Official Next Smash - Speculation & Discussion Thread

[Folezicle Lives!]

Well now. Seems my feelings about Amatersu being a potential underdog for the next Smash have paid off.

I see what you did there.


I had the weirdest idea, what if smash ultimate had one final dlc character as some sort of closure for Nintendo Switch (that's if we aren't getting a Smash Ultimate Expanded edition in Switch 2). Its unlikely we will see a roster this huge again and to me it would be an epic way to celebrate the end of the console.

Who would the character be, it'd be someone symbolic of the Switch I guess?

To me it'd be someone from the Tears of the Kingdom. Even though I'm yet to play that game or Sylux.

 

[SharkLord]

I still feel like the last member of Eggman's team in Team Sonic Racing (himself, Metal, and Zavok) should've been Heavy King. I mean you have a host that can send invites forward AND backward in time and don't use anyone from a Classic-styled game?

Could've made his Ultimate theme a snippet of Hi-Spec Robo Go! as well.

For a while Sega was insistent on Classic and Modern Sonic being separate dimentions, after Mania got glowing reviews and Forces got an exremely tepid reaction. They eventually nixed that concept and re-retconned it into just one timeline again, but when Team Sonic Racing was released they still had the Classic games isolated in their own little corner

 

[Speed Weed]

But it could also refer to all of the different versions/timelines of the Sonic characters. Regular Sonic, Classic Sonic, Movie Sonic, Prime Sonic, Boom Sonic, Comic Sonic, etc. Especially how Shadow was teased with looking like his movie version.

Yeah unfortunately I'm about where Buckley's at when it comes to the roster. I can't shake the feeling that they're just gonna use the cross-dimension premise as a way to get really lame brand synergy **** like movie Sonic and stuff like that. It fits in with what SEGA higher-ups have been going off about in interviews and such

 

[maf91186]

But it could also refer to all of the different versions/timelines of the Sonic characters. Regular Sonic, Classic Sonic, Movie Sonic, Prime Sonic, Boom Sonic, Comic Sonic, etc. Especially how Shadow was teased with looking like his movie version.

That's a fair point actually. I'd still expect the franchise cross but yeah, it wouldn't truly be surprising if it's different Sonic stuff instead.

 

[Ivander]

Speed Weed

Official account or not official? Cause it has this description.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, the latest entry in the beloved series of SEGA racers.
Drift Across Dimensions!
Race across land, sea, air, space, and time in Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds!

This is going to grind at my head, isn't it? And I thought the wait for the Game Awards showings felt way too long.

 

[Speed Weed]

Speed Weed

Official account or not official? Cause it has this description.


This is going to grind at my head, isn't it? And I thought the wait for the Game Awards showings felt way too long.

I believe that is an official account, yes. Still seems a bit too general to put much stock in, though. FWIW there's this:

EDIT: I will kill smashboards. It was a tweet quoting a statement referring to "characters from the Sonic the Hedgehog universe"

 

[Ivander]

I believe that is an official account, yes. Still seems a bit too general to put much stock in, though. FWIW there's this:

EDIT: I will kill smashboards. It was a tweet quoting a statement referring to "characters from the Sonic the Hedgehog universe"

I don't know if you couldn't see it, but I was able to see and read it and how the only franchise mentioned was Sonic the Hedgehog.

This is going to be a long wait, isn't it? Just for one clarification.

 

[PersonAngelo53]

Speed Weed

Official account or not official? Cause it has this description.


This is going to grind at my head, isn't it? And I thought the wait for the Game Awards showings felt way too long.

I wonder if the description implies we are getting the water and air transformation sections from sonic all stars Transformed back?

 

[Wonder Smash]

Has anyone else had any Smash Bros. related dreams? I had a weird dream last night that a new Smash was shown off and three newcomers were revealed. The first was Ifrit from Final Fantasy using a design I’ve never seen. The second was some kind of gryphon chimera type monster from Monster Hunter that I don’t think exists. And the third was Jinx, who was a pirate for some reason.

