i could take castlevania bc as it may be clear, i tried to put games that have been nintendo affiliated
pacman is there because namco is helping develop the games
i can fuck w a castlevania inclusion
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pacman is there because namco is helping develop the games
i can fuck w a castlevania inclusion
I generally agree with "more Nintendo, less third party". I have varying thoughts on other things. I'll be like, responding to things either in this thread or said in the community more broadly. I quoted this post because it's the closest thing to a direct inspiration to this post but like, it's not all related. If you're reading this and think "but I didn't say that", you probably didn't!
1. Fire Emblem characters get too much flak. (On a related note, not directed at you AN, I know you were meming, just responding to the general popular sentiment here.)
a) Most of them have good reasons to be there. Of the 8 characters, 2 are echos – these guys require a lot less work to create and design, so they're not "taking anyone's spot" or whatever, think of them more like freebies. It's not really helping anyone to get rid of them or their original versions, like why pass up on the 2-for-1 deal. Ignoring the echos and their original versions, we have Robin (people don't complain about anyway), Byleth (represents the most successful game in the series, should stay), and Corrin and Ike. Between Corrin and Ike, I want Ike to stay and Corrin to go, but I can understand any configuration of Corrin and Ike staying or going. In other words, any number of Fire Emblem characters at least 6 (including echos) / 4 (not including echos) makes some sense to me, anything below that I will probably disagree with.
b) They are healthy for the competitive game. They have a lot of playstyle diversity without requiring super elaborate preparation to understand and play against them. There's so many characters in Ultimate that learning how to play against everyone to do well in competitive is a pain, and it's made worse because they all have so many special gimmicks and properties to learn. Marth plays very different from Roy, and it mostly boils down to a pretty subtle thing, their sweetspots (and like fall speed to some extent). Contrast that to like, Kazuya vs Steve: sure they play very different, but you have to learn about so many things just to play against them well. Like you might think it's as simple as "learn Kazuya has a special grab at 100 and avoid it" or "learn Steve can make blocks, don't run into them", but it's way more complicated than that. One could write multiple pages on the subject; I'll spare this chat from doing that.
c) As characters in their own games, they're often pretty interesting. (Not always – this is part of why I would cut Corrin.) Besides representing franchises in Smash, characters ideally should be, like, cool and interesting and important to that franchise on their own merits. I understand some characters are just too important to their franchises include, even if they aren't super interesting on their own. I'd put people like Mario, Byleth, and Inkling here. However, when you're advocating for more Splatoon reps, and your first character is "a non-specific representative of a species, not a standalone interesting character", I'm going to disagree with "another non-specific representative of a species" in Octoling.
2. Sonic doesn't need to stay. The primary reason is that he's just not that important of a character anymore. His heyday is at least 20 years in the mirror – he's another retro character in a game full of retro characters. I'm aware he has new games, and some of them even get positive reception, but as a property he's a shell of his former self. Even his primary interaction with Nintendo (to my knowledge), Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, is over now. I could understand him staying anyway out of respect for his past rivalry and history with Mario and Nintendo. However, in Smash specifically, they've had almost 20 years to make his gameplay interesting and not harmful to the competitive scene, and if anything they're in retrograde motion on that front, and there's no reason to think he (or any Sonic character based on him) will be any different in the future.
3. One of Wii Fit Trainer and/or the Miis gotta stay. These guys often get relegated to the sidelines, but casual gaming is such an enormous chunk of the market and history for gaming, especially Nintendo gaming, that it's a mistake to not incorporate them at all. To take an example, Wii Fit, like just that one game Wii Fit, sold more than the entire Metroid series combined. Unlike other Wii games with gaudy sales, Wii Fit wasn't included with the console, so that doesn't explain it -– it was just really popular. Including Wii Fit Plus, it sold twice as much as all Metroid combined. I know sales aren't everything, and I'm not saying we should turn the roster into "who sold the most" – I just want to highlight how big the casual playerbase is to people used to hardcore fansites like this one.
