Here’s a critique I have with Ultimate and overall the future of the rosters in the games to come.
Short version; there are plenty of Nintendo characters still left to use and even if they aren’t important or hype-worthy, they’ll become important by the sheer prestige that Smash gives its playable characters. This is still a Nintendo crossover game and Nintendo faces shouldn’t be downplayed, especially if 3rd party characters aren’t able to return for any number of reasons.
Long Version: There is a notion among certain parts of this fandom that annoys me. There’s this viewpoint that every 1st party (Keyword, they add in 2nd party characters in this umbrella too without knowing it) character that matters is already in the playable roster (Keyword, playable). Nintendo has hundreds if not thousands of characters that can be added to the roster. Whether you think they’re hype-worthy or not isn’t up to you. I’d argue that thanks to the 3rd parties Brawl introduced, there is this perception that any Nintendo-owned character that isn’t on the playable roster isn’t important. This to me damages the future roster potential of Smash Bros., you’re going to get people who want 3rd parties over actual Nintendo characters and Nintendo themselves in my opinion are only fueling those view points.
Ultimate’s roster also shines a light on why I feel this mindset is damaging. Again, this is all an opinion so please don’t come at me with any grievances you have over me disagreeing with what you like.
Smash has always had a rather…awkward manner of selecting characters. You’ve got Mario and Donkey Kong, alongside Yoshi, Link and Pikachu and even lesser characters like Kirby, Samus, Falcon and Ness. Kirby and Metroid aren’t terribly obscure, but they aren’t what I’d call games that could push a console like Mario, Zelda and DKC did. But Ness, Fox and Falcon are definitely the outliners of that roster. Jigglypuff could be argued, but the anime was making it a popular recurring character and it was an easy character to make off Kirby’s base. If nothing else, it was a fan favorite prior to Smash in a deck of 151 characters.
Melee comes in and adds some bigger names like Bowser, Peach, Zelda, Pichu who again had popularity from an already large deck prior to (And being a clone helped, more on that later), but you also had some strange picks like G&W, Ice Climber repurposing the player characters as a duo (sidenote, Ice Climber was one of my first games so I loved them to death), and two big sore thumbs like the clone characters and the two Japan-only characters from Fire Emblem, which at the time were shocking. Ganondorf was the big boss of Zelda’s breakout title, but he was a clone of Falcon? Then you had a smaller Link, Falco who I would say would be the last character anyone would have expected, and Dr. Mario who may as well be an alternate costume at the time. You also had some guys that people were anticipating that were missing in action like Diddy Kong, Wario, Banjo-Kazooie (Which was understandable as Rare was getting ready to move to Microsoft), Meowth, and Dedede or Metaknight, whichever one came first.
Looking at Melee’s roster, could you really say that the alternatives like Dr. Mario, Roy and Young Link are noteworthy names over someone like Diddy Kong, Ridley, Isaac or Wario? I know they were added to make the roster bigger and took very little time compared to a full character but this is why I don’t get into the mindset that Sakurai is scraping the bottom of the barrel; the barrel was being filled with potential candidates starting with Brawl. Diddy and Wario finally made it and you had more one-off characters like Pit and two new Kirby characters.
Yet Isaac, Samurai Goroh and Starfy were reduced to a short cameo that only core Nintendo fans would recognize, while characters like ROB, Zero Suit Samus and Lucas became playable. Not that there’s anything wrong with those characters but in the case of Zero Suit, Ridley in Melee’s intro led a lot of people on, and I think this is why Sakurai stopped using unique imagery like the scenes in Melee’s introduction, what you see from Brawl onward is what you get, I give him credit for that at least. Wolf, Goroh and Ridley were absent from Melee, and Goroh never got his time to shine while the other two eventually did, Ridley being way overdue alongside another villain that eventually got in, which also brings me to my next point.
A lot of obvious choices or some fan choices that people hoped to see would either make it to the roster eventually (IE a decade if not years) or never get to be playable or even get cut from the next game and them come back in the same position they were in (Isaac, and keep in mind I’m not a Golden Sun fan nor do I think they’re good games, but I get why people were banking on Isaac to be playable and I think some of the elements could lend themselves well to Smash). It should not take a suggestion box being filled with people shouting to add King K. Rool and Ridley on the
playable roster. A mode like Subspace Emissary which passed itself off as this big event should have had K. Rool in the game as a boss at most, if Ridley got that honor.
But then you see Ganondorf and Bowser and realize that villains could be playable too. So why weren’t they until now? And to make matters worse, they swapped a smaller Link for an even smaller Link – who I like alongside the games he stars in mind you – and added oddities like Samus outside her armor, a Wario that doesn’t really represent his Wario Land adventures and leans towards material that wasn’t present in his games, something Sakurai seemingly stresses over when developing a character and suddenly here comes Solid Snake and Sonic the Hedgehog. While Olimar, Ike and Lucario showed a good balance of newer Nintendo games and Pit and ROB showcased an older element of Nintendo alongside a unique showcase of Pokémon’s switch out mechanic and even Wolf and Diddy being the long-time guys that people hoped to see in Melee, I think that Snake and Sonic opened a box that would affect the roster further for the worse.
