Smash 3DS Kid Icarus, the Protagonist of SSB4?

[Los4Muros]

I've been playing the game a lot. By now I've got quite a good amount of trophies and I've noticed something. I'm a big fan of Metroid, but the trophies I have from the Metroid franchise are the Assists, the Smash Runs, character trophies and well the Varia and Gravity suit. 12 total trophies from Metroid so far. In a way I find it kind of weird to have so few when there's creatures, bosses, suits, planets, characters, etc to express.

But then I see Kid Icarus who only has two games and one being more than 25 years old, I have 46 trophies from Kid Icarus so far. Not only that, but the soundtrack only carries two Metroid songs while Kid Icarus has 6. I know compared to Mario it's not much. But Zelda has 7. How can a two game franchise get the same attention that Zelda does? Then we have Palutena and Dark Pit. Although I'm happy with Palutena, I don't consider Dark Pit deserves to be in the game. How can Dark Samus not be a character because she would have to be a clone when she has so many unique attacks, while Dark Pit gets his own place?

So my theory is, and you don't need to be a genius to see that. Kid Icarus Uprising was made just before beginning development for Smash Bros. 4. Obviously, after finishing one game, you still have the hypes from it, so I consider that his previous creation influenced and invaded his next. Sakurai is the creator of Kirby and Kid Icarus, so he could be giving his son extra especial attention. To many, Kirby was the protagonist of Brawl, could Pit be the protagonist of this Smash?

 

[Substitution]

There isn't really a protagonist, Smash Bros concept is basically Nintendo characters getting together to fight. That's really about it.

And if that was the case, then why didn't Pit appear in the first two?

 

[Comeback Kid]

Dedede is actually the protagonist of Subspace Emissary and therefore Brawl. The game tricks you into thinking he's one of the antagonists doing bad things when he is actually trying to save everyone.

 

[Syrek]

It's mostly because the 3DS version of Smash Bros focuses mostly on the handheld games and since Kid Icarus: Uprising rebooted the Kid Icarus franchise, is a very successful handheld game and was made by Sakurai, it's only natural for lots of representation to be on the 3DS version of Smash Bros. Most Metroid games come from the consoles anyways so well probably see more Metroid trophies and representation on the Wii U version. And Smash Bros. is not dependent on how many games a series has to quantify it in having more content within the game. There's no rule that says one series has to have less content than the other simply because its only had a few games in the series.

But really there is no protagonist of Smash Bros. It's a celebration of all things Nintendo so no singular character or series is dominate in the game. With that being said, it's only natural for Sakurai to represent his games well enough in Smash Bros.

 

[D-idara]

All of us Metroid fans feel this pain, a franchise much less relevant gets a ****ton of content, but that's Sakurai for you.

It's mostly because the 3DS version of Smash Bros focuses mostly on the handheld games and since Kid Icarus: Uprising rebooted the Kid Icarus franchise, is a very successful handheld game and was made by Sakurai, it's only natural for lots of representation to be on the 3DS version of Smash Bros. Most Metroid games come from the consoles anyways so well probably see more Metroid trophies and representation on the Wii U version. And Smash Bros. is not dependent on how many games a series has to quantify it in having more content within the game. There's no rule that says one series has to have less content than the other simply because its only had a few games in the series.

But really there is no protagonist of Smash Bros. It's a celebration of all things Nintendo so no singular character or series is dominate in the game. With that being said, it's only natural for Sakurai to represent his games well enough in Smash Bros.

All series should get fair representation, especially ones that ooze quality like DK and Metroid.

 

[Vintage Creep]

Sakurai's bias strikes again.
I wonder how many trophies of Kid Icarus will appear on WiiU. He said trophies will be centered around console games, so I don't expect more than like, 3 or 4 trophies from Uprising without including Pit/Palutena/Pittoo and their final smashes. But we'll see.
I'm pretty sure Metroid will be filled of trophies though. Not only that, I expect the trophies on WiiU to be at least a thousand or so.

 

[Frostwraith]

To be fair, all of the 3DS Kid Icarus trophies and Smash Run enemies were directly ported from Kid Icarus: Uprising, another 3DS game, so it's not like it was given much attention, regarding development time and costs. It was just a whole bunch of stuff easily added to the game, unlike stuff from other series.

Sakurai had assets from his previous project and Brawl, and put them to use in this game. A lot of developers do that.

The Wii U version has a lot more series equality than the 3DS version that most has ported stuff from other DS/3DS games. Zelda stuff mostly being from Ocarina of Time 3D, Mario stuff being from 3D Land and NSMB2, Animal Crossing having mostly New Leaf stuff and Pokémon models being from X/Y.