add Mr. Grizz and Octolings into Smash 6 and I'm happy with the splatoon roster until another splatoon game adds a character worth it (a lot of the villains don't translate well to smash tbh, and a lot of the other important characters are just other inklings or octolings
he'd be more funny than anything but i wanna see this stanced up bear in competitive, kit should use salmon run ideas like throwing eggs like other characters with items
octolings should represent splatoon 2 and splatoon 3
ideally this means they use the classes that aren't represented in smash, and new sub / special weapons
he'd be more funny than anything but i wanna see this stanced up bear in competitive, kit should use salmon run ideas like throwing eggs like other characters with items
octolings should represent splatoon 2 and splatoon 3
ideally this means they use the classes that aren't represented in smash, and new sub / special weapons
Attachments
bro I'd take a hundred more third parties over a single extra FE chump
I love the crossover aspect of seeing some whacky match ups that would never happen anywhere else. Being able to have a free for all between Minecraft Steve, Sonic the Hedgehog, Sephiroth and Sans Undertale in a professionally made game is just too great to pass up on
I love the crossover aspect of seeing some whacky match ups that would never happen anywhere else. Being able to have a free for all between Minecraft Steve, Sonic the Hedgehog, Sephiroth and Sans Undertale in a professionally made game is just too great to pass up on
when are they going to put ash ketchum (from poke.on) in super smash brothers!
I disagree, with 2 at least. Outside of Zelda, we don't need more nintendo reps. Mario, Pokemon, That one nerdy anime looking game (fire emblem, I think), I'm actually glad more non nintendo characters are getting in.
Now can we please get more Sonic reps?
Trying to balance all of franchise importance, importance within franchise, coolness, history within Smash, history within gaming, competitive play, etc., my "best hypothetical roster" would be something like what comes below. Or, given my edit, about half of my best roster would be this.
Edit in Post: OK, this project was a bigger undertaking than I imagined. If I'm able to complete this, I think this will have to be a 2-part post. This first part right now will be "Official Nintendo Franchises With Several Reps ATM".
Preface:
1) I'm trying to make a "best roster", not "my preferred roster". Some additions will be characters I like. Some won't! Same with deletions. I'll (imperfectly) try to be putting my bias aside. For transparency, though, I'll roughly note how I personally feel about the character as a Smash character. This ranges across this scale: Dislike Neutral / Ambivalent Like Love. The character's name will be colored the matched way.
2) This is such a detailed project that I know everyone will find ways to disagree with it. Some of these disagreements will probably be right – I can't account for everything, but I'll try. My opinions tend to be unpopular anyway, so like, I expect some disagreeing.
3) Some decisions are more important and valuable to my design than others. If you say "I disagree with you keeping Mario", I will strongly disagree. Politely, but strongly. If you say "This FE lord from I game I haven't played should be another lord with a similar playstyle, because the second lord is a more important and interesting character", like, sure, I probably don't super care either way and might just take your word for it.
4) If you read my prior post, you know I consider echo fighters as basically a freebie. Therefore, I won't include them in the standard character counts above each franchise, flagging them to the side. The more echos the better, I generally think.
5) I prefer a smaller roster overall for reasons I won't get into right now, and it also makes this post more interesting because I have to decide cuts instead of saying "everybody stays why not". This already looks like a several-hours post. Maybe later. (SPOILER ALERT: IT WAS.)
Franchises Covered This Round: Mario, DK, Zelda, Metroid, Kirby, Star Fox, Pokemon, Fire Emblem
Roster From Those Franchises:
Analysis:
Mario (6 Characters + 1 Echo) (-1 from Ultimate)
Mario / Dr. Mario
Dr. Mario isn't formally considered an Echo for whatever reason, but he's close enough to Mario to be one, so I'll just lump him in that bucket and keep him as a freebie.
Luigi
Peach
Bowser
Bowser Jr. / (alts) Koopalings
This is a complicated one. Even though I like the character, I initially strongly felt they should be excluded. I don't think they're that important or interesting characters in the franchise. The Koopalings kind of smuggle in a bunch of free characters in the way I normally love, but I think they're getting a bit stale. They tend to have oscillating time periods where they're everywhere and where they're nowhere, and with their prominence in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and here, it feels about time for them to go back on the shelf to be fresher later. However, 8 characters in 1 is a hard deal to pass up, he's competitively interesting while being pretty healthy, and the integration of a core franchise game in Super Mario World is pretty cool. They stay for now.
Daisy
This was a tough call. I'm removing two pretty unique fighters from the most important franchise here (I'll get to them soon), so I wanted to give some compensation, so Daisy is her own deal now. She's a neat character who bounces off the main cast well, has momentum (e.g. playable in Ult and Wonder), and could do with some more development / crystallizing ofn her identity. She can represent some less common games, like spinoffs and Super Mario Land, without making it her entire Thing in a way that feels predictable, forced, or limited. There's a ton of creative potential and I'm cautiously optimistic to see what they do with her. I thought about a lot of common suggestions for a new Mario character: maybe I didn't see upside that you know about, but I did consider and consciously reject the following: Goomba, Koopa Troopa, Pauline, Waluigi, Geno, Toad / Captain Toad / Toadette.)
