It’s been kind of surprising to see how many people hadn’t heard of Terry or SNK at all during this whole ordeal, with some people calling them both “obscure.” While Terry wasn’t on most people’s radar for Smash, the people calling him a literal who are kind of showing the Smash community’s collective tunnel vision.
Unfortunately I don't think it's surprising. Smash is a well known game, the biggest crossover in gaming, and has a lot of fans. But at the same time, there's a lot of fans in the Smash community that complains no matter who's announced. Basically, if the new character isn't the one they wanted then it's a waste of slot of something like that..
I mean, there's so many franchises and games in videogames it's impossible to know all of them, and that's okay. You don't have to be an expert of every game and character. But at least people should show some respect to those characters, specially if they don't know anything about the fighter or his games.
In that sense a lot of Smash fans are bravely ignorants, speaking and despising characters/franchises with 0 knowledge of the latter. It happened with Joker, it happened with Hero, it also happened with Banjo in a lesser extent, and it's happening with Terry Bogard and SNK characters in general. I find it sad, because Smash is supposed to be a celebration of games and yet, a lot of his fans are so close-minded with franchises they don't know.
I would say, I'm not a great SNK fan or something in fact I usually don't play traditional fighting games. I have played some KoF in the past, nothing more. I knew some characters from SNK like Terry or Mai, and I'm really excited to see Terry (if it's finally him) in action. I think it has a great design and looks cool.
Why I say this? I think SNK, his legacy and some of their characters are very well known. But of course some people don't think that, and they're partially right. A lot of Smash fans aren't into other fighting games, meaning that they wouldn't be very familiar with characters from those games.
There's also demographics. A lot of people only plays the 2-3 genres they know and like, and these people usually are not familiar or informed about other genres and games. A hardcore JRPG fan that only plays role playing games probably will know nothing about King of Fighters, while a hardcore fan of fighting games probably won't know anything about Persona, and there's nothing wrong with all of this.
The problem is believing that if you don't know a franchise that must mean those games aren't good or important enough. We're all ignorant about some games and genres.
Terry Bogard is absolutely an iconic character, at least for me and some people I know even if I'm not into classic fighting games and neither I played arcade games.
I thought my first post would be shorter, sorry. Nice to meet you all