Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is an extremely fun platform fighter and a huge step up from the first game. This sequel is better in almost every way. The controls feel tighter and more fluid, the movesets are much more inspired and far less homogenous, the visuals are significantly cleaner-looking, there’s an actual story mode that is well thought-out, there are more in-game items, the voice acting was included from the get-go, there are bosses, and there a slew of other welcome upgrades.

However, there is one major issue from the first game that carried over to this one, and that’s the handling of the roster of playable characters. It’s genuinely great for Nickelodeon fans to be able to play as the likes of Spongebob, Rocko, and Aang in a video game, but there are quite a few issues overall with how the developers approached the roster.

There are far too many notable Nicktoons absent from the roster. Popular series like Rocket Power and The Fairly Odd Parents are completely missing from the game. The same can be said for later hits like Sanjay and Craig or Harvey Beaks. Doug is an absence that is felt but understood due to the Disney ownership. Rugrats is another story, though. None of the babies are playable, which is heartbreaking. They were the original Nickelodeon mascots and a vital part of Nicktoon history. Reptar being the only Rugrats representation on the roster is like having Tingle being the only Legend of Zelda rep in Super Smash Bros.

Eleven fighters from the first game were completely dropped for the sequel. It’s not uncommon for fighting game sequels to feature newcomers and lose some formerly playable characters, but eleven is rough. It would also have been more understandable if it was just side characters like Powdered Toast Man who were cut, but that wasn’t the case. Characters like CatDog and Oblina being cut means that their respective TV series are also no longer represented altogether. Lincoln Loud, the protagonist of The Loud House, is no longer playable but his sister Lucy is. This leaves The Loud House fans scratching their heads. 

Once again, the developers have favored memes instead of main characters. Eliza Thornberry, protagonist of The Wild Thornberrys, would make for a fun animal-summoning brawler but is absent in favor of her father Nigel because he’s a popular internet meme. Arnold’s grandmother from Hey Arnold! Is playable for some reason, but not Arnold himself. Why not include the joke picks as well as the main series representatives?

In just about any other fighting game series, sequels build off of their predecessors. Even if everyone doesn’t make the cut, the roster size is a bit larger due to the inclusion of newcomers. That doesn’t feel like the case with Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 as the roster sizes in both games are equal.

In fact, it feels like they simply replaced characters with newcomers to ensure certain archetypes were filled rather than finding creative ways to include more characters. The parental guardian meme character is no longer Hugh Neutron; now it’s Grandma Girdy. The duo/switch character used to be CatDog, but now it’s the Angry Beavers. Lincoln Loud served as a typical kid character by using sporting equipment and a bicycle, but now that’s Gerald’s job. The big bad villain Shredder is out and the big bad villain Plankton is in. They even went as far as replacing two of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with the other two Turtles instead of having all four of them be playable.

One would think that DLC or later additions could fix some of these problems, but the DLC that has already been announced is not-so-shockingly lackluster. Both Zuko and Iroh from Avatar: the Last Airbender sound like they’d be great choices, but it’s odd that with Azula already being on the roster that every single non-Avatar rep from that franchise would be a firebender from the same family which just feels redundant. 

Rocksteady from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will be added, but without Bebop. This just feels like a random pick for random sake rather than choosing the best fighters from a franchise. In what world are April and Rocksteady better reps for TMNT than the actual Turtles or the Shredder? Mr. Kabs is probably the DLC pick that makes the most sense and is the most exciting, but having yet another Spongebob SquarePants rep on the roster without ever touching ChalkZone or another completely unrepresented series is underwhelming.

This new game did offer some new inclusions that were a step in the right direction, though. Jimmy Neutron is finally playable and should have been a no-brainer inclusion in the first game. El Tigre and the Angry Beavers are extremely welcome additions. Inclusions like these prove that the developers do recognize characters that make sense and do see who fans actually want to play as.

Unfortunately, though, the developers don’t really seem to care what characters make sense or are heavily requested. They just care what bonkers and questionable choices make themselves laugh. One of the game’s more well-known developers, Thaddeus Crews, took to X(Twitter) to explicitly say that he doesn’t care what the playerbase wants. In his post, which is seen below, he states that he “sees all of your posts, hears you loud and clear” and that he “won’t do a thing about it.” In a reply to the post, he then insults the fans and tells them to “buzz off.” It’s not exactly encouraging to anyone hoping to see characters from Rocket Power or Back at the Barnyard included in the game or future sequel.

The Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl video game series is seemingly meant to celebrate all things Nickelodeon and the rich history of Nicktoons, but it can’t quite reach that goal with the current approach to the roster. Hopefully now that the gameplay has been greatly improved, future installments can build off of what this sequel has set up so that this can become the perfect Nicktoon crossover that fans want.

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 is a sequel that improves on the original game in almost every way. It’s just unfortunate that this one key issue carried over from the first game.

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