Removals: Rosalina is a character I've always loved but has poorly translated to Smash, for me, and modern appearances in general. She feels stale and without a clear identity, receding in development from her origins. The mother using her children to fight you and die is kind of weird. She's also kind of gimmicky and annoying in competitive. She can get some time on the shelf to come back later. Piranha Plant is a cool guy, nothing against him, but I don't want the fun to get stale by repeating the pattern of unexpected common Mario enemy. (This is also why I didn't do Goomba or something.) We'll get a silly guy later, don't you worry.
Donkey Kong (2 characters) (-1 from Ultimate)
Donkey Kong
King K. Rool
A two-character DK is not uncommon. Picking K. Rool over Diddy Kong might be. Long story short, I think K. Rool offers more to the cast. He and Diddy are both unique competitively in good hands, but K. Rool is more unique in thrilling charges, instilling fear, and precise, deadly combos, while Diddy is more unique for sitting behind a decoy and staring at you. K. Rool also represents the franchise's platformer roots more specifically than Diddy, who was there some too of course but is generally, like, a more generic representative of the franchise. K. Rool also has more general coolness, stage presence and his own sort of likability.
Zelda (5 characters) (-1 from Ultimate)
Link
Zelda
Sheik
Ganondorf
Ganondorf 2
This is reasonably straightforward. See here for my thoughts on Ganondorf. "Ganondorf 2" represents a new Ganondorf that is more canon-representative and mechanically different from our current guy. I don't personally love or hate a second Ganondorf existing, but I think its a natural way to inject some fresh variety and resolve a common complaint in one arrow. I've seen people pitch entirely new characters to join the Zelda roster, but none have really convinced me, most being prominent in one game and then kind of disappearing off the map. I'm also taking down Toon Link and Young Link. My personal preference among the two is clear, but I think both are pretty unexciting mechanically, less valuable for representing the franchise than a new Ganondorf, and a bit stale at this point. They're small Links that still do Link stuff, I think we've seen enough.
Metroid (3 characters, 1 Echo) (=0 from Ultimate).
Samus / Dark Samus
Zero Suit Samus
Ridley
The two biggest characters are here, and the biggest one gets an alternate costume that lets her actually exist as a human person that she is, and not just fight in her suit. I'm down. I could justify removing ZSS, but the franchise has momentum off Dread and I'll be removing enough people elsewhere, I think, so I'll just fix what doesn't seem broken.
Kirby (5 characters) (+2 from Ultimate).
Kirby
Meta Knight
King Dedede
All normal so far...
Waddle Dee
Adeleine & Ribbon
OK hear me out.
A problem I've seen discussing a new Kirby character is a lack of a clear choice. If there's anyone people gravitate to, it's Bandana Dee, but I'm less of a fan. He's not super important or relevant, appearing in the background fairly often but having one minor plot role ever in one subgame of one game (excluding spinoffs), to my knowledge. However, despite that, he's still so hyped up and talked about that he's not really a fresh, oddball, subversive pick. It's not like I could find one amazing representative for the franchise either, though, so I picked two.
A&R and Waddle Dee do a really great job together of representing the franchise. Both represent its early beginnings, with Waddle Dee being the original basic Goomba-like enemy, and A&R (alongside Adeleine's ?counterpart?, Ado) appearing in 2/3 of the Dark Matter trilogy in the 90s-2000. They both represent modern Kirby, with A&R being one of the most happy surprised for Kirby's own "Everyone is Here" in Star Allies, and Waddle Dees rising in importance to have their own town in Forgotten Land and, uh, champion in Bandana. Vibes wise, Waddle Dee is the resident silly guy representing the franchise's laid-back, unassuming nature, and A&R simultaneously represent its overtly cheery, energetic side and its darker, quieter, sadder side. Both could be super interesting fighters, with A&R having a wealth of abilities to draw on from Star Allies, or even the Kirby 64 combined Copy Abilities, while Waddle Dee is a perfect blank slate to express some less common base Copy Abilities. Suplex Waddle Dee, anyone? Imagine his little Hi-Jump.
Star Fox (2 characters) (-1 from Ultimate).
