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Sunrise, Sunset - Isaac for Smash Ultimate #GoldenSunday

KoopaSaki

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Sakurai confirmed on a recent Famitsu column that K.Rool, Ridley and the Belmont were all taken from the ballot.
Given that information, I can’t help but wonder if all that golden sun content we got in the game along with the Isaac AT getting new attacks came from the ballot directly. Additionally I now changed my smashtag to Isaac officially so I’m now jumping back into the competitive smash scene after a short hiatus due to college.
 

SonicLink125

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Given that information, I can’t help but wonder if all that golden sun content we got in the game along with the Isaac AT getting new attacks came from the ballot directly. Additionally I now changed my smashtag to Isaac officially so I’m now jumping back into the competitive smash scene after a short hiatus due to college.
I am almost completely convinced that Isaac did do well in the ballot. As evident to all the GS content we actually got in Smash Ultimate, Isaac must have been pretty close. If not, definitely in the top 5 or 10. I’d dare say we were close. Only shadowed by K. Rool (who should have been in Smash since Melee/Brawl) and a few others. Then there’s apparently the problem of not having a recent game. That is still BS to me as Xenoblade and Dark Dawn came out at the same year and Shulk got in while almost all GS content was non existent in Smash 4.

Now that K. Rool and Ridley (The Reptile Squad) is finally in, it time for us to push harder than ever before. Whether it’s for a new GS game and/or for Isaac to become a fighter, our goal is the same: Bring Golden Sun Back! In any way we can!

Also, it’s time for The Camelot Bros. (Isaac & Waluigi) to rise up!
 

shocktarts17

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That is still BS to me as Xenoblade and Dark Dawn came out at the same year and Shulk got in while almost all GS content was non existent in Smash 4.
While I agree with most of your post, I did want to address this. Dark Dawn was a disappointing revival attempt that had a huge drop off of sales from its predecessors while Xenoblade was showing good success and had solid plans for future games, it's an apples to oranges scenario.
 

FlawedAI

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While I agree with most of your post, I did want to address this. Dark Dawn was a disappointing revival attempt that had a huge drop off of sales from its predecessors while Xenoblade was showing good success and had solid plans for future games, it's an apples to oranges scenario.
I'm gonna have to disagree here: while Dark Dawn didn't do quite as well as Nintendo wanted it too, it still did pretty well for a game released on a dying console in a series without an entry for 7 years. In fact, if VGChartz is to be believed (meaning take this with a grain of salt), Dark Dawn only sold about 100,000 less than Xenoblade 1, which is still damn good. The reason Shulk got in while Isaac did not is simple: Sakurai bias. Sakurai enjoyed Xenoblade a lot. We know he did. Meaning he already has the attachment to Shulk, and that came at the cost of Golden Sun.

Not to mention: the original Golden Sun has outsold every XB game, despite when it released it was a) a brand new franchise and b) didn't have Smash to boost its sales like Xenoblade does.
 

Verde Coeden Scalesworth

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Problem is, a game is a flop if it doesn't do what the company expected it to do. This may be part of why Golden Sun has little content in 4. Cause the game flopped according to Nintendo's standards. Which is the only one that counts for them to figure out whether to keep the series going or not.
 

SPEN18

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I wouldn't say that Xenoblade is the reason that GS hasn't gotten a character yet, but at the same time the comparisons are pretty valid and Xenoblade kind of "lowered the bar" so to speak in terms of niche franchises being able to get a full PC.
 

tbuster766

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I think the lack of Golden Sun content in 4 is something we may never know for a while, but I do think a huge part has to do with Sakurai's preferences too . Sin and Punishment's latest entry in the series did arguably worse on the Wii compared to Dark Dawn, yet Saki's assist trophy still remained. Sakurai in an interview explained how he based KI Uprising game mechanics on Sin and Punishment. I personally think Sakurai just did not see Golden Sun as a higher priority series at the time. He also did mention how he had to cut back on lower priority series in another interview. Now comes smash ultimate and the roles are reversed: Isaac's assist trophy returns with far more content compared to Sin and Punishment. This may in part be due to how well Isaac did on the ballot, making Sakurai realize how big Golden Sun really is. Given that there were bigger priorities at the time, I think the team tried incorporating as much Golden Sun content as possible.
 
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KirbyWorshipper2465

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Problem is, a game is a flop if it doesn't do what the company expected it to do. This may be part of why Golden Sun has little content in 4. Cause the game flopped according to Nintendo's standards. Which is the only one that counts for them to figure out whether to keep the series going or not.
For the sake of comparison, Wario Ware got almost nothing new in Ultimate besides spirits, as a possible response to the sales failure of Game & Wario. Lulu and 13-Amp didn't even show up anywhere in this game, despite the fact that most WW spirits use art from Gold.

Meanwhile, there's the theory of Isaac's AT being too taxing for the 3DS ala Ice Climbers and the Zelda/Samus transformations.
 

Verde Coeden Scalesworth

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For the sake of comparison, Wario Ware got almost nothing new in Ultimate besides spirits, as a possible response to the sales failure of Game & Wario. Lulu and 13-Amp didn't even show up anywhere in this game, despite the fact that most WW spirits use art from Gold.

Meanwhile, there's the theory of Isaac's AT being too taxing for the 3DS ala Ice Climbers and the Zelda/Samus transformations.
I don't know if it'd be too taxing. It can be as simple as "the game flopped, let's cut down the representation a little". Do remember that Sakurai actually does consider relevancy as is. As well as "if the character is likely to have a future". Dark Dawn was a commercial flop, so maybe Isaac didn't have a future enough for a spot. And Xenoblade was a commercial success, giving Shulk a spot. They aren't related to each other, sure, but it's a mere coincidence. And makes sense.

Coincidentally, if that's why Isaac didn't get in(cause he lacked a future), Sakurai was right. The series is dead right now. I hope it gets revived soon, but his decision based upon this criteria wasn't wrong. Wolf can easily be put in here too, with an uncertain future(as SFZ wasn't coming out any time soon), which can easily explain why he isn't DLC. I'd have liked Isaac in, but I can see this point of view too.
 

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Lulu and 13-Amp didn't even show up anywhere in this game, despite the fact that most WW spirits use art from Gold.
It's possible the Gold artwork was added at the last minute. The Gamer stage wasn't changed to reflect Gold's version of the minigame despite the WW Gold character stickers.
 

KirbyWorshipper2465

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I don't know if it'd be too taxing. It can be as simple as "the game flopped, let's cut down the representation a little". Do remember that Sakurai actually does consider relevancy as is. As well as "if the character is likely to have a future". Dark Dawn was a commercial flop, so maybe Isaac didn't have a future enough for a spot. And Xenoblade was a commercial success, giving Shulk a spot. They aren't related to each other, sure, but it's a mere coincidence. And makes sense.

Coincidentally, if that's why Isaac didn't get in(cause he lacked a future), Sakurai was right. The series is dead right now. I hope it gets revived soon, but his decision based upon this criteria wasn't wrong. Wolf can easily be put in here too, with an uncertain future(as SFZ wasn't coming out any time soon), which can easily explain why he isn't DLC. I'd have liked Isaac in, but I can see this point of view too.
Yet a DD song was still put in. If he did lose faith in GS, it seems weird to allow that.
 

FlawedAI

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I don't know if it'd be too taxing. It can be as simple as "the game flopped, let's cut down the representation a little". Do remember that Sakurai actually does consider relevancy as is. As well as "if the character is likely to have a future". Dark Dawn was a commercial flop, so maybe Isaac didn't have a future enough for a spot. And Xenoblade was a commercial success, giving Shulk a spot. They aren't related to each other, sure, but it's a mere coincidence. And makes sense.

Coincidentally, if that's why Isaac didn't get in(cause he lacked a future), Sakurai was right. The series is dead right now. I hope it gets revived soon, but his decision based upon this criteria wasn't wrong. Wolf can easily be put in here too, with an uncertain future(as SFZ wasn't coming out any time soon), which can easily explain why he isn't DLC. I'd have liked Isaac in, but I can see this point of view too.
I prefer to use "dormant". A dead series is one that literally has no future, as in the publisher as confirmed zero intentions of ever making a new one. (Or something like Metal Gear where the creator leaves the company owning the rights.) Golden Sun is much more dormant right now, since Camelot seems to be increasingly referencing it, and Isaac's popularity in the ballot must have helped.

And honestly, I find it really hard to call Dark Dawn a "commercial flop." 800,000 units is nothing to sneeze at, even if Nintendo wanted a million (they should've marketed it better or forced it to the 3DS). Not to mention, Xenoblade didn't sell that much more, but all of a sudden has a "huge commercial future", mostly (I think) due to Smash. I just find it frustrating what happened to Golden Sun. Timing literally hurt the franchise every single time a release hit, with the first being too new for Melee, the gap between TLA and DD killing any chance at Brawl, then DD coming out at a really strange time for Smash 4, having to compete with Xenoblade. However, I think timing will be on our side this time: if a new GS is due for 2019 or early 2020, it can tie into a Smash character, for Wave 1 at least. A Wave 2 helps a lot, but I think it will finally line up for us.
 

Verde Coeden Scalesworth

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Yet a DD song was still put in. If he did lose faith in GS, it seems weird to allow that.
Nah, just throwing something in from the latest game isn't that odd.

"Not having a future" is about playable characters specifically. GS getting less content than normal is strange, but who knows why.
 

tbuster766

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I don't know if it'd be too taxing. It can be as simple as "the game flopped, let's cut down the representation a little". Do remember that Sakurai actually does consider relevancy as is. As well as "if the character is likely to have a future". Dark Dawn was a commercial flop, so maybe Isaac didn't have a future enough for a spot. And Xenoblade was a commercial success, giving Shulk a spot. They aren't related to each other, sure, but it's a mere coincidence. And makes sense.

