Why one of Project M's spots should be an encore of Marth & Roy:
As you know, one of my all time favorite characters in Smash Bros. in Roy. I am probably the foremost supporter on Roy's return in Smash 4, and I uncovered a number of things that helped people re-evaluate his prospects for return (that he was intended for Brawl, that he is among the most highly requested characters for Smash 4 in Japan, that FE6 is among the most games in the FE series in Japan).
Roy was the character that made me interested enough in FE, to actually try out a game. I eventually ended up becoming a big fan to the series, where I imported most of the Japan-only titles in the series (FE5 and FE6 are my two favorite games in the series).
However, just like everyone else, I had not known Roy from any previous games I had played. Sakurai took a profound risk on Roy, and it paid off. Contrary to popular belief, Roy was not an advertisement for FE6 suggested by Intelligent Systems, but rather the idea to include Roy had come from Sakurai himself (who is a very big fan of the Fire Emblem series). Sakurai said on the Japanese Dojo Melee site that although people had yet to play the game Roy was from, he had a feeling he would become a fan favorite because many people would love him for his "charm".
Marth and Roy drew lots of people to the Fire Emblem series for the first time as well.
(More backstory on Roy's Melee inclusion: Marth was selected to represent the Fire Emblem series despite not having made an appearance in the Fire Emblem series since early 1994 and FE4/FE5 being far more contemporary, due to the fact that Marth was far, far more requested than any other FE characters. Sakurai's original intention for the Melee roster was for it to have only 20 playable characters.
However, towards the end of Melee's development, Sakurai felt Melee's roster was too small, and decided that he had enough time to add in either one more non-clone newcomer (likely to have been King Dedede) or six more clone newcomers. Sakurai felt that people would be happier with the six clone newcomers, and went with that option. When Sakurai had decided to make a second Fire Emblem character one of the six newcomer spots, he went to Intelligent Systems for permission to use an additional character (as well as request art, notes, and materials to facilitate development on the character). While at Intelligent Systems, Sakurai was given a a sneak peak at FE6 which was in development at the time. Sakurai became intrigued with the main protagonist of that game, Roy, and felt that he would be the best choice for a second FE character. He particularly felt that the fire properties to Roy's sword would help distinguish him from other possible clone choices for a FE newcomer, and that Roy's inclusion could not only bring interest to FE6 but the entire series as a whole (Sakurai was definitely right on this).
The rest was history.
The reason why I bring up Marth/Roy in relation to Sami is that Marth/Roy are perhaps the only two surprise characters (Marth on the Western surprise of things) that ended up being extremely popular despite no one asking for them. It shows that if a character design is appealing enough, and even if the character is a clone (as was the case with Roy), people will still gravitate toward the character.
Another element to Marth/Roy is that they represented an entirely new franchise to Smash Bros. from which a large portion to the Smash Bros. fanbase was unfamiliar with, yet incredibly important to Nintendo and has a very long-running history.
From there I tried to think of characters from very long-running Nintendo franchises (at least a decade old, and at least five installments available to them) and came up with two choices:
1. A character from Advance Wars.
2. Lip from Panel de Pon (known as Tetris Attack/Puzzle League outside Japan).
Both choices I felt were worthy successors to the ideal set by Sakurai with the inclusion of Marth/Roy.
Before I go to explain Advance Wars, I will talk about Lip.
Lip is basically the main hero to Panel de Pon, which was the first installment to Nintendo's Panel de Pon/Puzzle League series. Despite being only in one installment to the series (though a Lip lookalike named Furil was the main protagonist of Panel de Pon 2 in Nintendo Puzzle Collection), Lip is basically seen as the "face" to the Panel de Pon/Puzzle League series, and still to this day has a small cult following to be in Smash Bros. Lip has yet to make a formal appearance outside Japan (the closest thing she got was a sticker appearance in Brawl).
In regards to the credentials of the Panel de Pon/Puzzle League series, they are quite impressive. There has been an installment to this series released on every Nintendo console since its Super Nintendo debut back in 1995, with the exception of the Wii. Even Sakurai thinks highly of Panel de Pon, calling the the game "a masterpiece" and that recommends that "everyone should give it a chance".
Within Smash Bros., Panel de Pon historically receives a bit of content. In Melee, Lip's flower baton, Lip's Stick, was featured as a bludgeoning item, a trophy of said item, and Kirby being able to transform into one of Lip's junk blocks (its the pink block with a face on it). In Brawl, the Panel de Pon cameo and references from Melee reprised their roles (Lip's Stick, Lip's Stick trophy, and Kirby's transformation). In addition, there was also five stickers from Panel de Pon (Flower Fairy Lip, Panel, Jewel Fairy Ruby, Moon Fairy Seren, and Water Fairy Elias), and a remix of Lip's Theme featured as one of the songs.
Lip also has a plethora of potential as a prospective fighter. as seen by the movesets listed in this link's opening post:
http://www.smashboards.com/threads/...-in-melees-development-theories-added.324269/
However, despite all this in favor of Lip as being Project M's Marth/Roy (her series is even developed by Intelligent Systems). There are a few reasons why I felt an Advance Wars character would be a superior choice.
