After months of speculation and frustration, Nintendo of Europe have finally decided that we Europeans are worthy of Super Smash Bros: Brawl. My copy arrived yesterday (as I have my own special way with games retailers), and I’ve given it an hour or two. I think it’s great - what about you? Leave us a comment below!

Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 27th June

If you’ve been playing Smash Bros. Brawl online over the past few days you may have encountered an unacceptable amount of lag. I wouldn’t know, because I live in Europe and thus Nintendo hates me. Gaming news site Kombo contacted Nintendo for an official statement, and they replied; “As with the launch of any online-enabled game, especially one as popular as Super Smash Bros. Brawl, everyone wants to play at once. This puts a strain on the pipeline. We have seen improvements in online play performance every day since launch.”

Paraphrased, as less people try to play at once, performance will increase. Good to be pro-active!

Today marks the US release of Super Smash Bros: Brawl for Wii. If you’ve been living under an e-rock for the past couple of years, Brawl is a 2D fighter featuring Nintendo all-stars. Of course, there is a huge amount of Zelda characters, stages and content, so if you’re a fan, you should definitely check it out. And be sure to join our forums, as we will no doubt be hosting online tournaments and stage creation competitions!

Yet again giving us something to write about during this mid-Zelda game lull, today’s “Smash Bros. DOJO!!” update featured an interesting Zelda tidbit, which will especially please fans of Koji Kondo’s compositions.

Sakurai unveiled possibly every music track which the player will have access to from the start of the game, and in this huge list are five Zelda pieces, some of which have not previously been revealed.

The list includes the Main Theme (arranged), an Ocarina of Time medley (arranged), Hyrule Field (Ocarina of Time, arranged), The Dark World (Link to the Past, arranged) and the Twilight Princess Main Theme (no-one is credited with the arrangement, so it is most likely taken directly from the game). More Zelda music is bound to be unlocked by picking up CDs in-game.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl is released in Japan this Thursday, and March 9th in North America.

For a full list of the game’s starting soundtrack, check out today’s DOJO update.

The Smash Bros. DOJO today confirmed the inclusion of “Masterpieces” - demos of games available on the Virtual Console featuring the title’s stars. Representing the Zelda series is the original NES outing, perhaps a poorer choice than the more obvious ALttP or OoT, though Sakurai does hint that there are more games hidden away on the disc than those announced today.

The Smash Bros Dojo defied half the SSB community’s expectations today by confirming that Sheik is once again Zelda’s Down+B.

As the new Zelda model is based on Twilight Princess, from which Sheik was absent, many thought that she would be appearing without her Ocarina of Time alter-ego. However, Sakurai has excitingly confirmed that Sheik’s new appearance is based on development art for the Wii adventure, revealing some insight into the game’s development.

Today, in the most successful hype-machine of all time, also known as the Smash Bros Dojo, Sakurai revealed Zelda’s Final Smash. It will be very familiar to those of you who have completed Ocarina of Time, The Wind Waker or Twilight Princess - the Light Arrow. Quite simply, Zelda fires a gigantic arrow of light. Check it out for yourself here! The Smash was previously revealed in low-quality scans from Japanese magazines, but now we have some proper screenshots. Such as this:

Super Smash Brothers: Brawl is out at the end of January in Japan, the start of March in the US, and unfortunately so far unconfirmed for Europe. Be sure to join our forums and take part in our inevitable tournaments and stage creation competitions when the game is finally released!

Cameos

If anyone has been wondering where the Smash Bros or Soul Calibur 2 sections have gone, the answer is our brand-new Cameos section. I’ve split the section into three sections: playable, non-playable, and TV appearances, adding new cameos to each.

I’m actually writing this update in the past. Yes, today is at least three days ago, and as I write this all you can see on the homepage or the forums is a MySQL error. I’d tell you about how the site will be back soon and how you shouldn’t worry, but I can’t. Because by the time you read this it will be back and you will have stopped worrying or wondering. The long and short of it is that our host is run by a bunch of monkeys, resetting all our passwords because of a Gordon Brown-style leak, and because I don’t live at home or have my computer any more, the passwords that they sent through the comical Royal Mail during the busiest postal season just before a weekend will not be with me for a few days.

Which means that you probably already know that Smash Bros Dojo has confirmed that the Zelda-themed Melee stage Temple will appear in SSB Brawl, along with a host of other classic stages which may or may not include Great Bay, so there’s no real need to bother telling you from all the way back here in the past as you are all the way over there in the future. What were the lotto numbers?

Monday edit: Hello. I still haven’t received my new passwords, and my hosts have just received the second snarkiest email I’ve ever sent. I still have FTP access so I’ve removed the login box from this frontpage, meaning the site now works but all the interactive pages are broken for the next few days. I’d just like to apologise to everyone who tried to access the site over the weekend and everyone still trying to access the forums and role play. I hope to have this sorted out as soon as possible.