Coincidentally, if that's why Isaac didn't get in(cause he lacked a future), Sakurai was right. The series is dead right now. I hope it gets revived soon, but his decision based upon this criteria wasn't wrong. Wolf can easily be put in here too, with an uncertain future(as SFZ wasn't coming out any time soon), which can easily explain why he isn't DLC. I'd have liked Isaac in, but I can see this point of view too.
I agree to an extent, but I do think that Isaac not getting in this time around is more because there were simply higher priorities at the time of smash ultimate's development. Given that King K Rool (last appearance in Mario Sluggers; considered a "irrelevant character" during smash 4 dlc cycle by various communities ) more than likely won the ballot, I feel more development time was allocated into making him into a playable character. Then there's Ridley whom Sakurai wanted to put in as a playable character, but did not know how to implement him into the game until Ultimate given his size. Given that Ultimate's selling point is "everyone is here," I think Sakurai was able to reestablish better terms with Konami and added Simon Belmont given that he is a gaming icon and his performance on the ballot. Then there are echoes such as Chrom and Dark Samus, characters who were also requested and were easier to implement. I think Isabelle also fits into this niche and given how her series is still active, she likely was easier to implement. Now Incineroar was added with the lack of the ballot, but Sakurai did mention that he intentionally saved a spot for a Gen 6 final evolution starter so it makes sense how he had more priority altogether. With all this combined, I think Isaac's exclusion from the base roster was simply because he had lower priority to make it in compared to other contenders (who'd otherwise take more development time), but did well enough on the ballot to the point his series got arguably the most representation for one without a playable rep.
 
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Verde Coeden Scalesworth

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I prefer to use "dormant". A dead series is one that literally has no future, as in the publisher as confirmed zero intentions of ever making a new one. (Or something like Metal Gear where the creator leaves the company owning the rights.) Golden Sun is much more dormant right now, since Camelot seems to be increasingly referencing it, and Isaac's popularity in the ballot must have helped.

And honestly, I find it really hard to call Dark Dawn a "commercial flop." 800,000 units is nothing to sneeze at, even if Nintendo wanted a million (they should've marketed it better or forced it to the 3DS). Not to mention, Xenoblade didn't sell that much more, but all of a sudden has a "huge commercial future", mostly (I think) due to Smash. I just find it frustrating what happened to Golden Sun. Timing literally hurt the franchise every single time a release hit, with the first being too new for Melee, the gap between TLA and DD killing any chance at Brawl, then DD coming out at a really strange time for Smash 4, having to compete with Xenoblade. However, I think timing will be on our side this time: if a new GS is due for 2019 or early 2020, it can tie into a Smash character, for Wave 1 at least. A Wave 2 helps a lot, but I think it will finally line up for us.
If Nintendo calls it a commercial flop, who decide whether the series continues or not, it's best to accept it flopped. It either hits their goal, or it doesn't. I'm not saying the goal is fair to make, but that's already what it is.

Game was good in its own right, but it doesn't mean it was a success officially at all.

Nintendo might not have handled it correctly, sure, but the issue wasn't even marketing as much as poor game design. Many of the characters barely did anything(only 5 of your 8 members are legitimately notable or have any real character development), the countless points of no return, the unnecessary easy mode design. And that's just the normal criticisms. Himi not being able to use either of the only two Venus Swords is one a few are annoyed at(it's not a big complaint, but it makes getting the best weapons pointless. This never happened in previous games, making it jarring. The first female Venus adept and she's somehow unable to use Venus-only weapons). They could've handled that better.

The series is unlikely to have a future right now. Dormant implies people are unsure of it, but there's no signs of it getting a 4th game any time soon.

Timing did not hurt the franchise for 4 at all. The game was already there at the right time. Isaac was completely active. The issue was the character was unlikely to have a future due to Dark Dawn flopping overall. It's no coincidence it got awful representation in 4, with barely anything. Just enough to note it exists. Brawl had more. Ultimate is brimming with content thanks to ballot presence. How has Camelot honestly been referencing it at all? I don't remember any of this, honestly. Renewing copyright/trademarks doesn't count, of course. That's something you gotta do every-some years to keep the rights.

I agree to an extent, but I do think that Isaac not getting in this time around is more because there were simply higher priorities at the time of smash ultimate's development. Given that King K Rool more than likely won the ballot, I feel more development time was allocated into making him into a playable character. Then there's Ridley whom Sakurai wanted to put in as a playable character, but did not know how to implement him into the game until Ultimate given his size. Given that Ultimate's selling point is "everyone is here," I think Sakurai was able to reestablish better terms with Konami and added Simon Belmont given that he is a gaming icon and his performance on the ballot. Then there are echoes such as Chrom and Dark Samus, characters who were also requested and were easier to implement. I think Isabelle also fits into this niche and given how her series is still active, she likely was easier to implement. Now Incineroar was added with the lack of the ballot, but Sakurai did mention that he intentionally saved a spot for a Gen 6 final evolution starter so it makes sense how he had more priority together. With all this combined, I think Isaac's exclusion from the base roster was simply because he had lower priority to make it in compared to other contenders (who'd otherwise take more development time), but did well enough on the ballot to the point his series got arguably the most representation for one without a playable rep.
Honestly, nothing changed for Isaac. He was still a series with no seeable future. That makes him automatically lower priority.

Also, the whole "won the ballot" thing needs to stop. That's not how it works. It's just a suggestion box. King K. Rool, Simon, Richter, and Ridley all "won" the ballot because they got in. Dark Samus and Chrom probably did too, since they got in due to fan demand. Third party series get in on their legacy/have nothing to do with his criteria for other stuff. When he looks at characters that aren't retros, 3rd parties, or surprise additions, or even clones/semi-clones/echoes, he realizes these unique additions take more time. So them having a foreseeable future makes them a better reason to choose first, since he's dedicating more to them. Basically, he's picking and choosing based upon this criteria. As I said before, this is why Wolf wasn't in 4. He had no foreseeable future. Unlike Falco, who was still a clone and took less work, he took a lot more to make, and was lower priority. Isaac doesn't fit into categories like Retros, Clones(etc.), or 3rd parties. He's a regular 1st party unique option. So he has different criteria for being added. And unfortunately, he didn't have a good chance for 4. Brawl was probably his only decent chance to begin with.
 
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FlawedAI

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If Nintendo calls it a commercial flop, who decide whether the series continues or not, it's best to accept it flopped. It either hits their goal, or it doesn't. I'm not saying the goal is fair to make, but that's already what it is.

Game was good in its own right, but it doesn't mean it was a success officially at all.

Nintendo might not have handled it correctly, sure, but the issue wasn't even marketing as much as poor game design. Many of the characters barely did anything(only 5 of your 8 members are legitimately notable or have any real character development), the countless points of no return, the unnecessary easy mode design. And that's just the normal criticisms. Himi not being able to use either of the only two Venus Swords is one a few are annoyed at(it's not a big complaint, but it makes getting the best weapons pointless. This never happened in previous games, making it jarring. The first female Venus adept and she's somehow unable to use Venus-only weapons). They could've handled that better.

The series is unlikely to have a future right now. Dormant implies people are unsure of it, but there's no signs of it getting a 4th game any time soon.

Timing did not hurt the franchise for 4 at all. The game was already there at the right time. Isaac was completely active. The issue was the character was unlikely to have a future due to Dark Dawn flopping overall. It's no coincidence it got awful representation in 4, with barely anything. Just enough to note it exists. Brawl had more. Ultimate is brimming with content thanks to ballot presence. How has Camelot honestly been referencing it at all? I don't remember any of this, honestly. Renewing copyright/trademarks doesn't count, of course. That's something you gotta do every-some years to keep the rights.


Honestly, nothing changed for Isaac. He was still a series with no seeable future. That makes him automatically lower priority.

Also, the whole "won the ballot" thing needs to stop. That's not how it works. It's just a suggestion box. King K. Rool, Simon, Richter, and Ridley all "won" the ballot because they got in. Dark Samus and Chrom probably did too, since they got in due to fan demand. Third party series get in on their legacy/have nothing to do with his criteria for other stuff. When he looks at characters that aren't retros, 3rd parties, or surprise additions, or even clones/semi-clones/echoes, he realizes these unique additions take more time. So them having a foreseeable future makes them a better reason to choose first, since he's dedicating more to them. Basically, he's picking and choosing based upon this criteria. As I said before, this is why Wolf wasn't in 4. He had no foreseeable future. Unlike Falco, who was still a clone and took less work, he took a lot more to make, and was lower priority. Isaac doesn't fit into categories like Retros, Clones(etc.), or 3rd parties. He's a regular 1st party unique option. So he has different criteria for being added. And unfortunately, he didn't have a good chance for 4. Brawl was probably his only decent chance to begin with.
Well, in the Japanese version of Mario Tennis Aces, some desert area is called the Sol Sanctum, which the localization team failed to carry over to the States, it seems. (Here) Not to mention, they seem to be mentioning GS in interviews more often now (also seen in that link). It's more than the series has seen in many, many years, and this along with the trademark renewals are what make people unsure of the series' future. It's these things that make this series dormant, rather than dead. The developer directly referencing the series within another is something that gets the rumor mills started. I think it means something, but others don't, so it's not a guarantee by any stretch of the word.

King K. Rool won the ballot. There was a winner, and it was K. Rool. There is no way he would've made it without the ballot, making him the winner. The same thing applies to Isaac, had he gotten in. Ridley and the Belmonts have outside circumstances helping them (fan favorite Sakurai already knew about, third-party legacy character), and I don't consider them "true" ballot characters, even though fan demand helped them. Also, I don't see any reason for cutting Isaac's Assist Trophy from 4, even if Golden Sun "didn't have a future", as you say. What about the Advance Wars Trophy, or Saki? Their series were even more "dead" than GS was at that point, so why keep them? We'll probably never know, but I think Isaac has been closer than everyone here thinks.
 

Verde Coeden Scalesworth

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Well, in the Japanese version of Mario Tennis Aces, some desert area is called the Sol Sanctum, which the localization team failed to carry over to the States, it seems. (Here) Not to mention, they seem to be mentioning GS in interviews more often now (also seen in that link). It's more than the series has seen in many, many years, and this along with the trademark renewals are what make people unsure of the series' future. It's these things that make this series dormant, rather than dead. The developer directly referencing the series within another is something that gets the rumor mills started. I think it means something, but others don't, so it's not a guarantee by any stretch of the word.
Though my other point stands that it having an unforeseeable future hurt Isaac's chances a lot. And ah, thanks for the information on Camelot's references.

