SmashRadar: 18 kickass theme smashes

Suicide Kings
Characters: Donkey Kong and Kirby
Stage(s): Any
Special Rules: You can only attack other players by sucking them up (Kirby) or grabbing and carrying them (Donkey Kong).

Naturally, the only way this leads to death is if you walk or jump off a stage with them. Bonus points if you can prevent your own death. If the match goes to Sudden Death because everyone managed to die and kill each other an equal amount of times, the win will be awarded to the kamikaze instead of the victim.

For this one you might want to skip the handicap and go easy on the penalties - we had a lot of problems getting DK’s grab just right:

Other Theme Smashes
These are the themes that are fairly obvious or will only appeal to a select few. Resort to them when you need to break out of your comfort zone after 50 hours of playing as the same character.

Princess Smackdown - Peach and Zelda have it out. You can also have Daisy join the fray if you don’t object to palette swapping.

PokeSmash - Like Poktoberfest, this Smash is all Pokemon all the time; but with the added choices of Pikachu, Lucario and Jigglypuff instead of just the Pokemon Trainer.

Guess Who - All Ice Climbers. The fun here is trying to figure out whose twin you killed.

Hide-and-Seek - Go into Special Brawl and set Body to Clear. Turn on the smoke bomb in the items menu. Choose a stage with obstacles or platforms.

Now try to find all your friends and kill them before time runs out. We recommend suggest adding a rule about not using projectile attacks (like lasers) to seek out your opponents.


Above: Spot the monkey!


Above: Really? We’ll take your word for it…

Headliners - Only choose characters that star in their own series (Mario, Link, Samus, etc.).

Bad Guys- Only choose characters who are the main villain in a series (Ganondorf, Bowser, King Dedede, etc.).

Heavyweight Championships - Go into Special Brawl and set everyone to giant. Choose big characters like Donkey Kong or Bowser and then head to a stage where there’s not much room to move around (Yoshi’s Island, for example).

Birds of a Feather - Choose only bird or bird-related characters (King Dedede, Falco, Captain Falcon, etc.).

Hack-‘n’-Slash - Choose only sword-bearing characters (Toon Link, Link, Ike, Marth, etc.) and attack only with swords. Penalties apply if you use any other attack.

Star Wars - This sounds kind of dorky but it looks cool. Turn all items off except the lightsaber. Choose only characters that come from space (Olimar, Samus, Fox, etc.) and duke it out via lightsaber duel on the Lylat Cruise level. (Until the lightsabers start dropping, use A attacks only.)

Shootout - This sounds way more fun than it turned out to be on the count of most laser attacks being weak sauce. But, if you can discipline yourself into not using any other attack, choose Falco, Fox and Wolf (Samus and Snake are too powerful) and have a shootout OK Corral style. Penalties apply if you use any other attack.

Got a Theme Smash of your own? Let us know at smashradar@gamesradar.com or head on over to theSmash Bros. forumand we’ll give it a shot ourselves.

Wii code - 7609-2353-2917-5081
Brawl code - 5412-9513-8383
smashradar@gamesradar.com

Apr 4, 2008