Additional characters, crossplay, and voice acting confirmed for Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl!

During a stream by famous Super Smash Bros. player HungryBox, the art director for Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, Diego Hernández, hopped on and spoke about a number of features that he and the rest of the Ludosity team are planning on adding.

First of all is that they are working on the final free DLC character. For those who don't know, the game was intended to release with 22 playable characters, but had to drop two of them to get the game out on time. As a compromise, they decided to release them later on for free.

Garfield is one of the two characters. The other one is suspected to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' iconic foe, the Shredder, due to a few interesting files found when players datamined the game.

They also revealed that a couple more characters - as well as stages - are being worked on. When HungryBox asked if the new characters would "grant all of our wishes" or are "gonna blast our minds", Diego simply responded "maybe," which seems to imply that two of the characters being worked on may be Jimmy Neutron and Timmy Turner. Regardless, we'll mostly likely find out who they are as development on them gets closer to completion.

Crossplay is also in development, which will allow players to play against others who own the game, but on a different platform. (Thus, a PC player can play against Nintendo Switch, XBox One, XBox Series X/S, and PlayStation 4/5 users) Diego mentions that he and the team were planning on including this on launch, but felt they needed to test it out more before they included it.

Finally, Diego mentioned that they are adding a "highly requested feature," which was all but outright said to be voice acting. A very common complaint amongst reviewers was that all of the characters are completely silent in the game. While a reason was never given, it's often suspected by fans that voices never happened because of budget constraints, but it seems that the game's success has finally cleared that problem.

While a date for all of these has not been said, crossplay is expected to be released sometime in Q1 of 2022.

Garfield Joins Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl!

IGN has revealed the newest fighter joining Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl: Garfield from... well, the Garfield series!

Initially published locally as Jon in 1976 and then nationwide as Garfield in 1978, Garfield started out as a Newspaper strip created by a man named Jim Davis. The comic often focuses on humorous interactions between the three main protagonists, Garfield, Jon, and Odie. Other re-occurring characters include the veterinarian Liz, Garfield's on-again-off-again girlfriend Arlene, and the self-proclaimed "world's cutest kitten" Nermal.

Garfield would make his first animated debut in The Fantastic Funnies, where he was voiced by Scott Beach. From 1982 to 1991, Garfield would receive twelve animated primetime specials, where he would be voiced by Lorenzo Music, Garfield's most well-known voice actor. Garfield would also receive a cartoon series, starting with Garfield and Friends in 1994, to The Garfield Show in 2016. In 2019, Viacom would acquire the Garfield License, and in 2020, a new cartoon starring the lasagna-loving cat was said to be in the works for Nickelodeon.

Garfield blocking one of SpongeBob's attacks.

In Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, Garfield attacks range from conventional to unconventional. From swiping at his foes with his claws, to throwing a pie, to eating a plate of Lasagna. (Yes, really.)

One of his - presumably special - moves involves him throwing his teddy bear, Pooky, forwards. Presumably pressing the special button again, Garfield then holds his arms out as Pooky comes flying back to his owner, damaging and flinging opponents away. More info on Garfield and his moves is expected to be revealed later.

Garfield crosses paths with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the first second third time.

Garfield will be arriving on December 9th for free on the PC, Xbox, and PlayStation versions of the game. Nintendo Switch owners will have to wait a bit longer to play as Garfield, though.