King K. Rool won the ballot. There was a winner, and it was K. Rool. There is no way he would've made it without the ballot, making him the winner. The same thing applies to Isaac, had he gotten in. Ridley and the Belmonts have outside circumstances helping them (fan favorite Sakurai already knew about, third-party legacy character), and I don't consider them "true" ballot characters, even though fan demand helped them. Also, I don't see any reason for cutting Isaac's Assist Trophy from 4, even if Golden Sun "didn't have a future", as you say. What about the Advance Wars Trophy, or Saki? Their series were even more "dead" than GS was at that point, so why keep them? We'll probably never know, but I think Isaac has been closer than everyone here thinks.
There is multiple winners. Sakurai said so. Just let that go. It was a suggestion box anyway. King K. Rool, Ridley, Simon, and Richter all won the ballot because they were chosen due to the ballot. It's not rocket science. Ridley wouldn't have made it either or either of the Belmonts. They were all in the same category entirely. People are way overstating how hard King K. Rool had to fight to get in. He didn't fight anymore than the other 3. Again, it wasn't some big "one winner contest". The whole point was that multiple characters could be chosen. It's even specified that "the suggestions would be used for future games". They're all winners officially. And anybody else chosen for any role due to it are winners. This is most likely why Golden Sun got tons of content and why Isaac is back, so he's a winner too in some way.

Fair point on the other AT's, but the issue is, those were not considered as playable characters like Isaac was. It wasn't simply a dead or dormant series at that point, it was the flop that hurt its content. Dead/dormant series don't matter as much. When a series flops, developers are hesitant to put stuff in from it. Which may be why there's a lack of content in 4. Ultimate had Isaac have a high score, which helped gained more content. Just like King K. Rool, Ridley, and the Belmont Boys. All high ranking characters. Isaac probably didn't score nearly as high as them, but who knows. Maybe he did. But being from a currently dormant series pretty much made him lower priority for playable among unique characters. So he got an updated AT instead, which actually is still nice.
 
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Organization XIII

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The sad fact is that winning the ballot meant nothing. Popularity is more of a bonus with Sakurai. It is not a deciding factor. If Isaac had more going for him than ballot placement we likely would have him instead of just a sizable amount of nonplayable content. Simon, Dark Samus, and Chrom all are ballot picks in the sense that they have enough votes to justify calling them ballot picks. Really even if they had 0 they would likely still be here just maybe not called ballot picks or looking at Bayonetta still called ballot picks. The ballot just wasn't what people thought it was. We thought it was an election what it really was, was a tool to reinforce what Sakurai was likely to do anyway. Only the high strength spirits ATs and Mii costumes were likely to be heavily influenced by pure popularity.
 

tbuster766

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If Nintendo calls it a commercial flop, who decide whether the series continues or not, it's best to accept it flopped. It either hits their goal, or it doesn't. I'm not saying the goal is fair to make, but that's already what it is.

Game was good in its own right, but it doesn't mean it was a success officially at all.

Nintendo might not have handled it correctly, sure, but the issue wasn't even marketing as much as poor game design. Many of the characters barely did anything(only 5 of your 8 members are legitimately notable or have any real character development), the countless points of no return, the unnecessary easy mode design. And that's just the normal criticisms. Himi not being able to use either of the only two Venus Swords is one a few are annoyed at(it's not a big complaint, but it makes getting the best weapons pointless. This never happened in previous games, making it jarring. The first female Venus adept and she's somehow unable to use Venus-only weapons). They could've handled that better.

The series is unlikely to have a future right now. Dormant implies people are sure of it, but there's no signs of it getting a 4th game any time soon.

Timing did not hurt the franchise for 4 at all. The game was already there at the right time. Isaac was completely active. The issue was the character was unlikely to have a future due to Dark Dawn flopping overall. It's no coincidence it got awful representation in 4, with barely anything. Just enough to note it exists. Brawl had more. Ultimate is brimming with content thanks to ballot presence. How has Camelot honestly been referencing it at all? I don't remember any of this, honestly. Renewing copyright/trademarks doesn't count, of course. That's something you gotta do every-some years to keep the rights.


Honestly, nothing changed for Isaac. He was still a series with no seeable future. That makes him automatically lower priority.

Also, the whole "won the ballot" thing needs to stop. That's not how it works. It's just a suggestion box. King K. Rool, Simon, Richter, and Ridley all "won" the ballot because they got in. Dark Samus and Chrom probably did too, since they got in due to fan demand. Third party series get in on their legacy/have nothing to do with his criteria for other stuff. When he looks at characters that aren't retros, 3rd parties, or surprise additions, or even clones/semi-clones/echoes, he realizes these unique additions take more time. So them having a foreseeable future makes them a better reason to choose first, since he's dedicating more to them. Basically, he's picking and choosing based upon this criteria. As I said before, this is why Wolf wasn't in 4. He had no foreseeable future. Unlike Falco, who was still a clone and took less work, he took a lot more to make, and was lower priority. Isaac doesn't fit into categories like Retros, Clones(etc.), or 3rd parties. He's a regular 1st party unique option. So he has different criteria for being added. And unfortunately, he didn't have a good chance for 4. Brawl was probably his only decent chance to begin with.
I disagree considering that there is evidence to suggest that King K Rool indeed won the ballot., and no I will not think that people should stop the "won the ballot" point going on when there is important information that cannot be ignored. I think it's ridiculous to so much as insinuate that other characters, such as Dark Samus and Chrom, "won" the ballot given that they are echoes and more than likely were easier to implement as characters such as Ridley or K Rool took more development time. Namely the various polls combined onto the google spreadsheet that combined global data across various regions, particularly in areas such as the United States, Japan, and Europe. The metrics of the poll further elaborate how it went about polling for various contenders to make sure said characters were in fact requested well across and were consistently requested, potentially removing sampling bias and making the results more generalizable to said locations. Not to mention that the poll had a very decent sample size to go off from ( over 44,000 votes) and furthers adds onto its validity. Let's not forget that various sources like Source Gaming have come across and cited that Bayonetta was in fact chosen two weeks into the ballot itself, using assets from Zero Suit Samus and Ike with data supporting this (she did have relatively a decent amount of votes which I acknowledge and was a top contender, someone who was realizable at the time). Add that into King K Rool getting a mii fighter costume shortly before the "winner" of the ballot was decided, which more than likely was a consolation prize. Like I said I do agree to an extent that Isaac not being relevant is part of the reason why he was not in smash 4, but at the same time I do not think the lack of sales compared to the first two series is why he was excluded. I mentioned Sin and Punishment for a reason, and arguably sales from that series were lackluster compared to Golden Sun and I doubt it is more relevant compared to Golden Sun as a whole (as a matter of fact it is in a similar boat in terms of relevancy given its last title was around 2010 like Dark Dawn). Sakurai did base Kid Icarus' game mechanics after all on SIn and Punishment, so I can see why Saki's assist trophy was kept at the time. Veterans such as Wolf also had decent amounts of votes, but I do not think they even needed the ballot given that one of Ultimate's selling point was every playable character ever would return into this entry. At the end of the day I think Isaac more than likely had enough votes from the ballot to at least have the most amount of content for a series that lacked a playable rep.

Edit: Also at the end of the day, I can see the ballot being used to pick the top contenders as well as ones that have higher priority at most, but were limited in number when it came to characters who appeared in the smash roster as playable characters. Characters such as Incineroar, as I mentioned, and Ken are different cases entirely. Sure we do not know exactly how the characters were chosen at the end of the day, but we cannot completely ignore all the data compiled.


https://www.sourcegaming.info/2018/07/03/bayo106/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...pw5m-b4JHJ0_cGRKU15KYlTe1E/edit#gid=729442469
 
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FlawedAI

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Though my other point stands that it having an unforeseeable future hurt Isaac's chances a lot. And ah, thanks for the information on Camelot's references.


There is multiple winners. Sakurai said so. Just let that go. It was a suggestion box anyway. King K. Rool, Ridley, Simon, and Richter all won the ballot because they were chosen due to the ballot. It's not rocket science. Ridley wouldn't have made it either or either of the Belmonts. They were all in the same category entirely. People are way overstating how hard King K. Rool had to fight to get in. He didn't fight anymore than the other 3. Again, it wasn't some big "one winner contest". The whole point was that multiple characters could be chosen. It's even specified that "the suggestions would be used for future games". They're all winners officially. And anybody else chosen for any role due to it are winners. This is most likely why Golden Sun got tons of content and why Isaac is back, so he's a winner too in some way.

Fair point on the other AT's, but the issue is, those were not considered as playable characters like Isaac was. It wasn't simply a dead or dormant series at that point, it was the flop that hurt its content. Dead/dormant series don't matter as much. When a series flops, developers are hesitant to put stuff in from it. Which may be why there's a lack of content in 4. Ultimate had Isaac have a high score, which helped gained more content. Just like King K. Rool, Ridley, and the Belmont Boys. All high ranking characters. Isaac probably didn't score nearly as high as them, but who knows. Maybe he did. But being from a currently dormant series pretty much made him lower priority for playable among unique characters. So he got an updated AT instead, which actually is still nice.
Yeah, Dark Dawn's failure in Nintendo's eyes probably hurt Isaac's chances quite a bit. I won't deny Dark Dawn made the future of the franchise a lot more shaky.

I think the key difference between K Rool, Ridley, and the Belmonts (at least for me), is that they could be justified without the ballot. Ridley was a massive fan demand character, and Sakurai knew it. His biggest obstacle was making him work. The Belmonts were large third-parties, and basically round out the "NES classics", like Mega Man, Pac-Man, Sonic, Final Fantasy, etc. I personally believe K Rool would not have made it without the ballot, while the other two could've. That's my personal opinion on K Rool "winning" the ballot, no matter what the official statement is. Remember, the official statement was that Bayonetta won the ballot, which is complete ****.

And about the dead/dormant series thing: Sakurai loves to do this. He literally facilitated a revival of Kid Icarus with Pit's inclusion in Brawl, and then KI: Uprising. That series was actually dead, until Sakurai decided he liked Pit as a character. I suppose we're going to have to agree to disagree here, since I don't think I'll be able to change your mind on this subject.
 

