Of course Sakurai wouldn't think in one sentence and immediately consider her for playability. I think the way Sakurai considered Rosalina was that he knew she had a playable appearance in an upcoming title (which is pretty much the heavy factor in Smash 4's criteria), then considered her for a candidate in Smash 4. Then he probably thought about what she represents in terms of importance in the Mario series and then made moveset concepts that could work for Rosalina.
Could you please stop stating opinion as if it were the truth? Unless you're Sakurai, then you don't know what the criteria was for Smash 4. This is exactly what I told you, and something that so many people do, you think that you know why a character got in but you don't. There's so much
hindsight bias that it's unreal. The only time Sakurai said anything about new games affecting the chance of a character was with the Ice Climbers, and that was
only because he had technical difficulties with them and thought it would be better to give up on them to have more time to work on the rest of the game.
Duck Hunt is the historical retro addition of this game, added for similar reasons Game and Watch and R.O.B. were added as playable characters. Pit and IC were added for reasons different from Duck Hunt.
We keep making up our own terms for this too. There was never any "historical retro" characters, and the retro term itself has been used and abused by the speculative community to the point of breaking. The only thing Sakurai said about "retros" was that he added
old, unused (which contradicts your first statement about characters with newer games) characters in the hopes that their franchises would come back. The Ice Climbers failed to come back completely, and Pit only came back because of Sakurai taking the responsibility himself. Duck Hunt is the same, he had a single game decades ago and it's about time for a reboot. Mr. Game & Watch and R.O.B. are completely different, they have no proper franchises to bring back. They are the only thing close to historical characters as you describe them, but they are more-so representatives of their respective hardware.
I'm well aware of the titles that Pac-Man had different abilities from. It's just I don't think he really thought outside those games, he probably considered him first at face value, seeing him as just a character who eats dots.
Now you're just blatantly and insultingly underestimating Sakurai as a designer. Hasn't he already made it clear that he does extensive research on a character to find what works and what doesn't work? This has to be the poorest excuse I've seen.
If that's true, what Rayman games heavily took advantage of his lack of limbs then? Did Rayman 2 (The most well-known Rayman game) take heavily advantage of it? His lack of limbs do not have any special functions themselves to easily give a playstyle to like Olimar.
Again, your ignorance of the franchise is showing, you should zip that up. From the very first Rayman game, his lack of limbs has been a focal point. He could throw his fists between narrow passages to hit enemies that he otherwise couldn't reach, he also picked up items this way. At the end of the game, his fists were even taken away from him, leaving him helpless to attack. In Rayman 2, he lost his foot and it had to physically hop back to him, and in Rayman 3, his fists were stolen again, leaving him only able to kick. He's fallen apart, reassembled, his detached parts are very important.
And again, you keep asking me "what Rayman does in his games to constitute uniqueness in Smash" while using Olimar and Rosalina as examples. When in a Mario game did Rosalina ever throw her babies at people as weapons? When did Luma's ever do
anything, let alone attack or spit star bits? When has Olimar grabbed Pikmin and swung them like melee weapons? The most he's done is throw them, which is represented by a single special in Smash. The gameplay of Pikmin is mostly premised of collecting things and carrying them back to the ship, which brought nothing of value to Smash. If Olimar can take creative liberties and do things that he doesn't actually do in his game, then Rayman can too. And as I've said before, if you can't see anything unique at all about a character with
floating body parts that aren't physically attached, then you need a better imagination.
The way I see it; in some cases (based on the characters added in Smash 4), importance can trump over uniqueness or uniqueness can trump importance as the bigger reason to add the character, other factors can trump over other factors, it varies with each possible candidate.
Again, you are not Sakurai. You
think you know why a character got in, but you don't really know. Just the fact that you have to debate whether importance or uniqueness was more important shows this blatantly.
I don't put too much faith in it really. Notably appearing in a new game only just makes the character possible for playability. I also consider if the franchise the character belongs to is significant and/or important to at least a decent level too. (Bravely Default and Bayonetta are examples of decently successful third-party franchises.)
You think that Young Link is going to come back because of a
remake when he was blatantly replaced by Toon Link (by function within Smash, Young Link and Toon Link are the same character). Again, third parties have a completely different criteria from Nintendo characters. Bravely Default and Bayonetta having new games doesn't get them any brownie points, Mega Man is dead in the water and he got in. You even think that them having new games makes them more likely than Snake, a veteran, who has an
even newer game,
and another new game on the way. You also completely disregard that third parties have to be iconic in general, Bayonetta and Bravely Default only have two games to their names, they should not even qualify. They'll have a chance in a few decades or so, if they actually spawn large franchises. Pac-Man, Snake, Mega Man, Sonic, and Rayman all have 20+ games and are all over a decade old (in fact, Rayman is the youngest, and he turns twenty this year). Bayonetta and whoever the protagonist of Bravely Default is, are not iconic characters, they are not even important to their own companies (Bayonetta is nowhere close to Sonic, and Squeenix would want a Final Fantasy character before some new one).
They aren't impossible to implement as people have suggested concepts for the Chorus Kids that can work within 3DS limitations. I don't want to go on the technical stuff though (You should probably visit the Chorus Kids thread if you want more info on that), but it's possible to make them work.
Remember when Sakurai said that the Ice Climbers didn't join the roster because they couldn't not go through 3DS limitations and most importantly had no upcoming game? Chorus Kids do with the RH 3DS game. And considering their franchise is very popular in Japan and managed to get localized outside of Japan, it's why I think they have a better chance than Ice Climbers and other newcomer candidates,. Not pure bias really.
Where on earth did Sakurai say "most importantly"? Perfect example of people taking things way out of context.
If the Chorus Men can be made to work on the 3DS, then why can't the Ice Climbers? That
is bias, plain and simple.