Fox
Falco
Given the franchise's unfortunate crashing trajectory, 2 feels appropriate, but it was tough picking Falco or Wolf. I would have said Wolf in the past, but I like Fox and Falco staying together as comrades to the end, no matter what happens with the franchise. Falco also has tremendous importance to the franchise's history with his Melee ability, and unlike Wolf, he's been here for every iteration since then. Wolf is a bit cooler and better for competitive, I think, but that's not enough for me here.
Pokemon (8 characters + 1 echo) (+-0 from Ultimate)
Pikachu
Jigglypuff
Mewtwo
Pokemon Trainer
Lucario
Greninja
Meowscarada
Koraidon / Miraidon
Let's just do this rapid fire.
I thought about making Pichu a Pikachu echo, but size meaningfully changes how you play against a character, and that (among other distinctions) was too big for me to justify slipping it in. To the Smash veterans thinking about Pikachu pancaking making his size closer to Pichu than it appears – I hear you, and would tinker Pikachu around to make that less of a thing.
I went back on forth on Jigglypuff, but besides being a founding member of both Smash and Pokemon, it represents the anime and some Smash history with Melee, so I barely gave it the nod.
Mewtwo is simultaneously lore important (and plot important in the biggest movie), a reasonably fleshed out character, pretty competitively healthy (at least for now), and cool and popular and neat. Many reasons to keep for me.
Pokemon Trainer is neat, but they smuggle characters in kind of the opposite of echos, 3 characters that take normal effort to make, but compressed into one character slot. Not super efficient in that way. This mechanic also makes them very gimmicky. I'm happy to have it once to showcase the mechanics of switching, have an actual trainer as a member, and cram in popular guys, but I'm definitely not adding, like, Hoenn Pokemon Trainer or anything.
Lucario represents a generation of Pokemon fans, which I'd label as "Gen 4 to Gen 5", which share a lot of visual/narrative/aesthetic/mechanical/etc. similarities. If I had a Gen 5 mon I'd want to take his place, I'd think about it, but I could not find one. Despite keeping Lucario, I would definitely want to tone down his gimmickiness with Aura, though.
Like Lucario representing 4-5, Greninja represents 6-7, with Incineroar being phased out for a newer Pokemon. Why Greninja over Incineroar? Roster continuity from Smash 4, and more uniqueness and coolness as a Pokemon to most people. I'm not written in stone here, though. I don't want both, though – Pokemon already has the most in my new roster by a decent chunk. That to me is a natural consequence of it having so many good characters with interesting abilities, but I should draw the line somewhere and not make Pokemon Fighter.
Meowscarada is a fairly natural choice as (afaik) the most popular recent starter, the starter type least represented in Smash, and (afaik) the one that translates most naturally into a platform fighter. However, just adding one starter as the modern Pokemon rep felt stale, especially since Smash 4 and Smash Ultimate both did this. The bikes are my second choice. A legendary Pokemon echo setup just sounds really fun and prime opportunity for some epic fights, and also some silliness as the bike dogs rev down the field. Ridley and K. Rool tells us you can be big and work fine, and I think we have a pretty cool opportunity here.
Fire Emblem (6 characters + 2 Echo Fighers) (+- 0 from Ultimate)
Marth / Lucina
Roy / Chrom
Ike
Robin
Byleth
[New FE Game Character]
Just see the first part of this post, really. Corrin's game was new at 4 and they slipped in, but I think they're pretty easy to replace with whoever's game is new when this new game releases.
Edit in Post: OK, this project was a bigger undertaking than I imagined. If I'm able to complete this, I think this will have to be a 2-part post. This first part right now will be "Official Nintendo Franchises With Several Reps ATM".
Preface:
1) I'm trying to make a "best roster", not "my preferred roster". Some additions will be characters I like. Some won't! Same with deletions. I'll (imperfectly) try to be putting my bias aside. For transparency, though, I'll roughly note how I personally feel about the character as a Smash character. This ranges across this scale: Dislike Neutral / Ambivalent Like Love. The character's name will be colored the matched way.
2) This is such a detailed project that I know everyone will find ways to disagree with it. Some of these disagreements will probably be right – I can't account for everything, but I'll try. My opinions tend to be unpopular anyway, so like, I expect some disagreeing.
3) Some decisions are more important and valuable to my design than others. If you say "I disagree with you keeping Mario", I will strongly disagree. Politely, but strongly. If you say "This FE lord from I game I haven't played should be another lord with a similar playstyle, because the second lord is a more important and interesting character", like, sure, I probably don't super care either way and might just take your word for it.
4) If you read my prior post, you know I consider echo fighters as basically a freebie. Therefore, I won't include them in the standard character counts above each franchise, flagging them to the side. The more echos the better, I generally think.