 

[Comeback Kid]

Do people ever complain here about Pokémon being everywhere when they are barely characters? Because of a soulless quality like their sales?

But charming characters who have great banter from a very fun game like Kid Icarus are included and everyone loses their minds.

We all know that a Dark Samus clone would have upset people just as much as any other, so I can't say the selection is an issue.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

Kid Icarus has 3 games.

And a protagonist is the person you play or read as as the core character in a story. Pit can't be this, nor can a "series" be it. A series can be important to it. The Kirby characters in Brawl was all major protagonists in the story. Nobody else was that important except R.O.B., Master Hand, Tabuu, and arguably Ganondorf.

 

[allison]

whoa i've never seen a sakurai bias topic before 10/10

 

[TheMagicalKuja]

TC not stating anything new? I'm not surprised. We all know Sakurai is biased, we get it. You could write books on it.

But guess what--we no longer care.

Put it this way: Sakurai goes with what he knows. Kid Icarus Uprising was essentially Smash in the third dimension, and much of the things in it were very similar to not just Brawl but other things he worked on in the past. You're not treading any new ground by stating this or complaining about it.

And for the record, KI has *three* games, not two. Please be more accurate with your complaints. Thank you.

 

[SwoodGrommet]

Not true, but I'd be totally fine with that

 

[many37]

More like Sakurai is the creator of Kirby and the one who revived Kid Icarus. Kid Icarus (the NES game) was created a long time ago with Satoru Okada (Nintendo's former General Manager of research and engineering) being the game's director and Yoshio Sakamoto (the co-creator of the Metroid series) being the lead game developer.

Back to the topic:

It is not surprising that Sakurai displays favoritism towards the projects that he has been involved in the past. Like you, I initially did not agree that Dark Pit should be in the roster. As of now, I really don't care.

You have to take into account that the Wii U version is not out yet, so claiming that there are more Kid Icarus trophies compared to other more iconic series in SSB4 (that's both versions) is still not a valid statement.

As for the 3DS version, Sakurai does seem to have more Kid Icarus trophies compared to other series with more background in Nintendo's history. This, again, is largely due to his favoritism in my opinion.

 

[Arklos]

Do people ever complain here about Pokémon being everywhere when they are barely characters? Because of a soulless quality like their sales?

Almost all Pokemon trophies are from the pokeball item or in the background of stages. It would be weird if they didn't have a bunch of trophies.

 

[LancerStaff]

All of us Metroid fans feel this pain, a franchise much less relevant gets a ****ton of content, but that's Sakurai for you.

All series should get fair representation, especially ones that ooze quality like DK and Metroid.

Never was about fair represntation. It's about what works, and what's interesting. And KI doesn't get a cool stage like Phyrosphere, and doesn't get managable stages like Norfair and Brinstar. KI gets the decent Reset Bomb Forest, the bad Skyworld, and the ******* huge Palutena's Temple.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

Sakurai has gone on record to say he didn't want Kirby to be overrepresented in Melee. Representation has some important to him, especially the fair kind. So yes, it was. He may have removed that ideal however.

Also, he owns Uprising and can port over everything quickly and put in more content this way. I doubt it was bias. Maybe choosing Dark Pit over Alph to make a clone, perhaps(but Dark Pit was highly popular in Japan, so...). But that was it. Remember, he wants to throw in as much content as possible with a time limit to do this and has to actually get permission for other stuff. He went with a reasonable route. Is it biased? You could say that sure, sure. He was too biased to work harder on other series so instead took a lazier route.

If anything, the enemies in Smash Run that are a pain in the butt is more of a problem than the high amount of Uprising content.

 

[Ignoth]

To be fair, all of the 3DS Kid Icarus trophies and Smash Run enemies were directly ported from Kid Icarus: Uprising, another 3DS game, so it's not like it was given much attention, regarding development time and costs. It was just a whole bunch of stuff easily added to the game, unlike stuff from other series.

Sakurai had assets from his previous project and Brawl, and put them to use in this game. A lot of developers do that.

The Wii U version has a lot more series equality than the 3DS version that most has ported stuff from other DS/3DS games. Zelda stuff mostly being from Ocarina of Time 3D, Mario stuff being from 3D Land and NSMB2, Animal Crossing having mostly New Leaf stuff and Pokémon models being from X/Y.

This here is the right way to look at it.

Think of Kid Icarus content like "clones". It takes very little time/effort to simply port them over from KI:U to Smash bros. Sakurai could have arbitrarily limited the amount of KI:U content in the game to maintain a semblence of balance or whatnot. However, Sakurai is all about cramming as much content as possible into a game, so that's what he did.

 

[StupendousMike]

Kid Icarus has 3 games.