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I disagree considering that there is evidence to suggest that King K Rool indeed won the ballot., and no I will not think that people should stop the "won the ballot" point going on when there is important information that cannot be ignored. I think it's ridiculous to so much as insinuate that other characters, such as Dark Samus and Chrom, "won" the ballot given that they are echoes and more than likely were easier to implement as characters such as Ridley or K Rool took more development time. Namely the various polls combined onto the google spreadsheet that combined global data across various regions, namely the United States, Japan, and Europe. The metrics of the poll further elaborate how it went about polling for various contenders to make sure said characters were in fact requested well across and were consistently requested, potentially removing sampling bias and making the results more generalizable to said locations. Not to mention that the poll had a very decent sample size to go off from ( over 44,000 votes) and furthers adds onto its validity. Let's not forget that various sources like Source Gaming have come across and cited that Bayonetta was in fact chosen two weeks into the ballot itself, using assets from Zero Suit Samus and Ike with data supporting this. Add that into King K Rool getting a mii fighter costume shortly before the "winner" of the ballot was decided, which more than likely was a consolation prize. Like I said I do agree to an extent that Isaac not being relevant is part of the reason why he was not in smash 4, but at the same time I do not think the lack of sales compared to the first two series is why he was excluded. I mentioned Sin and Punishment for a reason, and arguably sales from that series were lackluster compared to Golden Sun and I doubt it is more relevant compared to Golden Sun as a whole (as a matter of fact it is in a similar boat in terms of relevancy given its last title was around 2010 like Dark Dawn). Sakurai did base Kid Icarus' game mechanics after all on SIn and Punishment, so I can see why Saki's assist trophy was kept at the time. Veterans such as Wolf also had decent amounts of votes, but I do not think they even needed the ballot given that one of Ultimate's selling point was every playable character ever would return into this entry. At the end of the day I think Isaac more than likely had enough votes from the ballot to at least have the most amount of content for a series that lacked a playable rep.

Edit: Also at the end of the day, I can see the ballot being used to pick the top contenders as well as ones that have higher priority at most, but were limited in number when it came to characters who appeared in the smash roster as playable characters. Characters such as Incineroar, as I mentioned, and Ken are different cases entirely


https://www.sourcegaming.info/2018/07/03/bayo106/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...pw5m-b4JHJ0_cGRKU15KYlTe1E/edit#gid=729442469
SourceGaming doesn't have the real results at all. That is not evidence. That's just fan polls.

Sakurai outright said that he chose King K. Rool, Ridley, Simon, and Richter due to the ballot. Those all scream "winners" to me. Especially since it was always a suggestion box, not a contest. Let's note he described Ridley getting in due to fan demand. And then noting the same thing that Dark Samus and Chrom got in due to fan demand. That's most likely a ballot winner too. No, it's not ridiculous. They got in from the ballot because tons of people voted for them. 6 characters from it isn't odd, and actually pretty reasonable. Especially when people remember it was not a contest to choose one character, but intended to choose multiple characters. So yes, they're all winners. There was no "one true winner". It doesn't exist. And never will. It was never intended to be that way. That's a misinterpretation of its intentions. Calling it a ballot was a poor move on their part too.

Yeah, Dark Dawn's failure in Nintendo's eyes probably hurt Isaac's chances quite a bit. I won't deny Dark Dawn made the future of the franchise a lot more shaky.

I think the key difference between K Rool, Ridley, and the Belmonts (at least for me), is that they could be justified without the ballot. Ridley was a massive fan demand character, and Sakurai knew it. His biggest obstacle was making him work. The Belmonts were large third-parties, and basically round out the "NES classics", like Mega Man, Pac-Man, Sonic, Final Fantasy, etc. I personally believe K Rool would not have made it without the ballot, while the other two could've. That's my personal opinion on K Rool "winning" the ballot, no matter what the official statement is. Remember, the official statement was that Bayonetta won the ballot, which is complete ****.

And about the dead/dormant series thing: Sakurai loves to do this. He literally facilitated a revival of Kid Icarus with Pit's inclusion in Brawl, and then KI: Uprising. That series was actually dead, until Sakurai decided he liked Pit as a character. I suppose we're going to have to agree to disagree here, since I don't think I'll be able to change your mind on this subject.
They got in mainly due to the ballot. That's the point. They. All. Won. There is no need for pointless conspiracy theories. We know the facts. The ballot is the reason he chose them.

And that is not even accurate about Bayonetta. He said she scored high on the ballot, which is true. He nowhere said she got in due to the ballot or "won it". That's a complete misinterpretation of what he actually said. So no, that wasn't his official statement. It is not why she got in, as she was worked on well before the ballot was far enough underway for that to make sense. No way she got all that work done and licensing done for her barely in two weeks(and probably less, since you have to tally votes up). She was chosen before the ballot started. People were expecting Smash 4 to get a "ballot winner"(not that there was going to be a single winner anyway), despite it being clear that the "character would be considered for Smash 4 DLC". And none of them in the end among those votes were chosen due to the large ballot. All the ballot choices otherwise were used for Mii costumes and tons of Smash Ultimate stuff, including 4-6 characters at minimum.

His official ballot-statements were that Bayonetta scored high(top 5 across the world, 1st in UK), King K. Rool was chosen because of the ballot, Simon and Richter were chosen because of the ballot, and Ridley was chosen because of the ballot. He implies Dark Samus and Chrom too by saying "fan demand" got them in, which is also how he spoke of Ridley before even saying it was a ballot choice too. So while not outright confirmed, it's extremely like all 6 effectively "won the ballot" either way. Which was never something he actually said about Bayonetta either.
 
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tbuster766

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SourceGaming doesn't have the real results at all. That is not evidence. That's just fan polls.

Sakurai outright said that he chose King K. Rool, Ridley, Simon, and Richter due to the ballot. Those all scream "winners" to me. Especially since it was always a suggestion box, not a contest. Let's note he described Ridley getting in due to fan demand. And then noting the same thing that Dark Samus and Chrom got in due to fan demand. That's most likely a ballot winner too. No, it's not ridiculous. They got in from the ballot because tons of people voted for them. 6 characters from it isn't odd, and actually pretty reasonable. Especially when people remember it was not a contest to choose one character, but intended to choose multiple characters. So yes, they're all winners. There was no "one true winner". It doesn't exist. And never will. It was never intended to be that way. That's a misinterpretation of its intentions. Calling it a ballot was a poor move on their part too.


None of them got in due to the ballot, so it doesn't matter. They got in mainly due to the ballot. That's the point. They. All. Won. There is no need for pointless conspiracy theories. We know the facts. The ballot is the reason he chose them.

And that is not even accurate about Bayonetta. He said she scored high on the ballot, which is true. He nowhere said she got in due to the ballot or "won it". That's a complete misinterpretation of what he actually said. So no, that wasn't his official statement. It is not why she got in, as she was worked on well before the ballot was far enough underway for that to make sense. No way she got all that work done and licensing done for her barely in two weeks(and probably less, since you have to tally votes up). She was chosen before the ballot started. People were expecting Smash 4 to get a "ballot winner"(not that there was going to be a single winner anyway), despite it being clear that the "character would be considered for Smash 4 DLC". And none of them in the end among those votes were chosen due to the large ballot. All the ballot choices otherwise were used for Mii costumes and tons of Smash Ultimate stuff, including 4-6 characters at minimum.

His official ballot-statements were that Bayonetta score high, King K. Rool was chosen because of the ballot, Simon and Richter were chosen because of the ballot, and Ridley was chosen because of the ballot. He implies Dark Samus and Chrom too by saying "fan demand" got them in, which is also how he spoke of Ridley before even saying it was a ballot choice too. So while not outright confirmed, it's extremely like all 6 effectively "won the ballot" either way. Which was never something he actually said about Bayonetta either.
I think you are ignoring the metrics they went about conducting their polls, simply dismissing them because they are "fan made." I did not even use source gaming for the ballot results, but rather just to state a source for data for Bayo that was implemented two weeks into the ballot. Not even with the google docs have I claimed that the data used is 100 % accurate, but you are dismissing it entirely as being "fan based" when in fact that the data compiled is global and is done so to avoid inconsistencies, namely to increase its validity and make it more generalizable ( and given a sample size of over 44,000 this is definitely not to be ignored). If we go and simply list data off as being " fan made" and simply not "real results" without so much as considering the statistics and the like behind it, then any survey data can be ruled off as being insignificant with the parameters you have established. I think you are putting way too much stock in what Sakurai said in terms of the roster. Not that I said those characters did not have any ballot backing (as a matter of fact characters like Simon did have a decent amount of votes), but they were also at the end of the day higher priority compared to Isaac under various circumstances ( ballot winner with the most amounts of votes, easier to implement echoes, characters that Sakurai was meaning to put in but had problems with due to size, etc). At the end of the day, neither of us know exactly how it went about, but research into the topic does show there's significant data that cannot be ignored.
 

SPEN18

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Timing did not hurt the franchise for 4 at all. The game was already there at the right time. Isaac was completely active. The issue was the character was unlikely to have a future due to Dark Dawn flopping overall.
You could still argue that the timing was bad for 4 in the sense that, had DD been pushed back to the early part of the 3DS's lifetime, it would have sold much better and it also would've been even more lined up with the project plan's timeline. People have covered this to quite a large degree in this thread.

Also, the whole "won the ballot" thing needs to stop. That's not how it works. It's just a suggestion box. King K. Rool, Simon, Richter, and Ridley all "won" the ballot because they got in. Dark Samus and Chrom probably did too, since they got in due to fan demand

Just getting into the game does not imply that they got in primarily because of the ballot. And just about all the evidence that we have says that King K. Rool placed first in the ballot and that is far and away the biggest reason that he made it. Placing first mattered. After that, it was much more nebulous.

You're right that the ballot wasn't intended just to have one winner; however, it seems to have turned out that the top vote-getter was chosen and the other "winners" were cherry-picked in such a manner that undermines the point of having a "suggestion box."

The sad fact is that winning the ballot meant nothing
With K. Rool it seems that placing first in the ballot did matter. Placing anything else other than first just put you into a bushel of berries to maybe, just maybe, be picked at Sakurai's whim.

what it really was, was a tool to reinforce what Sakurai was likely to do anyway. Only the high strength spirits ATs and Mii costumes were likely to be heavily influenced by pure popularity.
Aside from K. Rool, who was probably the winner, yeah. The rest was probably Sak mining for the gems he valued the most and throwing the rest into non-playable content.

Ridley wouldn't have made it either or either of the Belmonts
Idk if you can claim that. There are plenty of documented reasons why Ridley and the Belmonts were gonna be added without considering the ballot itself.