I don’t know what causes me to have such nonsensical dreams. I almost never dream at all, or if I do, I don’t remember them by the time I wake up. When I do remember them, they’re always weird like that. Maybe this one is a sign that I’m thinking about Smash too much lol. When I was still half asleep this morning I was ready to make a post about how cool the reveal was but then I realized it was a dream shortly after.

I've had a few myself.

Back when I was playing Melee and before Brawl was revealed, I had a dream of a four player match on the Princess Peach's Castle stage and Little Mac (my only MW character at that time) was one of the characters in the match.

Then when Smash 4's DLC was still ongoing, I had a dream of a Hayabusa vs Yoshi match on the Yoshi's Island stage (Ω). That was long before Hayabusa became my MW. But at that point, I was looking at other third-party companies that were involved in Smash could have had a playable character in the roster and with Koei Tecmo having Fatal Frame characters as a trophy, it made me think about Hayabusa as a possible character in the game.

 

[smashkirby]

I know we think R.O.B. should have his own stage, Bowser should have Bowser’s Castle, and maybe even Min Min should’ve had Ramen Bowl instead of Spring Stadium but are there any other characters who you think should have their own specific stage?

Bowser's Castle. That is all.

Oh, and Dr. Mario should really get a stage already.

Has anyone else had any Smash Bros. related dreams?

I know for certain that I've had a couple over the years, but in terms of what I can remember?

Spoiler

Shortly after Smash Ultimate had been teased, I dreamt that Ultimate's E3 trailer (before it was titled 'Ultimate', BTW) was pretty much a remake of Brawl's trailer... but with more characters than what Brawl gave us. (Like 20 or so).

I don't remember EVERYONE announced, but for who I DO? Bandana Dee, Dixie Kong, Cynthia (from Pokémon), Mona, Mimikyu, Krystal, Geno, A ninja character (Ryu Hayabusa?), Saki Omokane, Isaac, and SOMEONE who appeared in Namco x Capcom (I can't remember WHO it was).

Don't remember how the trailer ended, but THIS scene was in my dream... just imagine like 20+ characters instead, with the characters I mentioned + those others I can't remember... and that everyone was gathered in a place that resembled Corneria instead of some deserted wasteland.

All of that being said, I don't remember if Wario himself was the cause of the characters in my dream being in this position again or if someone else caused the characters to gather like this.

 

[NintenRob]

Ya know how we were talking about Bayonetta's future? Well platinum games seems to be in more hot water than we realised

https://bsky.app/profile/knoebel.bsky.social/post/3ld7quakiyc2p
"Seems like there is a "mass exodus" at PlatinumGames.

-Kenji Saito (Metal Gear Rising)
-Takahisa Taura (Astral Chain)
-Masaki Yamanaka (Anarchy Reign)
-Abebe Tinari (Bayonetta Origin)

Removed PlatinumGames from their social media bios."

I'm not exactly sure platinum has much of a future left, and this after Kamiya already left. Makes me wonder how much Nintendo cares about Bayonetta, are they willing find a new studio? Are they willing to be the active party in getting a new one made? Will Kamiya want to make Bayonetta from another studio?

 

[KingofPhantoms]

I have to wonder if this was before or after people spotted Chunky at SmashFest like the cryptid he is lmao

I honestly don't remember hearing about this, so I either forgot, or it was just a random dream I had while thinking and hoping that K. Rool land Dixie Kong would be among 4's newcomers lol.

 

[Folezicle Lives!]

Ya know how we were talking about Bayonetta's future? Well platinum games seems to be in more hot water than we realised

https://bsky.app/profile/knoebel.bsky.social/post/3ld7quakiyc2p
"Seems like there is a "mass exodus" at PlatinumGames.

-Kenji Saito (Metal Gear Rising)
-Takahisa Taura (Astral Chain)
-Masaki Yamanaka (Anarchy Reign)
-Abebe Tinari (Bayonetta Origin)

Removed PlatinumGames from their social media bios."