No one ever remembers poor Of Myths and Monsters.

 

[3DSplayer]

There isn't really a protagonist, Smash Bros concept is basically Nintendo characters getting together to fight. That's really about it.

And if that was the case, then why didn't Pit appear in the first two?

I remember reading about that Sakurai couldn't get his wings animation to work or something along those lines. (not 100% sure on that though)

 

[NocturnalQuill]

All of us Metroid fans feel this pain, a franchise much less relevant gets a ****ton of content, but that's Sakurai for you.

All series should get fair representation, especially ones that ooze quality like DK and Metroid.

Metroid is getting a stage and a boss on the Wii U version, and DK is getting a stage with its own unique mechanic. Metroid (unfortunately) hasn't had a handheld games since the mid 2000s, and DK had one 3DS games and no DS games to my knowledge. Both series feature predominantly on consoles. It makes sense that they hardly got anything in the 3DS version. Metroid could use a new character, but I'm satisfied with DK. The only rep I could honestly see working there is K. Rool.

 

[D-idara]

Metroid is getting a stage and a boss on the Wii U version, and DK is getting a stage with its own unique mechanic. Metroid (unfortunately) hasn't had a handheld games since the mid 2000s, and DK had one 3DS games and no DS games to my knowledge. Both series feature predominantly on consoles. It makes sense that they hardly got anything in the 3DS version. Metroid could use a new character, but I'm satisfied with DK. The only rep I could honestly see working there is K. Rool.

Yeah, a stage from a widely-hated game rather than a stage from the critically-acclaimed Prime series, especially from Prime 3. Also, Metroid Fusion still exists and that had tons of material for a cool stage, and DK had one top-selling 3DS game, so rather than giving the Wii U version a Returns stage, they should've had a Tropical Freeze stage on the Wii U version and a Returns stage on the 3DS. Ridley was demoted to an almost-playable stage boss which feels even more insulting and K.Rool's nowhere to be seen, as he apparently doesn't even exist anymore.

 

[Arcadenik]

All of us Metroid fans feel this pain, a franchise much less relevant gets a ****ton of content, but that's Sakurai for you.

All series should get fair representation, especially ones that ooze quality like DK and Metroid.

What do you consider "fair" representation?

You said all series should get fair representation.... so what's fair, exactly?

All series should each have four playable characters. All series should each have three stages. All series should each have two Assist Trophies. And so on... is that what you mean by "all series should get fair representation"???

 

[Reila]

The absurd amount of Kid Icarus content in Smash 4 is quite disconcerting. The franchise isn't big, popular or important enough to get that absurd amount of content in Smash. I don't complain about Mario content, or Pokémon content, because it makes sense for those franchises to get a lot of representation. I also don't complain about lack of Metroid representation, because it wouldn't make sense for Metroid to get tons of representation in Smash. I do complain about the lackluster representation of the Donkey Kong series, though (no ATs, only two playable reps, etc), but that is a subject for a different thread.

If anything, the Kid Icarus bias only made me grow a distaste for the franchise and its characters.

 

[The Shadow Emperor]

I've more or less gotten over the amount of trophies. Smash Run enemies and Dark Pit's inclusion, but I do find it ridiculous how much effort was put into Palutena's custom moves compared to the other characters. And then to add insult to injury, she gets all her moves unlocked from the start while the others require hours of Classic Mode grinding.

And don't give me any of that "oh, well KI:U has tons of moves, so it makes sense for them to be in the game" malarkey because none of that attention was given to other characters that have equally diverse moves and abilities. Mario and Link have had tons of different moves and items in their dozens of games, so why don't they get to use them too?

I also don't think its a coincidence that Kirby and Kid Icarus were picked for the honor of having the biggest stages in Smash history, but that's a separate topic entirely.

 

[SwoodGrommet]

And I'm here loving all the KI representation

 

[Deathcarter]

No one ever remembers poor Of Myths and Monsters.

Your telling me. Even Sakurai forgot it existed!

 

[RespawningJesus]

Also keep in mind that a bunch of trophies were made for Kid Icarus Uprising, and I have seen quite a bit of them reused. So yeah, Kid Icarus is definitely getting a **** ton of trophies since no effort is involved in creating them.

Although, I really wish we had one more Metroid character that wasn't Ridley to play as. I was thinking along the lines of Dark Samus or Rundas from Prime 3, but Dark Samus was turned into an Assist Trophy along with Mother Brain. I'll take what I can get though.

 

[D-idara]

Also keep in mind that a bunch of trophies were made for Kid Icarus Uprising, and I have seen quite a bit of them reused. So yeah, Kid Icarus is definitely getting a **** ton of trophies since no effort is involved in creating them.

