The popularity of Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl owes much to nostalgia

It is easy to understand why Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl he made waves when he was first announced in July.

All-Star Brawl is a platform fighter, for starters, which means matches work almost exactly like Super Smash Bros., one of the largest and most popular fighting game franchises of all time. Of course, part of the reason for To breakThe popularity is also that, for many players, it is an opportunity to relive some of their first and most pleasant game memories. In his own way, All-Star Brawl it also has the power of nostalgia by its side, a letter of triumph that developers haven’t been shy about playing in the latest storefront videos.

Nickelodeon All-Star BrawlThe cast is obviously prepared to attract a certain demographic population, that is, millennials like me. Spongebobob SquarePAnts and their cohorts combine, of course, in addition to beloved characters from Rugrats, The Wild Thornberrys, i Invader Zim. The game even shows some attention to darker cartoons like Ren & Stimpy i Aaahh !!! Real monsters. It’s like someone going back to 2001 and asking a bunch of kids which Nick characters they’d like to see in the next one. Super Smash Bros. game.

Take this breakdown of SpongeBthe set of ob tools, for example. Many of his moves are inspired by the time when people my age would have been watching the show, including the discourse of the imagination and the bit on Spongebobsweeping and sweeping ob are outrageous applause of a talent show audience. The developers also turned around one of the most enduring memes in the program and SpongeBthe mocking of the ob, which allows players to make fun of opponents with their imitated chicken face ALL YEARS.

References extend even to Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl victory screen (pictured above), showing SpongeBob celebrate a victory with his “anxious face” from the popular episode “Sweet Victory” and Patrick nailing a two by four to the head in defeat, as he usually does. Almost every piece of this game seems geared toward activating that fun little place in your brain where you remember the good parts of your childhood before you grew up and it all went to shit.

I’m still not 100% sure if this game looks really great or if nostalgia has brainwashed me, but we’ll know when Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl arrives on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X / S, Switch and PC this fall.