If you don’t have any friends…that are online to play you in a quick Super Smash Bros. Brawl game, not to worry! Brawl will come with the option to play random players online. When you go into Wi-Fi Connection mode, you can select a Basic Brawl or Team Battle to go to the Character Selection screen as your game searches for other players looking for a random match, much like other Nintendo WFC games do. You’ll have 45 seconds to pick a character, and then each player votes for the stage they want to play on.
Unlike games like Mario Kart DS, where you’d get pissed off because your opponents would leave the game because they were losing (it’s not your fault you’re so good), and you wouldn’t get a win record as a result, Brawl is different. If opponents drop out in a random (i.e., not with friends) online match, the CPU will take over those characters without you knowing.
Lastly, Sakurai won’t be doing anything to prevent hidden characters from showing up in online matches if your opponents have unlocked them and you haven’t. Basically, he says that you’ll know about all the hidden characters via the internet way before finding them out in the game anyway.