Sakurai outright said that he chose King K. Rool, Ridley, Simon, and Richter due to the ballot.
Do you have the source for this? I couldn't find it with a quick search.

But either way, if Sakurai took Simon and Richter from the ballot, then that was probably a misinterpretation of the results on his part; it's incredibly hard to justify Castlevania when compared to other franchises/characters when we're just looking at raw votes, which means that there had to be other reasons that played a bigger role in its inclusion than the number of votes it got. This implies that Castlevania was probably gonna be added without a single ballot vote, especially given how fond Sakurai and the Smash team seemed to be of the series as well as the fact that they were able to get Konami back on board for Snake as part of "Everyone is Here." In hindsight, just about everything regarding Castlevania's inclusion seems to fit the narrative of Ultimate's development without taking the ballot into account at all. Add in the fact that Simon may not have been in the top 5 third party characters on the ballot, along with the general consensus that no other Castlevania character did notably well, and you have that Simon was, at best, mined out from underneath a bunch of other characters. If Sakurai is saying that Simon and Richter came from the ballot, then either almost all the evidence we have available is completely incorrect or, more likely, Sakurai purposefully eliminated other very strong candidates with arguably questionable justification in order to get to Castlevania.
 

Verde Coeden Scalesworth

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I think you are ignoring the metrics they went about conducting their polls, simply dismissing them because they are "fan made." I did not even use source gaming for the ballot results, but rather just to state a source for data for Bayo that was implemented two weeks into the ballot. Not even with the google docs have I claimed that the data used is 100 % accurate, but you are dismissing it entirely as being "fan based" when in fact that the data compiled is global and is done so to avoid inconsistencies, namely to increase its validity and make it more generalizable ( and given a sample size of over 44,000 this is definitely not to be ignored). If we go and simply list data off as being " fan made" and simply not "real results" without so much as considering the statistics and the like behind it, then any survey data can be ruled off as being insignificant with the parameters you have established. I think you are putting way too much stock in what Sakurai said in terms of the roster. Not that I said those characters did not have any ballot backing (as a matter of fact characters like Simon did have a decent amount of votes), but they were also at the end of the day higher priority compared to Isaac under various circumstances ( ballot winner with the most amounts of votes, easier to implement echoes, characters that Sakurai was meaning to put in but had problems with due to size, etc). At the end of the day, neither of us know exactly how it went about, but research into the topic does show there's significant data that cannot be ignored.
You're missing the point even then.

Sakurai already told us that 4 characters were chosen due to the ballot. They're all winners. It's that simple. People need to stop with the "true winner" bull, because it doesn't exist nor ever will. That's not important to him at all. It's in fact the point he was making before on his own, that popularity only plays a part in it.

People are looking for some arbitrary thing here. It's just a suggestion box. And 4 characters at the bare minimum(probably 6) all were chosen as winners. There is no such thing as a true winner. In fact, Bayonetta may have scored the highest over those 6 too, which doesn't matter because she didn't get in the due to the ballot anyway. So the 6 runner ups got into the next game instead. Others may have got into Smash due the ballot, and that makes them all winners too. Why? Because the whole purpose of the ballot was to suggest a character to be playable in Smash. Anyone who was chosen due to it thus becomes a legitimate winner. All I see from those results is how we had a crapload of winners in Ultimate due to the ballot. Cause that's more accurately what they are. Again, it wasn't a contest. Nor was it ever meant to be. That's a misinterpretation of its purpose. Those results are still not accurate either way, as there's no way they could ask every single person. They're decent information, but it's not like those show more than "a lot of characters were voted for as we were able to find out", which is the beginning and the end of it.

You could still argue that the timing was bad for 4 in the sense that, had DD been pushed back to the early part of the 3DS's lifetime, it would have sold much better and it also would've been even more lined up with the project plan's timeline. People have covered this to quite a large degree in this thread.
It got content, so it wasn't all that bad.

Just getting into the game does not imply that they got in primarily because of the ballot. And just about all the evidence that we have says that King K. Rool placed first in the ballot and that is far and away the biggest reason that he made it. Placing first mattered. After that, it was much more nebulous.
Yeah, it kind of does. "They were chosen because of the ballot." It's the primary reason.

You're right that the ballot wasn't intended just to have one winner; however, it seems to have turned out that the top vote-getter was chosen and the other "winners" were cherry-picked in such a manner that undermines the point of having a "suggestion box."
Or more like the top voters all got chosen if they were from a currently relevant series.

With K. Rool it seems that placing first in the ballot did matter. Placing anything else other than first just put you into a bushel of berries to maybe, just maybe, be picked at Sakurai's whim.
Yeah, nothing suggests he placed first. People need to let that go. We only have any proper evidence that Bayonetta placed first... in one region. Rest is loose information that only gives a small indication of a possibility. But enough hard information.

Aside from K. Rool, who was probably the winner, yeah. The rest was probably Sak mining for the gems he valued the most and throwing the rest into non-playable content.
Nope. It was more those games were not relevant and put in lower priority. Veterans got their own sections.

Idk if you can claim that. There are plenty of documented reasons why Ridley and the Belmonts were gonna be added without considering the ballot itself.
You mean fan reasons? That's meaningless. Sakurai's thoughts are the only ones that matter in the end. He chose them due to the ballot as the main reason spoken. He's said this before.

Do you have the source for this? I couldn't find it with a quick search.
https://twitter.com/PushDustIn/status/1087124989239734272 Do note the interview hasn't been translated, but they were indeed all ballot picks. "They were added due to the ballot." Kind of can't get more clear than that, honestly.

But either way, if Sakurai took Simon and Richter from the ballot, then that was probably a misinterpretation of the results on his part; it's incredibly hard to justify Castlevania when compared to other franchises/characters when we're just looking at raw votes, which means that there had to be other reasons that played a bigger role in its inclusion than the number of votes it got. This implies that Castlevania was probably gonna be added without a single ballot vote, especially given how fond Sakurai and the Smash team seemed to be of the series as well as the fact that they were able to get Konami back on board for Snake as part of "Everyone is Here." In hindsight, just about everything regarding Castlevania's inclusion seems to fit the narrative of Ultimate's development without taking the ballot into account at all. Add in the fact that Simon may not have been in the top 5 third party characters on the ballot, along with the general consensus that no other Castlevania character did notably well, and you have that Simon was, at best, mined out from underneath a bunch of other characters. If Sakurai is saying that Simon and Richter came from the ballot, then either almost all the evidence we have available is completely incorrect or, more likely, Sakurai purposefully eliminated other very strong candidates with arguably questionable justification in order to get to Castlevania.
Could we stop with these conspiracy theories? No, there was no misinterpretation. It was Castlevania stuff people wanted in general. It got a crapload of votes. Sakurai knew what series was wanted. He wasn't sure who to add in at all. He considered Alucard, but wanted the protagonists, and had them split up for each region's favorite. This still makes it due to the ballot. You can pretty much say all the Castlevania content is due to the ballot. This is his reason. There is no real evidence to suggest he'd add them otherwise. Also, this is too much hindsight bias. He hasn't confirmed the veterans were brought back due to the ballot(though that's probably the case), or anyone besides 4 specific characters. He has given zero information on Echoes, so that should easily confirm 2 more ballot picks(since what else could fan demand feasibly be?).
 
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N3ON

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If you get included due to the ballot, you won the ballot. Its purpose was not to crown a #1, it was to cause inclusion in Smash. That's why we'll likely never know the true #1. It kinda doesn't even matter, because, while it'd be interesting, the metric doesn't inherently mean the character would be included. Maybe K. Rool was number one. Maybe it was someone else.

To that end, a large number of characters that got increased roles in Ultimate likely placed well on the ballot. K. Rool was self-evident and probably did catch the team off guard, since I do believe they've their heads in the sand sometimes. That said, I find it hard to believe the ballot did much past reassert the same popularity Ridley has had for a decade, popularity of which Sakurai was already aware. If Sakurai wants to claim the ballot got Ridley included that's fine, but I believe it was more owing to the sustained demand since pre-Brawl. This wasn't the first time Sakurai entertained a playable Ridley. Meanwhile, perhaps Castlevania got a greater amount of ballot attention than initially presumed, but that instance is undoubtably proof that the ballot was not a matter of "peak positions get included", rather a "realizable suggestion" the team moved forward with, possibly in part due to Konami's ostensible willingness to play ball. And fwiw, even though the inclusion wasn't attributed to the ballot (because it would happen irrespectively), Inklings doubtlessly placed well too.

It would also be very unsurprising to learn that vets like Wolf, Ice Climbers, and Snake (if not all the vets) performed well. Dark Samus and Chrom (and probably even Daisy - given her people) likely also did well among candidates that could make for easy clones.

The effects of the ballot wouldn't just be limited to the roster, though. Obviously Isaac and Golden Sun's treatment this time around are indicative of his ballot performance. Why would a previously cut character not seen since pre-Smash 4 show up with expanded utility and fleshed out series representation if not for popularity? I'd wager similar influences were behind the inclusion of some, if not all, of popular characters like Krystal, Knuckles, Shovel Knight, Bomberman, Scizor, Zero, Shantae and maybe even Sukapon (who used to be much more requested).

So you can question where all these characters really placed on the ballot, but that's a pretty fruitless endeavour, since all advantageous placement meant was that the team likely looked more closely at the possibility, not that the character would find automatic inclusion. It was likely a mix of the really popular candidates (K. Rool, Inkling, Snake, Wolf) and the decently-popular-but-embraced-as-a-good-choice candidates (Castlevania, the clones, some of the other vets). And that applies to supporting content as well as playable content; if a fan-favourite got an expanded role, it was probably ballot-related.

If you're treating the ballot like a straightforward election, you're playing by the wrong set of rules.
 

tbuster766

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You're missing the point even then.

Sakurai already told us that 4 characters were chosen due to the ballot. They're all winners. It's that simple. People need to stop with the "true winner" bull, because it doesn't exist nor ever will. That's not important to him at all. It's in fact the point he was making before on his own, that popularity only plays a part in it.

