If you're like me, you probably subscribed to Masahiro Sakurai's Smash Bros Dojo blog hyping the release of Super Smash Bros Brawl over a year ago. On a daily basis, Sakurai and company revealed fun new features of the game, some of which were standard and blasé and some of which were mind-blowingly awesome. The two most amazing, without a doubt, were the inclusion of fan favorite Sonic the Hedgehog as a playable character and, of course, the level editor. Including a level editor in Super Smash Bros Brawl meant nearly infinite replay value, even moreso than the game's prior iterations which have long since owned the attention of gamers for years. The only problem was that controlling the level editor was finicky and many gamers, including myself, would often press the wrong button and delete all their hard work. Designing stages in the living room on the Wii was stressful. If it wasn't great, then you were deemed a failure by your roommates and loved ones. What started as a wonderful idea to extend the user interaction in a fan-favorite franchise had become a Hooksexup-wracking and oft-ignored add-on.
Well no longer is this quite so harrowing an affair as programmer Xane has released the beta of his Brawl Stage Studio application, a homebrew program that allows you to build your Smash Bros stages from the comfort of your PC, save them to an SD card, and play them in Brawl. Fantastic! All the features are there, from conveyor belts and statues to the stage soundtrack, and even a few new features like setting the player spawn points and including your own custom thumbnail images. Plus, typing with a keyboard is much easier than using the virtual keypad on the Wii.
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