For one, I think for quite a few people, it would uncomfortable to have a loli-like character in Smash Bros. Even myself I have misgivings about the design to the character due to her relatively short skirt, and one thing I don't want to see in Smash Bros. are loli panties.
Secondly, unlike an Advance Wars character, she would have to be a character designed from the ground up, and could not be a clone from any other character on the roster.
Third, like Advance Wars character, no decent 3D model exists for her. However, if the team is really interested in pursuing Lip, and needs a model to go off of, there does exist a very rare figurine for Lip:
But as can be seen by the figurine, Lip's skirt is very problematic, and would turn away a good deal of players (though that may be mitigated by giving her biker shorts underneath her skirt.)
Next let me explain the worth of the Advance Wars franchise.
Here are some excerpts from a piece I wrote explaining the worth to a possible Advance Wars character to fellow Smash Bros. fans:
However, in terms of long-running Nintendo franchises, perhaps the one example that is most striking, and much more likely than Golden Sun to be ignored in Smash 4, is that that of the Wars franchise (Famicom/Advance Wars). This series only received an Assist Trophy (which basically consisted of three sprite rips from GBA games), a trophy of that Assist Trophy, and six stickers (Andy, Sami, Max, Jake, Rachel, and Hawke).
The dismal popularity to the franchise in Japan, as well as the very low amount of requests in the West, basically ensures that the series won’t be receiving a playable character in Smash 4 at the very least (it may even lose its Assist Trophy representation).
However, the Wars franchise is a series that is very much deserving of playable representation in Smash Bros. Aside from Punch-Out, it’s the longest running Nintendo franchise with at least five installments under its belt, that has not been given a playable character yet in Smash Bros.
A little history and background about the Wars franchise.
The Wars franchise is often either referred to as the Famicom Wars or Advance Wars franchise. Depending on who you ask, the series have a minimum of seven installments to a maximum of twelve installments. There are seven games in the series developed by Intelligent Systems (Famicom Wars, Game Boy Wars, Super Famicom Wars, Advance Wars, Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising, Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict). For the remaining five games, three of the games were developed and published by Hudson (a third-party), which were Game Boy Wars Turbo, Game Boy Wars 2, and Game Boy Wars 3. The remaining two games were real time strategy games developed by Kuju Entertainment (Battalion Wars and Battalion Wars 2).
Still, even strictly looking at the games developed in the series by Intelligent Systems (seven in all), the series is clearly deserving of a playable character.
Famicom Wars was the predecessor to Fire Emblem, being released by Intelligent Systems about two years before the first game in that series was released. While the Famicom Wars games (Famicom Wars, Game Boy Wars, and Super Famicom Wars) never reached the highs that the Fire Emblem series did in Japan in terms of popularity and sales, it did see a large fan following upon its first international release.
The first international release for the franchise was Advance Wars, released in September 10, 2001. The first international release was met with enormous praise and accolades. The game consequentially sold very well. In addition to the popularity of Marth and Roy in Melee, another huge factor for Fire Emblem going international was the sales success and praise of Advance Wars, according to one of the designers of the game.
As with the original Advance Wars, the sequel was also met with sales success and accolades in the West. This case was repeated with Dual Strike and Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict.
The case though with Japan was different. Although Advance Wars was originally planned for an October 2001 release, it was delayed in Japan due to the September 11th terrorist attacks, and the second installment as well was never released. It was not until November 25th 2004 that those games were released in Japan as part of a duo pack cartridge, however, it ended up selling poorly due to how close it was released to the Nintendo DS’s launch in Japan. Dual Strike also ended up selling poorly in Japan. The poor sales of the previous three titles developed by Intelligent Systems, may have been the primary reason why Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict was never released in Japan despite being made by a Japanese developer and already having a Japanese translation available for the game.
With three games released in the interim between Melee and Brawl (just going by Intelligent System’s mainline series), and Advance Wars released only two months prior to Melee, many people felt it was unfair that the series was basically ignored in terms of content in Brawl.
Basically, only two choices come up in regards to a possible playable Advance Wars character: Andy and Sami. And between the two, Sami easily seems like much more of a fighter than Andy. Just look at her official artwork:
Like Marth/Roy, on the whole she is an appealing character in terms of aesthetics. She also very plausibly could be a Melee-style clone of Snake.
The only potential downside to Sami is that she is not as important as Andy is in the first Advance Wars (though she a more important co-starring role in Black Hole Rising).
Advance Wars being the sister series to Fire Emblem also makes sense to have Sami be the Roy of Project M.
However, I think the ideas laid down here might be some decent food for thought (or at least I would hope so). This was an extraordinarily long read, but I do think it would be a good idea for at least one of the slots to be a more unconventional but very appealing (yet non-polarizing) character addition in the tradition of the FE duo from Melee.
So between these two successors of Marth/Roy, which would you like to see more:
Lip or Sami?
Personally, I would go with Sami, but Lip is still a good choice (though much more difficult).
