So, I'm thinking about putting together a comprehensive "Anti-Ridley Argument Guide", one that fleshes out each of the most popular or common arguments against His Grace and explains how to thoroughly deal with each one. At this point, we all know that there's no
real reason that Ridley can't be in Smash, especially with Sakurai's recent Miiverse post about how "scale be damned" in Smash obliterating the size argument, so I'd like to put together these responses in a professional, informative manner for aspiring Space Pirates to use in combat against our troublesome (and admittedly dull-witted) enemies. If I could get everyone's help and input, that would make it even more comprehensive and useful, with multiple views on each subject, as well as adding new arguments and counter-arguments to further bolster our defenses.
As such, here are a few of the most popular Anti-Ridley arguments, as well as a brief description of how they are faulty and can be countered.
1. "Ridley is too big to be in Smash!"
This is the big daddy of them all, a virus that was born from a misinterpreted quote from a interview with Sakurai. The "true" quote is "I think
that would probably be impossible. [laughs] If we had put our best efforts into it,
we may have been able to do it. But he might have been a little
slow. Would that have been all right? [laughs]" He never once states that Ridley is too large. You may receive "He said he was pretty impossible!", but then you remind them that this is also the issue where he claims that Animal Crossing characters cannot fight.
You'll get a lot about how Bowser can be resized because he has been before, which, in itself is faulty, since Ridley has to be resized to be resized before. Bowser is quite often several times larger than Mario, even in several playable appearances. Smash is among his smallest build. You'll also get nonsense about how Samus should fit in Ridley's hand, to which you simply post one of @
Angelglory's size comparisons and tell them that, by that logic, Bowser has to be big enough for Mario to go inside his maw and adventure through his intestines.
This argument was completely destroyed in a recent Miiverse post, in which Sakurai stated that the series isn't always to scale. While it is a seemingly innocent post, I personally believe that Sakurai is aware of our plight and doing his best to tide us over until Ridley can be properly revealed.
2. "He was a boss in Brawl and should stay a boss!"
Another popular one, Little Mac destroys this argument. He was an Assist Trophy and sure as hell didn't stay one. Also, Bowser, Ganondorf, and DeDeDe were all bosses in their respective games before becoming playable. End of story.
3. "He's the stage hazard of Pyrosphere!"
This is the hardest one to combat, as it may be true, but the chances get slimmer and slimmer every day. Little Mac showed us that Sakurai likes to tease us when it comes to stages, so Pyrosphere faking us out is definitely in within Sakurai's limits of "trickery". Also relevant is that Ridley is the stage hazard of Pyrosphere in another fighting game, Dead or Alive: Dimensions, and Sakurai has displayed a general distaste with borrowing or copying elements from other games, especially fighting games.
That's it for now, but I'm very interested in hearing more input and such. I'd like to compile this stuff as well as possible.