Subspace Enemies - The biggest missed opportunity in the game comes from the Subspace Emissary mode. Why make up a whole set of new, strangely Kingdom Hearts-esque enemies when you have an entire pantheon to draw from, sourced from multiple series? We do get goombas and koopas, but why not octoroks and moblins and waddle dees? If you're making a game based on nostalgia, what's the point of throwing in all sorts of new (rather generic looking) creatures that no one cares about?

Tabuu - And as long as I'm complaining about the opposing force in Subspace, why not go after the biggest one of them all. After it was revealed that Nintendo brought on Final Fantasy VII writer Kazushige Nojima to pen the "story" in Brawl, inevitable jokes followed that the game would end with fighting some ethereal, angelic creature with big magical wings. And then that is exactly what happened.

I realize my above complaint about using existing characters can't apply here, because Nintendo wouldn't want to pick one particular game's main bad guy as the head bad guy in Smash Bros. That's what they made Master Hand for. But they could have made up pretty much anything else and had it be better than Generic RPG God Figure #02603. His appearance has no build up or explanation (at least the Hands play into the overarching theme of each character being a trophy in a kid's toybox), and with his random teleportation and bag of stupidly overpowered attacks, he's not even any fun to fight.

Old and New - While Smash Bros. is known for being a celebration of Nintendo's history, they seem a little preoccupied with the far ends of the spectrum. Characters, stages and assist trophies are mostly either from recent history or the very early days, without much representation of the middle bits. Mid-90s series like Pilotwings, Waverace, Mario Paint, Battle Clash and Stunt Race FX are all but forgotten in favor of stages from the newest versions of Zelda and Fire Emblem and Pokemon along with a few retro throwbacks. I don't expect them to dedicate prime real estate to titles lost in obscurity (I gather that's what they made stickers for), but would it really be that tough to drop yet another Flat Zone stage in favor of, say, a stage set on Holiday Island from Pilotwings 64? And when you're really ready to kick it up a notch, you can push aside Mr. Resetti for the ultimate annoyance assist trophy: Make everything look like Red Alarm.

Clones - It's hard to complain about clones without sounding like one of those GameFAQs kids who gets angry that Megaman wasn't in the roster. But did we need Fox, Falco and Wolf? And if we did, couldn't there at least be more than one final smash between the three? The same goes for Ness and Lucas, who are at an almost Mario/Dr. Mario level of sameness.

Monkey Chicks - Seriously, two trophies of female Donkey Kong characters in hip huggers and little shorts is two too many.

Play This Masterpi--whoops you're done - Despite the fact that I've played most of these games within the last few years on an emulator, there is something special and extra nostalgic about playing them on a real TV in your living room. A shame then that the Masterpieces section of Brawl often limits you to less than a minute of playtime for each. I realize Nintendo doesn't want to cut into Virtual Console profits, as unfortunate as that is -- a selection of full versions of old games a la Animal Crossing would have been Goddamn fantastic -- but you're not going to lose any sales by letting people finish the first level. Hell, F-Zero cuts off just after you make one lap -- they feel that going around the same track a second time is giving too much away for free.

They also took Earthbound out for the American version, which is just silly.

Stickers - I like that they use the original art from various games over the years instead of just sticking to each character's current look. But unless I missed an instruction somewhere, there's no way to get a better look at each sticker short of buying a bigger TV.

And for as cool as I thought the idea of stickers was when I first learned about their stat-boosting power for Subspace, it turned out I never actually bothered to use them. They're only really helpful later on once you can start regularly picking the same characters over and over, but even then they seemed like more of a hassle than they were worth. Their only real usefulness is in going through again on harder difficulties or in making a grinding character to go back and get the stuff you missed.

And yet even that has limited appeal. In fact, Subspace In General could be listed as a disappointment. It seems like a large chunk of the disc for what is not a large chunk of the fun. There are good moments, like the Ridley boss fights, some old school platforming sections, and barrel blasting that is the closest we'll ever come to new Donkey Kong Country sequel. And of course, let us never forget the landmark scene involving Peach casually strolling along the deck of the Halberd as explosions go off and lasers fire all around her, the clarion moment in which it is finally revealed that she is functionally retarded.

But there is also a lot of dead space; too many times where the screen scrolling locks so you can stop and fight two dozen of the same boring enemies. There's also the Great Maze, which I didn't hate like some people but still exists mostly to make Subspace last longer. The mode is basically a jumble of different shades of gameplay -- some good, some not -- that doesn't add up to anything substantial.

They might as well have taken the Kingdom Hearts vibe to its fullest extent and made individual worlds representing various games (more akin to the Adventure mode levels in Melee) rather than Subspace levels that are just Metroid-ish or Mario-esque. I'm circling back to the first point now, but again it leads me to wonder why they went through the trouble of making so much original stuff for a game that's all about existing content. Especially when that original stuff is rather bland on its own.