5) I prefer a smaller roster overall for reasons I won't get into right now, and it also makes this post more interesting because I have to decide cuts instead of saying "everybody stays why not". This already looks like a several-hours post. Maybe later. (SPOILER ALERT: IT WAS.)
Franchises Covered This Round: Mario, DK, Zelda, Metroid, Kirby, Star Fox, Pokemon, Fire Emblem
Roster From Those Franchises:
Mario / Dr. Mario
Luigi
Peach
Bowser
Bowser Jr.
Daisy
Donkey Kong
King K. Rool
Link
Zelda
Sheik
Ganondorf
"Ganondorf 2"
Samus / Dark Samus
Zero Suit Samus
Ridley
Kirby
Meta Knight
King Dedede
Waddle Dee
Adeleine & Ribbon
Fox
Falco
Pikachu
Jigglypuff
Mewtwo
Pokemon Trainer
Lucario
Greninja
Meowscarada
Koraidon / Miraidon
Marth / Lucina
Roy / Chrom
Ike
Robin
Byleth
"New FE Game Character"
Luigi
Peach
Bowser
Bowser Jr.
Daisy
Donkey Kong
King K. Rool
Link
Zelda
Sheik
Ganondorf
"Ganondorf 2"
Samus / Dark Samus
Zero Suit Samus
Ridley
Kirby
Meta Knight
King Dedede
Waddle Dee
Adeleine & Ribbon
Fox
Falco
Pikachu
Jigglypuff
Mewtwo
Pokemon Trainer
Lucario
Greninja
Meowscarada
Koraidon / Miraidon
Marth / Lucina
Roy / Chrom
Ike
Robin
Byleth
"New FE Game Character"
Analysis:
Mario (6 Characters + 1 Echo) (-1 from Ultimate)
Mario / Dr. Mario
Dr. Mario isn't formally considered an Echo for whatever reason, but he's close enough to Mario to be one, so I'll just lump him in that bucket and keep him as a freebie.
Luigi
Peach
Bowser
Bowser Jr. / (alts) Koopalings
This is a complicated one. Even though I like the character, I initially strongly felt they should be excluded. I don't think they're that important or interesting characters in the franchise. The Koopalings kind of smuggle in a bunch of free characters in the way I normally love, but I think they're getting a bit stale. They tend to have oscillating time periods where they're everywhere and where they're nowhere, and with their prominence in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and here, it feels about time for them to go back on the shelf to be fresher later. However, 8 characters in 1 is a hard deal to pass up, he's competitively interesting while being pretty healthy, and the integration of a core franchise game in Super Mario World is pretty cool. They stay for now.
Daisy
This was a tough call. I'm removing two pretty unique fighters from the most important franchise here (I'll get to them soon), so I wanted to give some compensation, so Daisy is her own deal now. She's a neat character who bounces off the main cast well, has momentum (e.g. playable in Ult and Wonder), and could do with some more development / crystallizing ofn her identity. She can represent some less common games, like spinoffs and Super Mario Land, without making it her entire Thing in a way that feels predictable, forced, or limited. There's a ton of creative potential and I'm cautiously optimistic to see what they do with her. I thought about a lot of common suggestions for a new Mario character: maybe I didn't see upside that you know about, but I did consider and consciously reject the following: Goomba, Koopa Troopa, Pauline, Waluigi, Geno, Toad / Captain Toad / Toadette.)
Removals: Rosalina is a character I've always loved but has poorly translated to Smash, for me, and modern appearances in general. She feels stale and without a clear identity, receding in development from her origins. The mother using her children to fight you and die is kind of weird. She's also kind of gimmicky and annoying in competitive. She can get some time on the shelf to come back later. Piranha Plant is a cool guy, nothing against him, but I don't want the fun to get stale by repeating the pattern of unexpected common Mario enemy. (This is also why I didn't do Goomba or something.) We'll get a silly guy later, don't you worry.
Donkey Kong (2 characters) (-1 from Ultimate)
Donkey Kong
King K. Rool
A two-character DK is not uncommon. Picking K. Rool over Diddy Kong might be. Long story short, I think K. Rool offers more to the cast. He and Diddy are both unique competitively in good hands, but K. Rool is more unique in thrilling charges, instilling fear, and precise, deadly combos, while Diddy is more unique for sitting behind a decoy and staring at you. K. Rool also represents the franchise's platformer roots more specifically than Diddy, who was there some too of course but is generally, like, a more generic representative of the franchise. K. Rool also has more general coolness, stage presence and his own sort of likability.
