Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Is Getting A Dedicated Nintendo Direct

With Super Smash Bros. Ultimate set to launch this winter, Nintendo aims to keep the hype train rolling with an upcoming Direct livestream that will focus entirely on the highly-anticipated brawler. There are still a lot of question marks hanging over the game's head, so we expect the Direct will give us a better idea of what, exactly, Ultimate will offer when the stream goes live on Aug. 8.

Nintendo gave fighting fans something to be excited about this week, posting the above tweet to announce a Smash Bros. Direct is on the way. You might have to get up a bit early for this one, though, as the stream is scheduled to go live at 7a.m. PT/10 a.m. ET. That's a kind of surprising time slot, as it equates to 11 p.m. in Japan. Across the pond, though, it will only be late afternoon. If you can't drag yourself out of bed in time for the live showing, we're sure there will be no shortage of coverage to catch up on when your alarm finally goes off.

As for what will be featured in the stream, all we know is that Director Masahiro Sakurai will be on hand with some "new game information." That's vague but, based on all of the info we've received so far, we've got a pretty good idea of what to expect.

For starters, Smash Bros. Ultimate was announced earlier this year as the final trailer in a standard Nintendo Direct. The only things that were confirmed during that reveal were that the game was coming to the Switch and that Splatoon's Inklings would be joining the fight.

The real info blowout came during E3, when Nintendo revealed that every character to ever appear in a Smash game will be returning to this next outing. They also revealed some new playable characters, such as Ridley from Metroid.

For those who stuck around following the standard Nintendo Direct, Sakurai went into great detail about the new and tweaked mechanics for the game. In the weeks since, Nintendo has been rolling out videos revealing all sorts of details about the individual characters, levels and in-game items.

Because of that, news of this week's Direct has left a lot of people wondering why a dedicated update is even needed. Our guess? We don't know as much about the game as we think we do. What new stages might Nintendo be rolling out? Are there any other new items players will be able to use? Could there possibly be some other new characters getting introduced?

While it's possible some (or even all) of those questions will get some answers, we figure this Direct will focus on the one thing we know very little about: The actual game modes. On top of being a fighting game, more recent iterations of Smash Bros. have introduced some fun and interesting new modes. Outside of fun training mini-games, Smash Bros. Brawl also offered Subspace Emissary, a straightforward but fun platforming campaign that gave each character a chance to shine. The more recent iteration included modes like Special Smash, Event Mode, and Coin Battles. We have no clue what modes will be crammed into Ultimate, so hopefully this week's Direct will start filling in some of the blanks.