WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Fun fact – I was originally planning to write about the scene in Metroid: Other M where Ridley appears to tie-in with last week’s VG Music Pick but, after re-watching it, I realised it wasn’t as good as I remember it being. But I wanted to do something Ridley-related so let’s quickly talk about the time he got one-shotted by Pikachu.

While Super Smash Bros. Brawl‘s story mode was far from perfect, I fail to understand some peoples’ contempt for it when it has scenes like this. Though it’s very short, it manages to be awesome by getting right to the point and just being a spectacle. There is no build-up to Ridley’s appearance; he just shows up out of nowhere, and he immediately gets to wrecking Samus in a shockingly brutal manner for a Nintendo game. Sure, there’s no blood but it’s still hard not to wince at seeing Samus getting slammed into a wall and dragged along it.

But the real reason why I love this scene is because we get to see frigging Pikachu decimate Ridley with his Thunder attack. Allow me to repeat that. Pikachu, the adorable, yellow mouse mascot of the Pokémon series, electrocutes a ferocious, giant, space dragon out of the air. And to top it off, as Ridley gets back to his feet, Pikachu stares him down. He doesn’t even flinch when Ridley lets out his trademark roar. Obviously I’m reading too much into this but I still find the sight of this really cool. It’s one of the reasons why I loved The Subspace Emissary so much. It may be lacking in the way of a traditional narrative and character development but all it ever needed to do was show our favourite Nintendo characters hanging out and doing cool shit, which is exactly what this scene does.

I don’t know how else I’m supposed to explain why this scene’s great. Either you love it as much as I do or you just hate fun, I guess.