Zelda (5 characters) (-1 from Ultimate)
Link
Zelda
Sheik
Ganondorf
Ganondorf 2
This is reasonably straightforward. See here for my thoughts on Ganondorf. "Ganondorf 2" represents a new Ganondorf that is more canon-representative and mechanically different from our current guy. I don't personally love or hate a second Ganondorf existing, but I think its a natural way to inject some fresh variety and resolve a common complaint in one arrow. I've seen people pitch entirely new characters to join the Zelda roster, but none have really convinced me, most being prominent in one game and then kind of disappearing off the map. I'm also taking down Toon Link and Young Link. My personal preference among the two is clear, but I think both are pretty unexciting mechanically, less valuable for representing the franchise than a new Ganondorf, and a bit stale at this point. They're small Links that still do Link stuff, I think we've seen enough.
Metroid (3 characters, 1 Echo) (=0 from Ultimate).
Samus / Dark Samus
Zero Suit Samus
Ridley
The two biggest characters are here, and the biggest one gets an alternate costume that lets her actually exist as a human person that she is, and not just fight in her suit. I'm down. I could justify removing ZSS, but the franchise has momentum off Dread and I'll be removing enough people elsewhere, I think, so I'll just fix what doesn't seem broken.
Kirby (5 characters) (+2 from Ultimate).
Kirby
Meta Knight
King Dedede
All normal so far...
Waddle Dee
Adeleine & Ribbon
OK hear me out.
A problem I've seen discussing a new Kirby character is a lack of a clear choice. If there's anyone people gravitate to, it's Bandana Dee, but I'm less of a fan. He's not super important or relevant, appearing in the background fairly often but having one minor plot role ever in one subgame of one game (excluding spinoffs), to my knowledge. However, despite that, he's still so hyped up and talked about that he's not really a fresh, oddball, subversive pick. It's not like I could find one amazing representative for the franchise either, though, so I picked two.
A&R and Waddle Dee do a really great job together of representing the franchise. Both represent its early beginnings, with Waddle Dee being the original basic Goomba-like enemy, and A&R (alongside Adeleine's ?counterpart?, Ado) appearing in 2/3 of the Dark Matter trilogy in the 90s-2000. They both represent modern Kirby, with A&R being one of the most happy surprised for Kirby's own "Everyone is Here" in Star Allies, and Waddle Dees rising in importance to have their own town in Forgotten Land and, uh, champion in Bandana. Vibes wise, Waddle Dee is the resident silly guy representing the franchise's laid-back, unassuming nature, and A&R simultaneously represent its overtly cheery, energetic side and its darker, quieter, sadder side. Both could be super interesting fighters, with A&R having a wealth of abilities to draw on from Star Allies, or even the Kirby 64 combined Copy Abilities, while Waddle Dee is a perfect blank slate to express some less common base Copy Abilities. Suplex Waddle Dee, anyone? Imagine his little Hi-Jump.
Star Fox (2 characters) (-1 from Ultimate).
Fox
Falco
Given the franchise's unfortunate crashing trajectory, 2 feels appropriate, but it was tough picking Falco or Wolf. I would have said Wolf in the past, but I like Fox and Falco staying together as comrades to the end, no matter what happens with the franchise. Falco also has tremendous importance to the franchise's history with his Melee ability, and unlike Wolf, he's been here for every iteration since then. Wolf is a bit cooler and better for competitive, I think, but that's not enough for me here.
Pokemon (8 characters + 1 echo) (+-0 from Ultimate)
Pikachu
Jigglypuff
Mewtwo
Pokemon Trainer
Lucario
Greninja
Meowscarada
Koraidon / Miraidon
Let's just do this rapid fire.
I thought about making Pichu a Pikachu echo, but size meaningfully changes how you play against a character, and that (among other distinctions) was too big for me to justify slipping it in. To the Smash veterans thinking about Pikachu pancaking making his size closer to Pichu than it appears – I hear you, and would tinker Pikachu around to make that less of a thing.
I went back on forth on Jigglypuff, but besides being a founding member of both Smash and Pokemon, it represents the anime and some Smash history with Melee, so I barely gave it the nod.
Mewtwo is simultaneously lore important (and plot important in the biggest movie), a reasonably fleshed out character, pretty competitively healthy (at least for now), and cool and popular and neat. Many reasons to keep for me.
