and Snake and Sonic and Bayonetta and Street Fighter...
Sorry I don't really get your point here though. Of course Smash was mostly first party, and continues to be mostly first party, because it's Nintendo's game. Of course they're gonna go with their characters (which are also FREE to use) first. We've gotten more third party in Ultimate than Sm4sh and Sm4sh than Brawl because, well, most of the big first party characters are already here and they do need to expand and clearly want to please everyone as much as possible. I never disagreed with that to begin with and my original point was simply "first parties likely didn't do so well on the ballot", and my reasoning being "because most of them are already in, and the ones that aren't are very likely not too far behind".
Bit of a side-note, but specifically regarding Waluigi: I wouldn't be surprised to know the actual numbers of how many people were actually surprised Waluigi didn't get in. It just seemed like a natural progression to include what's basically one of the major side-characters of their primary franchise not yet in Smash, ESPECIALLY with Daisy getting in. Yeah Daisy's been around a bit longer due to Super Mario Land, but outside of that game (and one tiny cameo in "NES Open Tournament Golf"), she didn't come back until Mario Tennis when Waluigi was introduced, and again in Mario Party 3 who also featured Waluigi. Both by this point being mainstays in the spin-off games. I still wonder how Daisy is in but Waluigi is not because it makes no sense to me whatsoever.
Most of the first parties were also in. I don't understand what you're talking about now.
The ballot very likely had third parties that people never expected to get in. Bayo was a direct result of the ballot, as were the Belmonts. These are third parties that I honestly never saw coming. I wouldn't be surprised if DQ got a lot of votes, but that one was more like a "well we got Square's FF, why don't we have Enix's DQ characters yet?". That was an inevitability.
Alright good to know. If anything with first parties, I can't see many having gotten too many votes though. KKR and Ridley may have been some, but many people would likely opt for "characters that won't happen w/o enough votes". KKR could be one, but Ridley, nah, despite the "too big" comment, Ridley was eventually going to get in. Who else is going to get in as a (non-echo) Metroid rep?
Kind of, yeah, except ownership is very tricky. Case in point:
Except Nintendo is one of three companies that makes up TPC. TPC is who "owns" Pokemon, which means Nintendo does in fact own a piece of Pokemon (a rather sizable chunk of it too), but not the whole pie.
So I don't know FE's ownership nearly as well as Pokemon's so I did some diving into it. Intelligent Systems (who also makes Paper Mario, nice~) is the developer while Nintendo is the publisher, though Nintendo does in fact own the copyright, which makes them the closest to "owning it", but I'd still put them on second party as well, otherwise, they're actually first party in your own view. You could argue that KKR was also second party in that way too then. Again, it's messy and tricky as hell. I don't think I even know 100% how I define "second" party, and it's usually not talked about because of how vague and weird it is.
I was more or less distinguishing it on a few factors, involving development and ownership. SMRPG may have been made by Square and published by Nintendo, but that's a third party game because Square actually has all the rights to the game (outside of the previously-owned IPs like Mario, Peach, Bowser, the Mushroom Kingdom, Toads, various Mario enemies and items, etc). Then you take Fire Emblem, of which Nintendo actually owns the copyright of, but it's still not being made by Nintendo. Is that still a first party game at that point? I'm calling it a "second party" when you get into the nitty gritty because I still think it's worth a distinction from something like Mario and Zelda, who are made by Nintendo, 100% owned by Nintendo, and no one else is involved with it. That said, in the more broad and generic talks regarding parties, "second party" is usually combined with "first party".
My original point for all of this second party talk was that people very likely weren't putting on their ballot votes for Mario or other first party characters (except dead ones) because they seemed like obvious choices, while also not having that many big first party characters left. Waluigi seemed like a lock because you gotta have some new Mario and other first party crew people, and most of the newcomers in base were in fact first/"second" party:
(
if you count Plant too), vs the third party in base:
.
Seriously though, there's not that many first party left and a lot of "big name characters" that would turns heads that still aren't in the game are of course going to be third party, because if there were any first/second party characters that were that big, they'd be in by now. Of the ones remaining that I can think of that I don't think would even be all that big, you have Rex (& Pyra?), Isaac, and the biggest being Waluigi, but they'd all be small fries compared to characters like Sora, Master Chief, Sephiroth (despite having his game already in Smash), Steve, a Fortnite rep, and maybe Dante, among others I'm just not thinking of. FTR: Even though I'm personally against all those characters, except Dante and Steve (who I honestly just don't mind; they'd be very "eh" characters to me personally), I'm not going to deny they'd all be bigger head-turners than Geno, Waluigi, or any other Nintendo-affiliated character not yet in Smash already. That was my whole point. Isaac and Rex have their dedicated fanbases and Waluigi is pretty big for the Internet, but they're no Sora, they're no Master Chief.
Closing in on the NA anniversary of SMRPG's release!