People are looking for some arbitrary thing here. It's just a suggestion box. And 4 characters at the bare minimum(probably 6) all were chosen as winners. There is no such thing as a true winner. In fact, Bayonetta may have scored the highest over those 6 too, which doesn't matter because she didn't get in the due to the ballot anyway. So the 6 runner ups got into the next game instead. Others may have got into Smash due the ballot, and that makes them all winners too. Why? Because the whole purpose of the ballot was to suggest a character to be playable in Smash. Anyone who was chosen due to it thus becomes a legitimate winner. All I see from those results is how we had a crapload of winners in Ultimate due to the ballot. Cause that's more accurately what they are. Again, it wasn't a contest. Nor was it ever meant to be. That's a misinterpretation of its purpose. Those results are still not accurate either way, as there's no way they could ask every single person. They're decent information, but it's not like those show more than "a lot of characters were voted for as we were able to find out", which is the beginning and the end of it.


It got content, so it wasn't all that bad.


Yeah, it kind of does. "They were chosen because of the ballot." It's the primary reason.


Or more like the top voters all got chosen if they were from a currently relevant series.


Yeah, nothing suggests he placed first. People need to let that go. We only have any proper evidence that Bayonetta placed first... in one region. Rest is loose information that only gives a small indication of a possibility. But not factual information.


Nope. It was more those games were not relevant and put in lower priority. Veterans got their own sections.
Well I never once said that the ballot alone was used entirely for picking out characters, even mentioning exceptions such as Ken and Incineroar. You're just creating a straw man there when I have been arguing how the data from the ballot cannot be ignored in regards to selecting certain characters. After all, characters like Ken and Incineroar (lacked ballot support) were added in exception to the ballot. The ballot alone was not used to determine a character's entry into the roster alone (was a criteria of course), as I also mentioned that various characters have different priorities. I mentioned how King K Rool was selected more so because he had the most amount of votes based on the data compiled from various polls (and can be argued that he was the true winner), and this further adds on to how the ballot's premise is to also use the information compiled to later determine characters in future entries. And even then I highly disagree on that front in regards for it being a mere suggestion box. I don't think it was just a mere suggestion and think you are putting more stock into what Sakurai is saying while ignoring statistically significant data data. Sakurai worked with what he could for smash 4. He at least picked Bayo as the most realizable character from the contenders that were in fact realizable. This is a known fact from what was stated in the Winter 2015 smash direct. The fact that King K Rool, a character that was long considered to be "dead", was added as a mere consolation prize as a mii costume further adds onto this. There was no reason to add K.Rool ( a character that did not have an appearance since the 2008 Mario Sluggards game) as a mii costume if that meant the ballot alone was meant as nothing more than a suggestion considering Bayonetta was the top contender of "realizable characters" from the data compiled.

Bayo at the end of the day can be argued to be added independently of the results when datamines suggest that she was added well in advance of the ballot and used prexexisting assests for movesetts from Zero Suit samus and Ike to work with (doesn't detract from how she did on the ballot either, but her results were factually used to justify her inclusion in the direct). If anything I felt that the information from the december 2015 direct was used to more so justify why she was added to begin with. This all further shows that King K Rool at the time would be entirely unique and would take more time to implement. There was no need to throw in King K Rool as a mii costume in a short time before the direct itself other than him being a consolation prize for all the fans. And then we have cases such as Inklings, who were also added because of poor timing. With ultimate, they can at least be implemented and Sakurai has made his stance pretty clear how he doesn't readily add new Nintendo IP characters, evident with Springman's inclusion as an assist.

At the end of the day, regardless of how well Isaac did on the ballot, none of that mattered because he was of lower priority compared to the likes of Ridley and King K Rool, one being that K Rool has backing with the amount of votes he received and two being that Ridley's main obstacle was his size, to which Sakurai worked around with to implement (and of course his backing from the ballot played a role in his inclusion as well). Additionally, the data has lots going on for it. The point that I mentioned was that it is not something that 100 percent accurately tells the story, but given how it removed sample bias and has a decent sample size (even compiling various polls globably across) it's the best going for us in terms of representations of what we voted for and should not be dismissed as being fanmade. Not once did I say that it accounts for everyone who voted in the ballot and that's the point you are missing about the sample data collected.
 
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Verde Coeden Scalesworth

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Well I never once said that the ballot alone was used entirely for picking out characters, even mentioning exceptions such as Ken and Incineroar. You're just creating a straw man there when I have been arguing how the data from the ballot cannot be ignored in regards to selecting certain characters. After all, characters like Ken and Incineroar (lacked ballot support) were added in exception to the ballot. The ballot alone was not used to determine a character's entry into the roster alone (was a criteria of course), as I also mentioned that various characters have different priorities. I mentioned how King K Rool was selected more so because he had the most amount of votes based on the data compiled from various polls (and can be argued that he was the true winner), and this further adds on to how the ballot's premise is to also use the information compiled to later determine characters in future entries. And even then I highly disagree on that front in regards for it being a mere suggestion box. I don't think it was just a mere suggestion and think you are putting more stock into what Sakurai is saying while ignoring statistically significant data data. Sakurai worked with what he could for smash 4. He at least picked Bayo as the most realizable character from the contenders that were in fact realizable. This is a known fact from what was stated in the Winter 2015 smash direct. The fact that King K Rool, a character that was long considered to be "dead", was added as a mere consolation prize as a mii costume further adds onto this. There was no reason to add K.Rool ( a character that did not have an appearance since the 2008 Mario Sluggards game) as a mii costume if that meant the ballot alone was meant as nothing more than a suggestion considering Bayonetta was the top contender of "realizable characters" from the data compiled. And Bayo at the end of the day can be argued to be added independently of the results when datamines suggest that she was added well in advance of the ballot and used prexexisting assests for movesetts from Zero Suit samus and Ike to work with (doesn't detract from how she did on the ballot either, but her results were factually used to justify her inclusion in the direct). If anything I felt that the information from the december 2015 direct was used to more so justify why she was added to begin with. This all further shows that King K Rool at the time would be entirely unique and would take more time to implement. There was no need to throw in King K Rool as a mii costume in a short time before the direct itself other than him being a consolation prize for all the fans. And then we have cases such as Inklings, who were also added because of poor timing. With ultimate, they can at least be implemented and Sakurai has made his stance pretty clear how he doesn't readily add new Nintendo IP characters, evident with Springman's inclusion as an assist. At the end of the day, regardless of how well Isaac did on the ballot, none of that mattered because he was of lower priority compared to the likes of Ridley and King K Rool, one being that K Rool has backing with the amount of votes he received and two being that Ridley's main obstacle was his size, to which Sakurai worked around with to implement (and of course his backing from the ballot too). Additionally, the data has lots going on for it. The point that I mentioned was that it is not something that 100 percent accurately tells the story, but given how it removed sample bias and has a decent sample size (even compiling various polls globably across) it's the best going for us in terms of representations of what we voted for. Not once did I say that it accounts for everyone who voted in the ballot and that's the point you are missing about the sample data collected.
It's loose data that doesn't reflect every single person. It's somewhat useful, but won't get us perfect results.

The exact results will never be released.

Also, many characters got Mii costumes. They were likely consolation prizes too. Inkling, Isabelle, King K. Rool, Ashley, etc. and as of now, Isaac.

...Could you please split those paragraphs a little. Even as much as I say, that's a bit much for me to read. >.<(Might be too late since I already replied, but yes, I agree with your point on Isaac. If he didn't get in, no amount of votes was enough alone. Him being from a franchise that currently isn't continuing is probably what kept him from being playable. It's sad, but tis what it is. At least we got tons of GS content, so I'm not mad).

But that's still missing the point of what I said every time. Yes, K. Rool scored high. Nobody is arguing otherwise. But there is no "true winner" because the ballot was focused on adding as many characters as possible due to really being a suggestion box. It wanted information on how to implement characters as well, not just votes. It's why popularity alone isn't enough. Actually, Sakurai does add new IP characters. If he can. Spring Man was an issue due to bad timing, nothing else. The character was a great choice, but he missed the hard deadline. He got a Mii costume instead. This doesn't mean he can't be DLC, though. Rex probably won't be(at least the first pass, if a second one occurs, anyway).

I already knew of the Bayo thing. That's why I'm sure the ballot had zero influence on her addition. She still scored extremely high regardless. This is also why the datamine wasn't released till way later on. Sakurai only said she scored high on the ballot. People mistook that to mean she was added due to that(which he didn't even say, mind you). They all expected a ballot character for DLC(when it was something that "could" happen). So they decided to put two and two together and think that's what it meant. The datamine, if released when found out, would completely undermine this, which satisfied enough people already. It would cause a lot of drama as is. People would think Sakurai lied to them(he didn't anyway). Bayonetta was already feasible before the ballot, basically. She happened to literally be a character who got high votes and was feasible. This just had nothing to do with her inclusion. When he says "feasible", people can't help but think it enabled her to be in Smash. Besides that, people didn't think a niche 3rd party had a chance among bigger icons, so the only possible reason was the ballot. Can't blame them entirely for that. In a twist, nobody was a ballot winner in Smash 4(outside of Mii costumes, anyway. Geno might be possibly one).

Anyway, the results are good, but none of the results to me matter due to the purpose behind the ballot(as a suggestion box, where anybody who gets stuff in Ultimate due to it is an actual winner in the long run).
 
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tbuster766

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It's loose data that doesn't reflect every single person. It's somewhat useful, but won't get us perfect results.

The exact results will never be released.

Also, many characters got Mii costumes. They were likely consolation prizes too. Inkling, Isabelle, King K. Rool, Ashley, etc. and as of now, Isaac.

...Could you please split those paragraphs a little. Even as much as I say, that's a bit much for me to read. >.<

But that's still missing the point of what I said every time. Yes, K. Rool scored high. Nobody is arguing otherwise. But there is no "true winner" because the ballot was focused on adding as many characters as possible due to really being a suggestion box. It wanted information on how to implement characters as well, not just votes. It's why popularity alone isn't enough. Actually, Sakurai does add new IP characters. If he can. Spring Man was an issue due to bad timing, nothing else. The character was a great choice, but he missed the hard deadline. He got a Mii costume instead. This doesn't mean he can't be DLC, though. Rex probably won't be(at least the first pass, if a second one occurs, anyway).