Pokemon Trainer is neat, but they smuggle characters in kind of the opposite of echos, 3 characters that take normal effort to make, but compressed into one character slot. Not super efficient in that way. This mechanic also makes them very gimmicky. I'm happy to have it once to showcase the mechanics of switching, have an actual trainer as a member, and cram in popular guys, but I'm definitely not adding, like, Hoenn Pokemon Trainer or anything.
Lucario represents a generation of Pokemon fans, which I'd label as "Gen 4 to Gen 5", which share a lot of visual/narrative/aesthetic/mechanical/etc. similarities. If I had a Gen 5 mon I'd want to take his place, I'd think about it, but I could not find one. Despite keeping Lucario, I would definitely want to tone down his gimmickiness with Aura, though.
Like Lucario representing 4-5, Greninja represents 6-7, with Incineroar being phased out for a newer Pokemon. Why Greninja over Incineroar? Roster continuity from Smash 4, and more uniqueness and coolness as a Pokemon to most people. I'm not written in stone here, though. I don't want both, though – Pokemon already has the most in my new roster by a decent chunk. That to me is a natural consequence of it having so many good characters with interesting abilities, but I should draw the line somewhere and not make Pokemon Fighter.
Meowscarada is a fairly natural choice as (afaik) the most popular recent starter, the starter type least represented in Smash, and (afaik) the one that translates most naturally into a platform fighter. However, just adding one starter as the modern Pokemon rep felt stale, especially since Smash 4 and Smash Ultimate both did this. The bikes are my second choice. A legendary Pokemon echo setup just sounds really fun and prime opportunity for some epic fights, and also some silliness as the bike dogs rev down the field. Ridley and K. Rool tells us you can be big and work fine, and I think we have a pretty cool opportunity here.
Fire Emblem (6 characters + 2 Echo Fighers) (+- 0 from Ultimate)
Marth / Lucina
Roy / Chrom
Ike
Robin
Byleth
[New FE Game Character]
Just see the first part of this post, really. Corrin's game was new at 4 and they slipped in, but I think they're pretty easy to replace with whoever's game is new when this new game releases.
it is literally the nintendo crossover fighting game, we do not need more non nintendo reps lol
Discussions over adding or removing characters from smash bros are always so boring. They always amount to "remove characters from franchises I don't like, add ones from franchises I do like"
I went through pretty thorough efforts to avoid that above. If you think the discussion would be interesting without "give my guys all the figy pudding", why don't you check up there?
for me its less that and its more about what smash should be
i dont think every nintendo franchise is better than every third party one, i just think the culture of third party picks and how it's presented is very annoying given how they're basically just ads
plus, ultimate just didnt really do many nintendo reps
i would rather a character from a nintendo game i dont give a single shit about than another Steve Minecraft. I don't care about Fire Emblem at all but every Fire Emblem character is inherently worth more to me than Kazuya
Just adds, hmm? Than explain why Steve was the only character announcement to break twitter
Concurring with the opinion that breaking Twitter isn't something that games should aspire to. Furthermore, this doesn't actually contradict what they said about third-party characters basically being ads. Plenty of advertisements have outsized impacts, but that doesn't make them not what they are.
Does library of ruina count as a nintendo game? Seeing as its switch iteration is the only good one.
But in all honesty, we do need more castlevania rep. Aria of Sorrow is my favorite castlevania game by far, and it gets pretty much zero representation (not even dracula because he's absent from the game). Soma is incredibly different from Simon and Richter (who is an echo fighter), and because his whole gimmick is being able to absorb the souls of the monsters in the castle, he'd have a ton of attacks for the devs to play around with.
so its clear I'm not just talking out of my ass, DLC2 of smash ult was notoriously delayed, but often if you take the character and look at things that came out earlier in the year it is clear that if the release was not delayed, it'd line up perfectly with products
ie.:
Minecraft Dungeons release date: May 26, 2020
Steve in Smash release date: October 13th, 2020
Final Fantasy 7 Remake release date: April 10th, 2020
Sephiroth in Smash release date: December 22nd, 2020
imo it was clear these were supposed to be much sooner in relation to their respective games that they were meant to advertise
the original big DLC character, Joker (we don't talk about piranha plant) released like two weeks before this
Joker release date in Smash: April 17th, 2019
ah jeez, that's crazy - you mean to tell me that a week after joker was added to smash was the conference where they announced
two fucking Persona 5 projects, because they announced Persona 5 Royal, Persona 5 Scramble
this next one pissed me offf, every fucking Nintendo Direct in 2019 until the port came out had Dragon Quest 11S in it and then ah jeez who could've seen it comingggg Hero is being added to Smash
hero released into smash July 30th, 2019
dragon quest 11s released on switch september 27th 2019, and they kept advertising the fuck out of it too
it annoys me when nintendo youtubers or just in general nintendo fans online stoke up the importance of prestige of being a third party smash character, that smash is a "celebration of gaming", when it is LITERALLY just if you want to advertise your game and are willing to spend money. if it was actually just a celebration of gaming, it'd have tons of IPs nintendo fans hate like god forbid realistic human characters from the Sony IPs that sell like 20 million copies all the time
god of war??? that game isn't non stop action, realism slop! only real games like ps2 platformer guy is a real celebration of gaming!
