Just have your friends buy Wiimotes...that's what we do.  Not all of us have Wiis, but a bunch of us just have controllers for now, so we can spread the cost.  I mean, seriously, party in the same room is where it's at, though I am really looking forward to online play with SSBB.

backgrounds could use more candy for my taste, but oh well

I wouldn't want the backgrounds too busy...it'd get hard to see where you were otherwise.

the backgrounds could have been painted a little less realistic and more cartoony, in a way that matches the character models. right now the parts don't seem to fit together. I have yet to see it in live action though (in 480p without artefacts) and I'm sure people will look down on me because this will actually be my first Smash Bros. I never played the other parts.

Man the backgrounds pics won't show up

Nice to see that Link retains his camel-toe, despite a new design and a hardware upgrade...

Smash Bros. games have generally had very varied levels. So far most of the footage we've seen focuses on the relatively uncartoony looking Battlefield level, and Snake's, Pit's, Fox's and Meta Knight's levels look like they're from the serious end of the spectrum, but there's still at least Kirby, the Pokemons, and all the Mario characters to lighten things up. The Yoshi's Island level looked particularly umm... a Sony fan would call it kiddy, but let's stick to cartoony. =P I would go as far as to say that different kinds of characters from different kinds of games mixed up in a somewhat akward manner is a part of the appeal of Smash Bros. Oh, and you really should get at least Melee as soon as possible. If you have a Wii then you only need a memory card and a gamecube controller to play it, and if not then used Gamecubes have become dirt cheap.

How about that for an upgrade.

I have no doubt these shots are taken from in game, just like the SSBM ones were, Remember that thing where you could pause and then position the camera up real close to the action however you want? That's what they are doing here. 

am I the only one who gets the right side of pictures cut off all the time (ie, above post)?

I think the forum has a feature where it doesn't expand the window when there's an extra-wide image... which is a good think, I think... but it cuts off images that are too wide :-p