I already knew of the Bayo thing. That's why I'm sure the ballot had zero influence on her addition. She still scored extremely high regardless. This is also why the datamine wasn't released till way later on. Sakurai only said she scored high on the ballot. People mistook that to mean she was added due to that(which he didn't even say, mind you). They all expected a ballot character for DLC(when it was something that "could" happen). So they decided to put two and two together and think that's what it meant. The datamine, if released when found out, would completely undermine this, which satisfied enough people already. It would cause a lot of drama as is. People would think Sakurai lied to them(he didn't anyway). Bayonetta was already feasible before the ballot, basically. She happened to literally be a character who got high votes and was feasible. This just had nothing to do with her inclusion. When he says "feasible", people can't help but think it enabled her to be in Smash. Besides that, people didn't think a niche 3rd party had a chance among bigger icons, so the only possible reason was the ballot. Can't blame them entirely for that. In a twist, nobody was a ballot winner in Smash 4(outside of Mii costumes, anyway. Geno might be possibly one).

Anyway, the results are good, but none of the results to me matter due to the purpose behind the ballot(as a suggestion box, where anybody who gets stuff in Ultimate due to it is an actual winner in the long run).
Hmm, well like I said I do agree with certain points you had like the ballot not being a means to an end. Sakurai never once said he'd choose the "winner," but I do think it's more than a suggestion box when it comes to characters like King K Rool and Bayonetta, and the amount of content Golden Sun gotten. I think we can at least agree to disagree on that. Also I did acknowledge that Sakurai does add new characters, just it's more so the timing that matters. Hence why Inklings were added later into the base in ultimate. What I meant to say was that he wouldn't add a new character from a new ip later into the developmental cycle (especially when the roster was picked out in 2015), which is why Sakurai left Spring Man more so as an assist.

Apologies for the info dump I wrote. I did edit it to separate the paragraphs into the bigger points I wanted to talk about. I do agree with what you are saying to an extent, but some things I simply cannot agree on. I think it's better that we agree to disagree in that regard.
 
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Verde Coeden Scalesworth

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Hmm, well like I said I do agree with certain points you had like the ballot not being a means to an end. Sakurai never once said he'd choose the winner, but I do think it's more than a suggestion box when it comes to characters like King K Rool and Bayonetta, and the amount of content Golden Sun gotten. I think we can at least agree to disagree on that. Also I did acknowledge that Sakurai does add new characters, just it's more so the timing that matters. Hence why Inklings were added later into the base in ultimate. What I meant to say was that he wouldn't add a new character from a new ip later into the developmental cycle, which is why Sakurai left Spring Man more so as an assist.
That's what I meant by the new IP bit. We just said the same thing weirdly. I honestly think it was all a suggestion box, though. Main reason is Sakurai actually saying he doesn't base his decisions on popularity alone, as that's only part of the full picture. Though I do think Ridley needed the ballot to justify him doing that much work on the character, that's a matter of opinion. Right now, there's no reason to believe otherwise, as we only have one thing said "Ridley was chosen because of the ballot". But this becomes more hindsight. It's possible he could've gotten in without it, but as of now, he did get in due to it. That's pretty much a hard statement, so no reason to believe otherwise. Hypotheticals are neat, but sometimes are unnecessary.

Apologies for the info dump I wrote. I did edit it to separate the paragraphs into the bigger points I wanted to talk about. I do agree with what you are saying to an extent, but some things I simply cannot agree on. I think it's better that we agree to disagree in that regard.
Appreciated. So I agree to disagree, or you could say I agree to move on. :p
 

tbuster766

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That's what I meant by the new IP bit. We just said the same thing weirdly. I honestly think it was all a suggestion box, though. Main reason is Sakurai actually saying he doesn't base his decisions on popularity alone, as that's only part of the full picture. Though I do think Ridley needed the ballot to justify him doing that much work on the character, that's a matter of opinion. Right now, there's no reason to believe otherwise, as we only have one thing said "Ridley was chosen because of the ballot". But this becomes more hindsight. It's possible he could've gotten in without it, but as of now, he did get in due to it. That's pretty much a hard statement, so no reason to believe otherwise. Hypotheticals are neat, but sometimes are unnecessary.


Appreciated. So I agree to disagree, or you could say I agree to move on. :p
Fair enough. We both move on haha :p
 
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SPEN18

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It got content, so it wasn't all that bad.
One song is almost nothing. But yeah, considering that DD didn't do too great it wasn't all bad.

Or more like the top voters all got chosen if they were from a currently relevant series.
That's just an inaccuracy. Plenty of characters from "relevant series" like Bandana Dee and Waluigi got skipped over. Besides, giving special treatment to characters who fit into Nintendo's marketing plan and/or are vets (who were added back as part of a marketing gimmick as well) undermines the point of a ballot or suggestion box or whatever you wanna call it.

Plus Castlevania isn't exactly a "relevant" series right now, so idk how you give it the pass on relevancy.

Yeah, nothing suggests he placed first.
Barely anything suggests that he didn't place first...

Who could have feasibly beat him?

It was more those games were not relevant and put in lower priority.
Again, stuff like Bandana Dee, Waluigi, Ashley, Dixie Kong, and perhaps Rayman, could be considered "relevant," for varying reasons.

You mean fan reasons? That's meaningless.
Real reasons, like Ridley being an incredibly recognizeable and iconic character, or Konami already being on board for Snake and Castlevania being a well-known IP.

https://twitter.com/PushDustIn/status/1087124989239734272 Do note the interview hasn't been translated, but they were indeed all ballot picks. "They were added due to the ballot." Kind of can't get more clear than that, honestly.
That's still pretty nebulous, given how they justified Bayo as a "ballot character." It gives no information regarding exactly how well they did. And as I've said many times before, a statement like this doesn't change the large amount of evidence that suggests characters like the Belmonts were cherry-picked from a host of other viable choices. If Sakurai says that it's due to the ballot, then there's likely some major cases of confirmation bias and/or using controversial reasonings to eliminate certain candidates.

Could we stop with these conspiracy theories? No, there was no misinterpretation. It was Castlevania stuff people wanted in general. It got a crapload of votes. Sakurai knew what series was wanted. He wasn't sure who to add in at all. He considered Alucard, but wanted the protagonists, and had them split up for each region's favorite. This still makes it due to the ballot. You can pretty much say all the Castlevania content is due to the ballot. This is his reason. There is no real evidence to suggest he'd add them otherwise. Also, this is too much hindsight bias. He hasn't confirmed the veterans were brought back due to the ballot(though that's probably the case), or anyone besides 4 specific characters. He has given zero information on Echoes, so that should easily confirm 2 more ballot picks(since what else could fan demand feasibly be?).
The goal isn't to come up with some grand conspiracy theory. Idk if I've explained myself poorly or what, but I've tried to justify what I've said. What would be the point of making up a conspiracy theory? To make it easier to be angry and call it justified? This is a video game with fictional characters; I'm not angry or personally hurt about anything Sakurai did, perhaps just a bit confused. There's just certain explanations for the way things went down that make a great deal of sense to me, and I'm explaining why they make sense. Dismissing it as a conspiracy theory is just a silly way to write off the argument. Sakurai has given statements about most of the newcomers; I don't think he's lying or trying to fudge the truth, but in certain cases I think he's either not telling the entire story or I just disagree with his reasoning for including the character. Remember that we're just as interested in what didn't make it into the game as we are what did. If a number of characters with significantly higher vote totals than Simon were removed from consideration for reasons that I don't view as valid, then I'm not gonna call Simon a ballot character, even if Sakurai might.

I don't see how Castlevania could have put itself in the upper echelon of votes. I don't see a path to the top (or anywhere all that close) for Castlevania. There is some hindsight bias, but that doesn't change the fact that, with the information we have now that we didn't have pre-E3, Castlevania had big things going for it that Sakurai surely would have taken into account with or without the ballot. The circumstance of Konami being back on board, the team loving Castlevania, and Sakurai eager to add another NES icon to the roster was a big factor, and was probably enough to carry it over another third party without the ballot's help. Besides, if we're talking about hindsight bias, then the whole idea of Castlevania being a ballot choice in the first place is strongly affected by it. Almost nobody brought up Castlevania as a huge ballot request until the leaks came out, and the Belmonts being revealed in the same Direct as K. Rool added to the notion that they were popularity characters. Without leaks or K. Rool being revealed at the same time, I don't think there'd be as much dispute about this.
 
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Verde Coeden Scalesworth

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One song is almost nothing. But yeah, considering that DD didn't do too great it wasn't all bad.
My point exactly. It was lame, but a flop of a game getting little makes sense. And I like the game, bar the points of no return(I want all my Djinn, damnit!)

That's just an inaccuracy. Plenty of characters from "relevant series" like Bandana Dee and Waluigi got skipped over. Besides, giving special treatment to characters who fit into Nintendo's marketing plan and/or are vets (who were added back as part of a marketing gimmick as well) undermines the point of a ballot or suggestion box or whatever you wanna call it.
Nobody was chosen for some marketing scheme. At all. Come on, man. Vets were given special treatment for the fans, because they miss them. Sakurai has made that clear he doesn't like cuts.

Plus Castlevania isn't exactly a "relevant" series right now, so idk how you give it the pass on relevancy.
Netflix Castlevania exists. So do the Pinball games. It's been kept relevant for a long time.

Barely anything suggests that he didn't place first...

Who could have feasibly beat him?
Bayonetta says sup. Who did score number 1 in Europe. And top 5 in the US. It's very possible she is the closest thing to the "true winner"(as irrelevant as it is) as youc an get.

Again, stuff like Bandana Dee, Waluigi, Ashley, Dixie Kong, and perhaps Rayman, could be considered "relevant," for varying reasons.
Rayman is also 3rd party, but has to battle with the more known Rabbids as well. Both are in as Spirits, so maybe there was no easy choice in that regard. Dixie Kong may still be a "tag team only" character for Sakurai, making her not an option easily. He seems to never view Waluigi as more than a good AT. Who knows on the others. I don't believe in the Sakurai Kirby Bias myself, mind you.

Real reasons, like Ridley being an incredibly recognizeable and iconic character, or Konami already being on board for Snake and Castlevania being a well-known IP.
Or cause the ballot helped influence it. That's a real reason too. The reality is, tons of reasons happening. Quotas, votes, characters' own merits... You didn't think Zero Suit Samus got considered due to her own merits, did you? No. Her reason was "I wanted another Metroid rep." Her being a pretty important part to Samus absolutely helped, imo, but that was never a reason given.

