth best-selling Wii game.

Retrospectively, Super Smash Bros. Brawl is considered by critics to be one of the best video games of all time. The game was named "Fighting Game of the Year" by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, while being one of the titles in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die in 2010. Brawl is well-known for its modding community, which hosted a popular fan-project to enable the game's mechanics to resemble its predecessor, Melee, entitled Project M. The game also began the trend for the series to add more third-party playable characters in the future, continuing with its successor Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U in 2014.