Smash For definitely proved my point with a lot of would-be fan favorites, regardless of how big or well-known they were being pushed into the assist trophy corner if not being cut altogether simply because of reasons or the dreaded “Relevancy” argument. You had a list of characters who were pushing a recent title and some 3rd parties that weren’t really pushing a new game, Mega Man and Pac-Man a prime example of this, and in the case of 3rd parties, pushing a new game wasn’t the priority, it was simply being these big name 3rd parties. This is why I don’t like when people are attacked for suggesting Nintendo characters in the big Nintendo crossover, it’s clear that 3rd parties don’t have to push a new title, but Nintendo characters have to do just this or they get shafted. There's also the
well-documented strategy of
Fire Emblem being promoted when it only just now became a series barely on par with say, Kirby or Metroid and especially with DKC1 outselling the entire series before Awakening.
In the case of Sakurai, I also feel this is a mix of obligations and biases on his end. Who you see on the roster is ultimately his choice. You could argue that Nintendo may not want certain characters pushed but then you have to remember that King K. Rool jumped the hurdles that were being used against him. And then you realize that K. Rool is the
only example here. Ridley was already in Smash in some capacity, but K. Rool was just a trophy you collected until the Ballot, and he was just a western creation that Donkey Kong already did away with at the time. So being ‘relevant’ isn’t an argument. And all of a sudden, King K. Rool is important and a worthy addition when there’s plenty of receipts showing that people thought otherwise. What should be the norm is now just a bone thrown to the dogs to keep them quiet.
Again, he was a western-made character vs. Ridley being Japanese-made. That alone gave Ridley more priority. Castlevania hasn’t gotten a new title in years, Street Fighter is big enough that it doesn’t need Smash to sell the newest title, Dragon Quest is a literal cultural phenomenon, Banjo-Kazooie is the 3rd party equivalent of King K. Rool, Terry’s series got devoured by King of Fighters, you kinda see where I’m going with this. 3rd parties get to be 3rd parties, just the name alone is enough to get them in (Except Bomberman it seems, and I’m still raw over that).
But Nintendo characters that Sakurai doesn’t care for or Nintendo themselves don’t care for or don’t want to push are likely never going to be playable. Big names like Dixie Kong, King Hippo, Isaac, Bandana Dee, Gooey, Krystal, Toad, Ashley, Waluigi, Skull Kid, Pig Ganon, Starfy (He had five games vs. Kid Icarus’ three) alongside niche fan favorites like Takamaru, Sukapon, Lip, Chibi-Robo, Dillon and Ray-01 are never becoming playable unless you get a big roster like Ultimate’s again and even that’s not a guarantee when Nintendo newcomers like Spring Man and Rex weren’t safe from getting the shaft, making additions like Min-Min and Pyra/Mythra even more damning and sloppy, proving that giving the fans something over nothing doesn’t always work.
And this brings me to the big controversy the next Smash title has to deal with: Who’s worthy of staying and who’s getting cut? You could look at the roster now and make the obvious cuts (3rd parties, clones/dessert) but then what? Do you cut characters that aren’t ‘relevant’? Falcon and Ness and Little Mac come to mind for me. But wait, they have fans. But they can’t promote a game. They have to go. And then…
Who do you replace these guys with? You’re going to have to sell Smash someway. New playable characters are always going to get more attention than any other side attraction, and it’s understandable why Assist Trophies and spirits aren’t enough for some people (Myself included). You’ll have to get a newcomer lineup that gets people’s attention. So do you dive into your irrelevant war chest of has-beens, do you strictly keep things fresh with all new faces or do you continue to push for 3rd parties in an already reduced roster?
This is why the argument of every Nintendo character that’s important is already in is flawed. Because if that were the case, you wouldn’t see King K. Rool in the roster, you’d see Spring Man and Rex instead. You wouldn’t see Isaac and Skull Kid fans getting hopeful after K. Rool was shown and the Moon assist which also raised a few eyebrows. Those characters have their fans, same as Ness, Falcon and Little Mac just to use as an example of ‘important’ characters.
Even in an 88-man roster, there are still people who want their character in, Nintendo or not. But Nintendo owns Smash, so you'll have to deal with Nintendo characters anyway. These eighty-eight characters are the do-or-die definitive list of important characters in all of video games?
Only everyone in the image above? Smash can
never scratch the surface of video games, and the spirits mode is not a viable way of doing that, it only shows how small Ultimate's roster is. Sticker Mode did this back in Brawl, and that wasn't really a mode people were sad over losing. This is a game where Mario, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Sonic, Rayman, Bomberman, Akira Yuki and Kunio-Kun all come together...but the latter half mentioned only appear as cameos or costumes, never mind the ones I didn't mention who appear in the supporting role. All of the trailers showing the playable roster doesn't show the spirits or even the assist trophies. If they're a great way to add in characters who wouldn't be in the game otherwise, why not
show them alongside the playable characters? Why not show how great it is to have these ten-second cameos alongside the meat of the series...unless they aren't really...
Never mind. Forget I even mentioned it.
Everyone has their perception of what Smash should be, and only one man currently has any actual power to add in characters within the mandates Nintendo offers him. But assuming he isn’t around for the next title or he decides to scale down the roster, it’s definitely clear that there’s always going to be new faces in the playable roster. Who they are isn’t important, because Smash already makes lesser known faces big, sometimes bigger than the games or series they come from and whatever the next game’s roster looks like (or doesn’t look like) is going to piss off a lot of people anyway.
