There is a lot of pressure on Nintendo’s little white unit to produce some stellar games to go along with the new wave of casual titles that seem to have swept up the majority of buyers into the market. This year has already seen the release of both Metroid Prime 3 and Super Mario Galaxy. Once you take into account the release of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess last year you can see that Nintendo has brought it’s big guns to bear and might be running low on steam. But as far as cracked out, balls to the wall, multiplayer action goes there is one title that is brought out time and time again as a reason to own a Wii, and that’s Super Smash Bros Brawl. Now one could argue that Mario Kart Wii could be just as big, but we’ve had most likely the best edition of that series on the DS for years now and I find that not many people have gotten tired of that cart yet. Smash has been dormant since Melee on the Gamecube and as long as you discount distant rip offs like the incredible Jump Ultimate Stars for the DS you are left with hole in Nintendo’s Wii lineup. Sure you have Mortal Kombat Armageddon, even Bleach: Shattered Blade to provide you with two-player ass kicking action but where is my four player smash fest? Your best bet until the allusive release date of Brawl is to be found in Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution.

Naruto is a mange/anime series much in the same vein as Dragon Ball Z but substituted in for aliens and power levels are ninjas and chakra. It lends itself nicely to a video game setup. You can easily jump into the game without any previous knowledge of the show and there is a lot to enjoy in this game without caring about the characters.

Like the anime it is based on and like it’s name, the Naruto fighter series is convoluted to no end. The majority of the series was released as Gamecube exclusives to Japan only up until the anime itself began to air on western television. Your standard update methodology was applied to the Naruto fighting games: slightly pump up the roster each year to coincide with new characters in the show and tweak game play modes as needed based on customer feedback. The second entry in the series saw a great update in allowing up to four players to compete in a single match however, and since then the series as kept this feature to distinguish itself as the “other” four player fighting game available on Nintendo’s consoles.

During development of the first Wii Naruto fighter, developer Eighting and publisher Tomy made the decision to split up development for both sides of the Pacific. I applaud this decision because of the time gap between the anime in North America and Japan. Instead of only get a localized version of the Naruto fighting game from two years ago, Eighting has went ahead and developed a version tailored to go along with the current North American episodes. What this gives us is a series that isn’t dependant on waiting for the TV show to catch up to Japan in order to avoid “spoiling” anything by including characters that haven’t yet appeared in the show.

As with any fighting series that has had several editions and years of development time, you will find the game play in Naruto to be tight and refined, if a bit simplistic. The path that Eighting has taken in controller methods is great, basically the same that Nintendo is taking with Smash Brawl in that it offers a stunning amount of play methods across all of Nintendo’s support controllers. The game supports both the classic and Gamecube controllers, as well as a stand-alone wii remote setup and two different remote + nunchuck methods. Having played around with all the methods, I find myself actually coming back to the default remote + controller method for ease of use and because of a nice touch by the developer. When you connect with any of the special attacks, called jutsu in keeping with whole ninja them of course, you are allowed to enter in quick wii remote movements in order to pull off a few extras hits within the jutsu animation. It is a nice touch that gives the remote options a little more sex appeal.

Naruto is geared towards an easy to pick up difficult to master approach. Within moments of playing this game I could see how an experienced player could easily run circles around a novice. There is a certain level the game allows you to get to by button mashing, defeating the first 7 or 8 CPU opponents in single player mode is easy enough to do but those last couple take patience and skill. Your standard attacks are split up between weak and strong with a different effect when you press a direction in conjunction with the attack button. It is the same premise behind Smash Bros and Jump Ultimate Stars and it works very well in Naruto. Jumping is done by pressing up and a double jump (an extremely speedy one I might add for most of the fighters) is available. The game’s stages are 3D affairs involving obstacles to take refuge behind and launch surprise attacks as well as being able to knock your opponent off of ledges and score some sucker punches. Very ninja like. The key to the hidden complexity of the game, what draws the first player away from the gruff old timer is the sidestep system and to a lesser extend, the throw system. Like many fighting games, your fighter builds up an energy bar during battle that is used to execute the jutsu specials I spoke about earlier. What makes Naruto unique to me is that this bar builds extremely fast. A well placed decent length combo of 7 to 8 hits will built up this chakra bar to full. In addition to jutsu attacks, the chakra bar can be called open to do a substitution sidestep. Naruto uses two sidestep buttons, one to move you into the foreground and one to move you out of the foreground. When pressed while you are being attack, your chakra bar will deplete by about half and you will teleport behind the opponent. This will set up an immediate counter attack especially if your opponent is in the middle of a long string of attacks they cannot cancel of. It is important to remember that while you are counterattacking if the opponent has enough chakra they can substitute as well. This leads to a lot of quick short brawls punctuated by gaining better ground, hiding behind rocks, setting up specials, etc. While characters have their own distinct strengths and weaknesses, Guy for example is a close quarters jujutsu brawler, all characters have the ability to deal damage at various distances on the arena. Jutsu specials are accomplished by a simple button pressed followed by wii remote motions to strengthen the attack.