Although, I really wish we had one more Metroid character that wasn't Ridley to play as. I was thinking along the lines of Dark Samus or Rundas from Prime 3, but Dark Samus was turned into an Assist Trophy along with Mother Brain. I'll take what I can get though.

A non-Ridley Metroid newcomer would be even worse than no newcomer.

 

[Gamingboy]

A non-Ridley Metroid newcomer would be even worse than no newcomer.

"Generic Space Pirate Joins The Battle!"

 

[CrazyChaos]

I was very close to being okay with the Kid Icarus nonsense...until I got into smash run and found two enemies from the series that interrupt the music to play a Kid Icarus song instead. One enemy being tedious to defeat, and the other being one that instantly KOs you on contact. They seem to spawn a lot as well, but maybe I just notice them more because they stick out like sore thumbs. It is rather unpleasant, and feels forced and uncomfortable. I would rather just keep listening to the music that I had specifically chosen for smash run.

 

[ChikoLad]

The book was closed on this a while ago.

Sakurai literally came out and said that he ripped the Uprising content right from Uprising itself.

As for there being a lot of Kid Icarus songs as bonuses for use in Smash Run, it's because Smash Run was designed as a 5-minute mode. Sakurai has said that he felt this length was sufficient because it's enough time for an average song in the game to loop twice, among other reasons. However, most of the bonus songs from Uprising are from the game's Air Battles - which actually happen to take 5 minutes just to complete one loop. This is because Uprising's Air Battles were also designed to be 5 minutes long. Therefore, those songs are perfect for Smash Run. Not to mention that he need not go through any licensing issues for them, since he's familiar with the composers of those songs, having worked with them before.

 

[Clemente]

If Sakurai really loved Pit as much as you say he wouldn't have nerfed him so hard

 

[S_B]

It's like I keep saying: just give the next Metroid game to Sakurai to develop.

Then, we'd have playable Ridley, Meta Ridley, Ridley Jr. and Dark Ridley.

 

[Zero Suit Wario]

Wario is the protagonist of all life as we know it

 

[PizzaGuy]

I suppose it was a quick way to fill content for trophies/Smash Run enemies, but it still seems weak to have so much content from one game/franchise when there's at least 6 others that seem starved by comparison.

And look at Fire Emblem. Outside of Ike, Marth, and Lyn, all the representation went to Awakening. Aren't there 4 other titles on the handhelds alone?

 

[elitex12]

Yeah, a stage from a widely-hated game rather than a stage from the critically-acclaimed Prime series, especially from Prime 3. Also, Metroid Fusion still exists and that had tons of material for a cool stage, and DK had one top-selling 3DS game, so rather than giving the Wii U version a Returns stage, they should've had a Tropical Freeze stage on the Wii U version and a Returns stage on the 3DS. Ridley was demoted to an almost-playable stage boss which feels even more insulting and K.Rool's nowhere to be seen, as he apparently doesn't even exist anymore.

Technically, K. Rool is seen... He's a trophy in the 3DS version. Also I doubt Ridley was "demoted" to a boss, I think he was determined to be a boss from day one of Smash 4's development. He's like the harder to get Flying Man, you can get him to fight for you, but you have to beat the crap out of him first.

 

[The Slayer]

Since most Metroid games are on home consoles, Kid Icarus on handhelds, and going hand in hand with Sakurai for reviving the series, it's pretty much a given. However, Pit as the protagonist? I don't see no Subspace Emissary in either of these games, so clearly not the case. And no matter how bitter you can be about Dark Pit (or Lucinia and Doctor Mario), they don't take up any unique character slot, chances or overshadowing other reps in the game. He's probably just an official rep for Uprising if anything.

Dark Samus would've been great (especially as a rep for the Prime trilogy), but I don't think he want her to be too similar to Samus and having two Samus types so far, a third would be pushing it. Although she doesn't seem clone-worthy with her abilities, it would be time-consuming to make her play differently from Samus while not making her OP and making her interact well with other characters.

 

[supercoolmayo]

I mean the franchise was dead till Brawl came out, this guy promotes it way to much

 

[Dash000]

Do people ever complain here about Pokémon being everywhere when they are barely characters? Because of a soulless quality like their sales?

But charming characters who have great banter from a very fun game like Kid Icarus are included and everyone loses their minds.

We all know that a Dark Samus clone would have upset people just as much as any other, so I can't say the selection is an issue.

 

[D-idara]

It's like I keep saying: just give the next Metroid game to Sakurai to develop.

Then, we'd have playable Ridley, Meta Ridley, Ridley Jr. and Dark Ridley.

Don't forget Anthony Higgs, Adam Malkovich, Sylux, and all the Hunters and enemies as ATs.