I agree, however that's not nearly as true for the four I've been discussing.
- In terms of Statistics, Spring Man and Min-Min are equal in everything apart from max charge time, and Ribbon Girl is nearly exactly the same in this regard to Min-Min, albeit with slightly lower dash distance. Ninjara is really the only one of these four whose Statistics are significantly different compared to the other three fighters, but even then he's only ahead by ~20% in each stat.
- In terms of Official Stats we see a bit more variance; The women are one unit shorter than the men, which is consistent with typical human dimorphism, though I'd imagine it wouldn't matter all too much in-game. Arm Girth is even amongst the men, with the women being below average, save for Min-Min's left arm when it's fully charged. Speed is consistent between three of these four fighters, with the obvious exception being Ninjara who is... well, a ninja, and is naturally faster. Jumping is relatively balanced between the four of them, with Ribbon Girl and Ninjara beating the other two out by a single point. The last two stats are clearly joke stats which have no effect in-game.
While there are noticeable stat differences between this quartet here and there, none of their stats are all too different that they can't be evened out should these characters get merged together for Smash. The only one of these you could make a decent argument for would be Ninjara thanks to his generally speedier gameplay, but due to Smash Ultimate already being as fast paced as it is, such speed differences compared to his home game would be negligable in the grand scheme of things.
While that may be true in some instances, such as their idle and victory animations, their basic movements and attacks aren't all that different. If these four were included as one general ARMS fighter, the idle, taunts, and victory animations are all that would need to be changed in terms of animation. Their punches would differ little, their jumps would differ little, their grabs would differ little, their aerials would differ little, even their Final Smash would differ little as they are all capable of using the same rapid-fire fisticuffs move when their special meter is full.
Well for one, we're most likely not getting any DLC Echo Fighters at all. Given that Sakurai has gone on record stating that they don't have any plans for DLC after Vol.2, as well as each Challenger Pack specifying only
one fighter, I'd take that as a pretty clear joss against DLC Echoes. But even if they did decide to add Echoes to a Challenger Pack, it would be pretty unfair to the other DLC fighters. "Oh okay,
my character comes alone, but
they come with another character?! Talk about Sakurai Bias!"
Also, I really don't think you paid any attention to what I was saying regarding the differences between Ryu and Ken. The reason these two are Echoes of eachother rather than being alt costumes is because they have very significant differences that make such homogenization unfeasable. A few of these unassailable differences are as follows:
- Quite a few of their standard attacking moves have different properties, with some of them being completely different in both animation and function.
- While Ryu and Ken share most of their imput commands, they each have one or two that are unique compared to eachother; Ryu has the Shankunetsu Hadourken and Ken has both the Oosoto Mawashi Geri and the Nata Otoshi Geri.
- Ryu can't do the Shippu Jinraikyaku or the Shinryuken, and Ken can't do the Shin Shoryuken or the Shinku Hadouken.
The same could apply to Dark Pit. Depite being almost identical to Pit in most ways, one way that the two differ that would prevent them from being part of the same fighter are their Final Smashes. It would make no sense for Dark Pit to use the Three Sacred Treasures (Smash 4) or the Lightning Chariot (Ultimate), as he never finds himself in posession of the former, and the latter is in Pit's custody by the time Ultimate rolls around (Super Smash Bros. is part of the Kid Icarus canon.), plus it doesn't really fit his style. As such, his Final Smash is his signature Dark Pit Staff.
From what I can tell, Echo Fighters are designated the way that they are based on how much development time is requires to make them, rather than how much of them is wholly different from their base fighter. From a designer's perspective, it takes much less time to make someone like Daisy or Chrom since all they'd have to do is reuse most of their base fighter's animations, attacks, grabs, even their Final Smashes in some cases, and their moveset is balanced compared to their base fighter rather than the rest of the cast, which takes even less time. It would explain why Dr. Mario isn't considered an Echo of Mario but Dark Samus is considered one for Samus, despite the former duo being superficially similar.
Also, I think you're seriously overemphasizing the importance of character animations when it comes to whether a fighter is worthy of being considered an Echo or not. I mean, the male and female Pokemon Trainer have different animations between eachother, but neither of them are considered Echoes of the other. Same with Inkling and Byleth, who have different animations in some cases between genders.
Also, I'm pretty sure one of them uses staves to attack and the other one is a manlet angel, which is pretty wildly different as far as protagonists go.
Wario is literally twice as wide as both Mario and Luigi
combined. They are not at all comparable to the four ARMS characters I'm talking about. Take a look at this:
View attachment 267765
(Note: There was no image of Min-Min's model to compare with.)
Their body types are nearly identical to eachother. Are you honestly trying to tell me that these characters couldn't be slightly modified in height to fit on the same rig? Especially since Smash tends to care very little when it comes to canon character sizes?
Different idle animations.
He wouldn't, those would be animations exclusive to those characters: Ninjara's dodges would have him warp as he usually does despite it functioning the exact same as everyone else's dodge, and Min-Min's left arm gimmick would be relegated to her Final Smash animation.