That's still pretty nebulous, given how they justified Bayo as a "ballot character." It gives no information regarding exactly how well they did. And as I've said many times before, a statement like this doesn't change the large amount of evidence that suggests characters like the Belmonts were cherry-picked from a host of other viable choices. If Sakurai says that it's due to the ballot, then there's likely some major cases of confirmation bias and/or using controversial reasonings to eliminate certain candidates.
Or there's no confirmation bias and you're just looking for something that isn't there. There's no legitimate evidence that the Belmonts were cherry-picked. Because you're looking at it the entirely wrong way. They weren't cherry-picked among the votes at all. It was the content all around Castlevania that got votes. Which is basically what he means when he says [Castlevania]. He chose those two for a unique reason, because he thinks they both are the best way to represent the series as a playable character, with one who is popular in the East, and one who is popular in the West. That's the part that wasn't strictly due to the ballot. It's why he only otherwise considered Alucard. The ballot still played a pivotal role. Konami being onboard isn't going to make Sakurai immediately go for those two. He needs a push first. When he says the ballot played that role, it's pretty clear... that is what it is. Again, he has many different reasons for doing stuff. Some is just fan demand due to what is pretty much a simple suggestion box. It's not everything, but Ultimate definitely used it for multiple characters. What I don't get is why you're trying to deny these facts at this point. They are the facts. Of course he could've considered some of these characters without the ballot. It's just the fact he didn't. That's all it means.

The goal isn't to come up with some grand conspiracy theory. Idk if I've explained myself poorly or what, but I've tried to justify what I've said. What would be the point of making up a conspiracy theory? To make it easier to be angry and call it justified? This is a video game with fictional characters; I'm not angry or personally hurt about anything Sakurai did, perhaps just a bit confused. There's just certain explanations for the way things went down that make a great deal of sense to me, and I'm explaining why they make sense. Dismissing it as a conspiracy theory is just a silly way to write off the argument. Sakurai has given statements about most of the newcomers; I don't think he's lying or trying to fudge the truth, but in certain cases I think he's either not telling the entire story or I just disagree with his reasoning for including the character. Remember that we're just as interested in what didn't make it into the game as we are what did. If a number of characters with significantly higher vote totals than Simon were removed from consideration for reasons that I don't view as valid, then I'm not gonna call Simon a ballot character, even if Sakurai might.
You shouldn't be confused. A series got a ton of popularity votes. He chose two characters due to that. Simon and Richter. That's literally what happened. The reasoning behind it is factual. You don't like that the ballot heavily influenced multiple characters and that's fine. But you're trying to justify why it's impossible, when again, that's not how the ballot worked. It got tons of winners.

I don't see how Castlevania could have put itself in the upper echelon of votes. I don't see a path to the top (or anywhere all that close) for Castlevania. There is some hindsight bias, but that doesn't change the fact that, with the information we have now that we didn't have pre-E3, Castlevania had big things going for it that Sakurai surely would have taken into account with or without the ballot. The circumstance of Konami being back on board, the team loving Castlevania, and Sakurai eager to add another NES icon to the roster was a big factor, and was probably enough to carry it over another third party without the ballot's help. Besides, if we're talking about hindsight bias, then the whole idea of Castlevania being a ballot choice in the first place is strongly affected by it. Almost nobody brought up Castlevania as a huge ballot request until the leaks came out, and the Belmonts being revealed in the same Direct as K. Rool added to the notion that they were popularity characters. Without leaks or K. Rool, I don't think there'd be as much dispute about this.
I can. It's a hugely relevant and ongoing series spanning multiple systems, with tons of characters and lore, based upon the infamous Dracula. It's not that hard to see. There's no hindsight bias. Castlevania is a severely huge series. People know it and recognize it. Honestly, why is it so hard to get that Castlevania got a crapload of votes. It's literally even admitted by the man himself. This was why it got in. Leaks didn't mean much to begin with either.[/quote]
 
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SPEN18

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Nobody was chosen for some marketing scheme. At all. Come on, man. Vets were given special treatment for the fans, because they miss them. Sakurai has made that clear he doesn't like cuts.
Characters absolutely were chosen for marketing. Take Incineroar as an example.
Vets coming back was something Sakurai wanted. You can't properly extrapolate from the ballot that people wanted every vet back. Certain ones yes, others much less so. "Everyone is Here" is absolutely a marketing gimmick. Maybe that's not the only reason that they did it, but really characters like Young Link made little sense to come back unless it was part of some bigger apparatus used to sell the game.

Netflix Castlevania exists. So do the Pinball games. It's been kept relevant for a long time.
Come on, that doesn't make it very "relevant" at all in the sense we're discussing. Plus having to use stuff other than mainline games to justify it's relevance severely undermines your argument.

Bayonetta says sup. Who did score number 1 in Europe. And top 5 in the US. It's very possible she is the closest thing to the "true winner"(as irrelevant as it is) as youc an get.
It takes guts to suggest that Bayo was more popular than K. Rool on the ballot. That's a real straw-grasp right there. Besides, I really don't think 1st in EU and 5th in US is anywhere close to enough to take down the juggernaut that is K. Rool.

Rayman is also 3rd party, but has to battle with the more known Rabbids as well. Both are in as Spirits, so maybe there was no easy choice in that regard. Dixie Kong may still be a "tag team only" character for Sakurai, making her not an option easily. He seems to never view Waluigi as more than a good AT. Who knows on the others. I do
Most of those are pretty bad reasons to exclude a character. If Sakurai can't see Dixie as anything but one half of a tag team or Waluigi as anything but an AT, he's probably not the man for the job he has. Moreover, the attempt to write off all these characters shows how many hoops you have to jump through to get to Castlevania. Maybe one or two weren't feasible, but there's a lot of fanagling that needs to be done to eliminate so many quality choices.

Or there's no confirmation bias and you're just looking for something that isn't there. There's no legitimate evidence that the Belmonts were cherry-picked. Because you're looking at it the entirely wrong way. They weren't cherry-picked among the votes at all. It was the content all around Castlevania that got votes. Which is basically what he means when he says [Castlevania]. He chose those two for a unique reason, because he thinks they both are the best way to represent the series as a playable character, with one who is popular in the East, and one who is popular in the West. That's the part that wasn't strictly due to the ballot. It's why he only otherwise considered Alucard. The ballot still played a pivotal role. Konami being onboard isn't going to make Sakurai immediately go for those two. He needs a push first. When he says the ballot played that role, it's pretty clear... that is what it is. Again, he has many different reasons for doing stuff. Some is just fan demand due to what is pretty much a simple suggestion box. It's not everything, but Ultimate definitely used it for multiple characters. What I don't get is why you're trying to deny these facts at this point. They are the facts. Of course he could've considered some of these characters without the ballot. It's just the fact he didn't. That's all it mean
Idk, I hope this doesn't sound rude cuz that's not the intention, but you're the one dismissing the only evidence we have as unreliable. I've acknowledged that other Castlevania characters had votes, but then gone on to explain that these votes made up a relatively small portion compared to those of Simon specifically, meaning that they are likely not enough to overcome a sufficient number of other characters in votes. Besides, you're dismissing Rayman in part because of the existence of the Rabbids, but why not combine their votes like Castlevania? Maybe that's a bad example, but maybe they also see the votes for K. Rool and the votes for Dixie and combine those, too. What can be combined and what can't? It's a bit sketchy in some respects.
Also, I'm not trying to claim that the ballot played no role. But in the grand scheme of things, it only meant so much.
I'm not trying to deny facts. If Sakurai says that the ballot is the primary reason that the Belmonts were included, then he jumped through a lot of hoops to get to that justification.

You shouldn't be confused. A series got a ton of popularity votes. He chose two characters due to that. Simon and Richter. That's literally what happened. The reasoning behind it is factual. You don't like that the ballot heavily influenced multiple characters and that's fine. But you're trying to justify why it's impossible, when again, that's not how the ballot worked. It got tons of winners.
It doesn't matter much how many votes Castelvania got if they had to dismiss other stuff that was ranked way higher in order to reach it.
What do you mean that I don't like that the ballot influenced multiple characters? I'd love to be able to say that it did. But I'm not sure that it did in a major, game-changing way.
I'm not trying to say it's impossible. I could be very wrong about a lot of stuff. But I'm working with the information I do have, and that information lends itself to a relatively sensible explanation of what happened.

can. It's a hugely relevant and ongoing series spanning multiple systems, with tons of characters and lore, based upon the infamous Dracula. It's not that hard to see. There's no hindsight bias. Castlevania is a severely huge series. People know it and recognize it
Those things don't necessarily translate into votes on the ballot, though. A lot of the same can be said for something like Halo and I don't think Master Chief had that many votes. Pre-Verge, many people didn't think Castlevania was feasible, especially without knowing Snake was back. Plenty of really iconic and relevant franchises did poorly on the ballot. Those things you listed, if anything, are reasons that Castlevania would've been likely without the ballot.
 

Verde Coeden Scalesworth

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Actually, this is way too off-topic. So I'm just going to drop it instead. Not even an agree to disagree, but sure, that too.
 
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Isaac: Venus Adept

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Like Kalaam Kalaam said, get your suggestions to Death Battle so they can maybe one day consider doing an episode with him. How cool would it be if we could have an animated fight sequence with Isaac against another character. I made a tweet about it just now. Who do you guys think would be worthy of an opponent?
 
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FlintIke

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I suggested Isaac vs Fayt from Star Ocean 3. Since I love both of them and their abilities would make a great and balanced fight imo.
I hope they consider it, since most of the time it's going to be mainstream fights which I am not into that much.
 

Ura

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My suggestion was Isaac VS Crono from Chrono Trigger. Two swordsmen from critically acclaimed games with unique powers and all.
 

Nimbostratus

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My suggestion was Isaac VS Crono from Chrono Trigger. Two swordsmen from critically acclaimed games with unique powers and all.
Yep, I went with the exact same haha. They have a lot of parallels, like you mentioned, and would both be make for great Smash characters.
I feel like Isaac might be a bit OP if he’s allowed a stash of djinn while Crono doesn’t have access to double and triple techs. I don’t follow Death Battle close enough to know the rules.
 

GoodGrief741

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My suggestion was Isaac VS Crono from Chrono Trigger. Two swordsmen from critically acclaimed games with unique powers and all.
I don’t know how Death Battle works, but if it’s a popularity contest we’d get bodied.

Or we use this as a chance to rally, flex our popularity muscles and show the world our might.

Probably the former though.
 
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