this isnt to say that every time they do a DLC character it's not warranted, I mean its fucking minecraft steve, but to pretend it is anything about prestige rather than "they paid money because they want more people who play smash to buy Minecraft Dungeons" is just not realistic
ie.:
Minecraft Dungeons release date: May 26, 2020
Steve in Smash release date: October 13th, 2020
Final Fantasy 7 Remake release date: April 10th, 2020
Sephiroth in Smash release date: December 22nd, 2020
imo it was clear these were supposed to be much sooner in relation to their respective games that they were meant to advertise
the original big DLC character, Joker (we don't talk about piranha plant) released like two weeks before this
Joker release date in Smash: April 17th, 2019
ah jeez, that's crazy - you mean to tell me that a week after joker was added to smash was the conference where they announced
two fucking Persona 5 projects, because they announced Persona 5 Royal, Persona 5 Scramble
this next one pissed me offf, every fucking Nintendo Direct in 2019 until the port came out had Dragon Quest 11S in it and then ah jeez who could've seen it comingggg Hero is being added to Smash
hero released into smash July 30th, 2019
dragon quest 11s released on switch september 27th 2019, and they kept advertising the fuck out of it too
it annoys me when nintendo youtubers or just in general nintendo fans online stoke up the importance of prestige of being a third party smash character, that smash is a "celebration of gaming", when it is LITERALLY just if you want to advertise your game and are willing to spend money. if it was actually just a celebration of gaming, it'd have tons of IPs nintendo fans hate like god forbid realistic human characters from the Sony IPs that sell like 20 million copies all the time
god of war??? that game isn't non stop action, realism slop! only real games like ps2 platformer guy is a real celebration of gaming!
this isnt to say that every time they do a DLC character it's not warranted, I mean its fucking minecraft steve, but to pretend it is anything about prestige rather than "they paid money because they want more people who play smash to buy Minecraft Dungeons" is just not realistic
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My Smash Bros roster take is that if the goal is to celebrate gaming they should work on representing genres that have not gotten playable fighters. In this aspect, horror is a stand out example.
Blue Pill: Leon Kennedy
Red Pill: Freddy Fazbear
Blue Pill: Leon Kennedy
Red Pill: Freddy Fazbear
forget about horror, they haven't done like 90% of the genres before we even get there. like there isn't even like. a shoot em up character. that's one of the oldest genres of videogames. ig you can maybe count kid icarus uprising, but kid icarus was in smash before that game came out, and his original game isnt a shoot em up
but lets be honest, the goal isnt to celebrate gaming, its marketing
What other genres have they missed? Off the top of my head we got nothing for beat-em-ups or rhythm games
those two, shoot em ups, battle royales, horror, text based adventure, visual novels, a bunch of RPG genres such as CRPGs, MMORPGs, roguelikes, dungeon rpgs, soulslikes, boomer shooters, auto battlers, etc. etc. etc.
a lot of genres they do cover are also because like 1 character has had a spinoff/sub series. for instance, if Dr. Mario was not there there would not be a puzzle game rep. Samus has Metroid Prime which is technically a first person shooter rep, otherwise there is no first person shooter character
but really i'd just say the more compelling argument than genre is just how many series that are so influential to gaming arent in smash
anyways i will enter nuclear seethe if they add shadow and he's just an echo instead of having chaos control and doom powers
Total agreement here. I'm by no means the biggest Shadow fan out there, but he doesn't deserve the Ganondorf treatment at all. I'd still prefer Metal Sonic though, I wanna v. Max overdrive through everything so bad
Fair enough, I suppose. I didn't say it wasn't an ad, only that non nintendo additions make a lot of people extremely happy, and excited, (like me for example) and that I view them as a positive thing. You're perfectly entitled to not be super excited about them or anything, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't happen.
ohno