you perhaps just dont understand where I'm coming at. yes, miis are avatars. yes, part of the reason why smash is cool is that you play as your favorite game characters. but thats where I put emphisis on PART. see, as cool and nostalgic as these characters are, they aren't the reason for nintendo's success. nintendo has gone through many things, good and bad. but frankly, these characters would have been worthless and useless without the most important nintendo character of all: the player. its like a tree falling in the forest with nobody around to hear it. it basically makes no sound. and nintendo relized this when they came up with the mii system. essentially, it all came down to the player. and guess what? it made the wii a huge success, and has yet to fail them. I admit, at first, I was skeptial like you. but that was, until I thought deeper into the "pokemon trainer" character.
True enough, Nintendo's success isn't reliant upon it's characters, but they're a huge part of it—hence a game like SSB even existing. The idea of Miis is a good one and it's proving to be a flourishing idea in Nintendo nowadays, but I think there's a time and a place for it. SSB's stick, it's gimmick, is using Nintendo's most iconic characters. Miis don't fit that bill. Using a Mii in a game like Smash seems equivalent to using one in place of Link in LoZ, or in place if Samus in Metroid, or in place of Mario in one of his games. Avatars have uses, but only when actual, developed characters are not a better alternative. I consider Pokemon Trainer a different type of avatar for this reason, which I'll get into in a minute.
The player is important, of course, but that doesn't mean that putting him or her
in the game is always a good idea. Not as far as I'm concerned anyway.
basically, back when I was a wee lad, I was a huge pokemon freak, like every other kid. I would also make little stories of me, in my imagination, as a pokemon trainer (believe it or not, I sorta had the same squirtle-charmander-bulbasaur team, but they all evolved simultaniously, as compared to the smash pokemon trainer, but its close enough) every halloween, I would cosplay as this very pokemon trainer I made myself into in my mind. I could never get scared when I was a kid as well. I knew my imaginary pokemon would tell my not to fear. anyway, in the first 2 smash games, the pokemon series was slightly misrepresented. while pokemon were playable, that was it. only pokemon were playable. I obviously had no problem with this back then of course, but I had never realized how it was misrepresented back then before trainer. one thing satoshi tajiri stated before was that in japan, pikachu himself only represented pokemon as its mascot. however, he noticed in america and other western areas, pikachu is always paired up with ash. both ash and pikachu always represented pokemon together, not one over the other. in most pokemon merchendising in the west, its always ash and pikachu. He concluded that the westerners truely understand the bond between the pokemon and its trainer. he said that westerners might understand pokemon better than the japanese do. and thats how pokemon trainer was born. he's based on what satoshi believed was the western view of pokemon. and thats what truely opened my eyes of how pokemon should have been truely represented in smash.
Pokemon Trainer is an interesting case because he's an avatar in his games, but he's been made into a full-fledged character in Brawl. In the pokemon games, you are constantly given new character models to use and the opportunity to catch and use whichever pokemon you wanted. You use the pokemon you want to use.
In Brawl, the only generic thing about him is his name. He's given one definitive moveset based on three pokemon that you are forced to control. He also, as far as we know up to this point, has one, specific aesthetic. You may not be playing a character you've grown to love to like Mario or Link, but you
are playing a specific
profession that you've grown to love. You play as Pokemon Trainer specifically because you want the benefits that come with that job. A job that it is iconic within the Nintendo universe.
I'm losing my words here, so I'll try to sum my point up a bit. Pokemon Trainer is an avatar because the focus needs to be on the pokemon themselves. The relationship between the trainer and the pokemon is a part of the experience, but the trainer's personality isn't what matters, so it's better to make him a blank canvas for the player. However, all the things you are able to customize about the trainer (basically, his name and his pokemon) have been taken away in Brawl. To me, this suggests that in order to represent the trainer in a way appropriate for Brawl, he needed to actually become a character rather than an avatar. He's essentially an avatar in his games, but that avatar is represented in Brawl
through a character.
(I REALLY feel like I'm not explaining this properly. I apologize for all the confusing wording.)
pokemon trainer is basically what every little kid back in the 90's wanted to be. and the best part is that pokemon trainer is generic. meaning that everyone is pokemon trainer. he is no specific character. pokemon trainer is what every little kid wanted to be, but knew couldn't actually happen. he's the amalgamation of every little pokefan back in the 90's. and thats where it hit me: by playing as pokemon trainer, I was basically playing as my childhood. every other pokefan who had nostalgic memories of pokemon was basically playing as thier childhood. pokemon trainer was basically an avatar. like miis. an avatar for people who wanted to be pokemon trainers back then. and thats part of what made pokemon successful: everything is generic. everything is flexible. every game of pokemon you play is basically your story. not everyone else's story.
This, I must disagree with. There are certain features that can be customized to conform to the player, but it's none done NEARLY to the extent that Miis are. In pokemon, you can pick your name, your gender, and the pokemon you use. You still have to collect badges, you still have to fight Team Rocket/Galactic, you still have to fight the Elite Four, you're still controlling a character that has a pre-existing look. This character may be your sex, have your name, and use the pokemon you like, but he or she still looks like someone else and has his or her own goal in mind—become pokemon master. You can't decide to just become a pokemon breeder or something (the game actually makes sure of this by having the pokemon stop listening to you and making certain areas inaccessible without a certain number of badges). You can't be the pokemon trainer you want to be; you are the pokemon trainer the game wants you to be. Fortunately, most people DO want to be THAT trainer. Which is why they buy the game.
now, where do miis come in? well, miis are basically a broader version of the pokemon trainer. its basically the player. but its every player, and not just a pokemon fan. its everything you want to be. thats what miis are: everything. and the appeal of miis is the same as part of the appeal of the pokemon trainer. however, miis are more realistic in a sense that they are simply normal humans. yet at the same time not, since they are pretty much everything. the player is what got nintendo this far. and nintendo realized that with the mii system. what better way to honor them by to make miis playable in the nintendo hall of fame that is smabura?
The thing is, Miis
aren't everything. There is a limit to what I can do with a Mii. Can I give a Mii a sword? Can I give it a different occupation? Can I give it it's own moves or statistics? Can I make it a creature other than human (and not just ****ty jobs of metroids and birdos that you see on the interent; those don't count)?
No. I can only change it's appearance, and even then, to an incredibly limited degree. All the mii offers is the chance to put something that
looks like me in the game, not me. I know that I, personally, would not feel anymore a part of the Smash universe than I do now because I would not be able to make the mii fight like me, sound like me, taunt the way I would, etc. I'd be controlling a character that basically just has my haircut (actually, not even that, since my haircut isn't even in the hair style list for the Miis!), with none of the character devolpement and personality that all the other nintendo characters offer. Why would I want to play as something that boring? I would not feel like I'd be playing as myself. I'd feel like I'm playing a human that can't throw fireballs, can't use magic, can't do anything creative or interesting.
My only point in posting these walls of text is to prove that the people who don't support Miis aren't "stupid" or "ignorant", to use your words. I don't support Miis because they are not in any way appealing to me, the same reason I don't support all the other candidates that I don't. The only thing they claim to offer—the ability to put myself in the game—is not only something I don't want to do in this particular game, but something that I wouldn't
truly be able to do even if I did want to. I'm not stupid or ignorant for feeling this way. I just play Super Smash Bros so that I can stab someone as Link or cap someone in the head as Fox, characters I admire. Inserting Miis among figures as iconic as them compromises something in the game for me. I just seem to value the theme of the game more than you do, where as you seem to value involvement with the game.
Or something.
I don't even ****ing know anymore. I'm tired.