Throws are mapped to a single button for all characters and are very useful in setting up juggles outside of the character’s other launchers. They have a long cool down time even for faster characters, so you have to be careful and not grab unless you are very close to your opponent.

What you will find in Naruto Revolution is a slightly bumped up Gamecube port. Still lacking true 16:9 resolution and progressive scan, I am upset to see Eighting put the effort into developing an exclusive North American Wii release and not give it the level of shine that the console can put out. Comparing this game to one of the older Gamecube Clash of the Ninja games will yield a difference as animations are overall smoother and some effects are more predominate. Perhaps the two biggest transgressors are the incredibly pixilated shadows under ever fighter and the large frame rate loss in four player. While the game is still very much playable with four participants the dip is noticeable.

What does pass the grade is the attention to detail on each fighter. Seemingly picked up off the page itself, each character looks exactly how you would picture them from the manga or anime. Kakashi sports the same pouches in the same places as he does on TV. The cel shaded look works well with anime games and in the heat of an intense battle you really can see yourself as watching an episode. I especially enjoy Neji’s various defensive techniques and Temari’s wind gusts as examples of good-looking attacks.

Levels mimic those from the show and contain enough obstacles to mix things up without becoming too Smash Bros chaotic. Rocks and boxes are littered around each stage to hide behind and launch surprise attacks as well as very cool looking cut scenes that occur when knocking an opponent to the next level of the stage. Favorites here are the Nine Tails Cage stage and Hidden Sand Village stage.

Having watching the Japanese version of Naruto for several years, Naruto Revolution was actually the first time I have ever heard the English voices for the show. And man do they run the gambit. Some nail it, such as Orochimaru’s raspy snake infused threats. It is a shame the same cannot be said for the main character Naruto whose voice borders on ear numbingly painful. Luckily the majority of characters are at worse bland.

I have also been a sucker for flute heavy feudal Japanese sounds and the music summons what you would consider a ninja anime to sound like. Typical anime rifts accompanied by light wind instruments dominated the game’s soundtrack. I did notice the music was tied to stages not characters as you would find in Guilty Gear but with the abundance of stages I rarely hear the same tune over and over again. The music is suitably upbeat and accompanies the action well.

Naruto includes enough unlockables for my tastes. It feels like Eighting really focused on the core fighting part of the game before turning its view towards mini games which is always a good thing in a Wii game. Distractions include a light gun style shuriken-throwing course that I found to be surprising fun, info on characters in cards that are unlocked during game play and a movie/music player for all included cut scenes and songs.

Naruto sees it’s true value with four players however. Being a 3D oriented game; you must specify a target for your character that then creates your horizontal axis. When you press towards your target you will move towards him or her despite their actual direction. Switching targets is quick and needs to be once the chaos begins. Local multiplayer setup is very robust allowing free for all, 2 on 2, 1 on 3 and even a co-op survival mode against the CPU. Assuming you can keep track of what character you are on screen Naruto delivers a multiplayer experience on the Wii that is very unique compared to your Wii sports and Wario Wares. It’s great to have a teammate come in behind you to prevent a jutsu move that an opponent almost caught you in. After playing for nearly an hour a friend and mine began to realize the true test of this game was who could keep up with the remote actions the best in order to maximize the damage done by jutsu specials.

The most glaring omission to this package and the one that brings the score down terribly is the lack of online multiplayer. It is apparent Eighting is riding their Naruto releases as close to the “just update it as much as we have to in order to sell it” line. To be forgiving, I am considering this Wii edition of Naruto to be a brand new game and not harping on it for essentially just being a roster update. I never owned the Gamecube versions and consider Naruto Revolution to be a very new creation even if I did own the older Clash of the Ninjas. However, if I look at this as a Wii game and not a slightly uplifted Gamecube port then not having Internet play is a terrible blow to the game’s longevity. I hope to see Eighting step up and create an online fighting system around Naruto or I am afraid it will get lost in the dust once Smash Bros Brawl comes out.

Once you pull yourself away from the kiddy license if it doesn’t interest you and gather a few friends together in the same house, you will find Naruto: Clash of the Ninja Revolution to be a competent and exciting fast paced fighter. It achieves a balancing act that most fighters such as Guilty Gear or Tekken fail at: giving the new players a chance to feel good playing and allowing them to compete with long time players with some practice. For this Christmas season there is no fighter better on the Wii than Naruto in my opinion now that we have seen Smash Bros pushed back again.