Super Smash Bros. Nintendo
Three stars
Every few years, Nintendo rounds up its most popular characters, like Mario, Donkey Kong and Pikachu, and has them beat the daylights out of each other. It's not exactly blood sport — there are no spine-shattering Mortal Kombat-style fatalities, and everyone walks away smiling. Only Nintendo could make bare-knuckle brawling cute.
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (Nintendo) continues that bizarre balancing act between adorable and brutal. Like most fighting games, it's a snooze to play alone but a delight to play with friends.
The initial 49-character roster includes familiar challengers like Link and Kirby, new fighters like the Wii Fit trainer and Little Mac from Punch-Out, and even a few non-Nintendo ringers like Pac-Man and Sonic the Hedgehog. You can also fight as your Mii avatar, armed with a gun, a sword or just your fists.
It's simple enough: one button lets you punch opponents or pick up useful items, like a baseball bat or a healing spell. A second button unleashes special attacks that vary by character: Mario can throw fireballs, Link can shoot arrows and Yoshi can inhale enemies. Once you get the basics, you can figure out which combinations of buttons yield the most damaging attacks. Each melee takes place on a two-dimensional field of floating platforms, with backgrounds inspired by classic games dating all the way back to Donkey Kong.
Cinco in numbers
Dh3.7 million
The estimated cost of Victoria Swarovski’s gem-encrusted Michael Cinco wedding gown
46
The number, in kilograms, that Swarovski’s wedding gown weighed.
1,000
The hours it took to create Cinco’s vermillion petal gown, as seen in his atelier [note, is the one he’s playing with in the corner of a room]
50
How many looks Cinco has created in a new collection to celebrate Ballet Philippines’ 50th birthday
3,000
The hours needed to create the butterfly gown worn by Aishwarya Rai to the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
1.1 million
The number of followers that Michael Cinco’s Instagram account has garnered.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Best Academy: Ajax and Benfica
Best Agent: Jorge Mendes
Best Club : Liverpool
Best Coach: Jurgen Klopp (Liverpool)
Best Goalkeeper: Alisson Becker
Best Men’s Player: Cristiano Ronaldo
Best Partnership of the Year Award by SportBusiness: Manchester City and SAP
Best Referee: Stephanie Frappart
Best Revelation Player: Joao Felix (Atletico Madrid and Portugal)
Best Sporting Director: Andrea Berta (Atletico Madrid)
Best Women's Player: Lucy Bronze
Best Young Arab Player: Achraf Hakimi
Kooora – Best Arab Club: Al Hilal (Saudi Arabia)
Kooora – Best Arab Player: Abderrazak Hamdallah (Al-Nassr FC, Saudi Arabia)
Player Career Award: Miralem Pjanic and Ryan Giggs
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