I'm not exactly sure platinum has much of a future left, and this after Kamiya already left. Makes me wonder how much Nintendo cares about Bayonetta, are they willing find a new studio? Are they willing to be the active party in getting a new one made? Will Kamiya want to make Bayonetta from another studio?

What does that mean for the future of Astral Chain?

Speed Weed

Official account or not official? Cause it has this description.



This is going to grind at my head, isn't it? And I thought the wait for the Game Awards showings felt way too long.

If this has some sort of Chao Garden I will be very excited.

 

[chocolatejr9]

What does that mean for the future of Astral Chain?

Well FWIW, Nintendo has full ownership of that one, and as we saw with Brothership they ARE willing to find a new dev to take over should the worst case scenario happen with the old one.

 

[KingofPhantoms]

I'm honestly wondering if Astral Chain and ARMS are ever going to get new games or projects at all.

 

[LiveStudioAudience]

Might be a bit conventional given their type of games, but it could be interesting to see Nintendo work with Koei Tecmo on an Astral Chain game. Given the work they've done on Ninja Gaiden alone, there might be real potential there, even without an Itagaki to oversee it.

 

[Ivander]

I'm honestly wondering if Astral Chain and ARMS are ever going to get new games or projects at all.

The likely reason we haven't seen ARMS get a new title is because the team that did ARMS is the same one that did Mario Kart 7, 8 and Deluxe. Since Mario Kart 8 was ported to Switch into Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, that probably gave the MK8 team an opportunity to do their own thing in the meantime while MK8D stood in for Mario Kart fans and people who didn't get a Wii U.
After ARMS, the team was probably ready to work on the new Mario Kart, but because MK8D did incredibly well, taking away the need for a serious Mario Kart sequel for the Switch, some of the team probably went to work on Mario Kart Tour(back around when Nintendo was still experimenting with the mobile market) while the rest of the team was likely spending alot of time figuring out and working on the next Mario Kart for the Switch's successor.

 

[TheFirstPoppyBro]

I'm honestly wondering if Astral Chain and ARMS are ever going to get new games or projects at all.

Well considering Astral Chain sold 1.3 million and ARMS sold 2.7 million, I feel like they will eventually since those aren't bad numbers by any means. Astral Chain also gets helped by the fact that Nintendo owns it 100% now, and ARMS is probably waiting on Mario Kart or something yeah, since 8 Deluxe sold like hotcakes and Nintendo is no doubt aware that a Mario Kart game early on in the Switch 2's life would similarly yield really good results.

 

[SharkLord]

Well considering Astral Chain sold 1.3 million and ARMS sold 2.7 million, I feel like they will eventually since those aren't bad numbers by any means. Astral Chain also gets helped by the fact that Nintendo owns it 100% now, and ARMS is probably waiting on Mario Kart or something yeah, since 8 Deluxe sold like hotcakes and Nintendo is no doubt aware that a Mario Kart game early on in the Switch 2's life would similarly yield really good results.

Maybe they should find a decently established indie studio and let them make the new games

This is only half joking actually, nowadays it seems like there's a decent amount of indies being contracted to work on big franchises, like the Dead Cells devs working on Prince of Persia and the Blasphemous devs working on the new Ninja Gaiden. Hell, Nintendo's already let the Cadance of Hyrule team work on a Zelda spinoff just because they thought the concept was really cool. I don't think it's a guarantee Nintendo will contract indies to work on some of their games, but given it's actually already happened I think it's at least a possibility.

 

[Gengar84]

Two of my most wanted first party characters are from Astral Chain so I’m hoping there’s a future for the IP. I thought the game was really fun and had a cool aesthetic with a unique battle system. I feel like there’s a decent chance we’ll see Officer Howard in the next Smash but getting a second character would take a miracle. I think it probably depends if there’s plans to continue. Unless the next game is a prequel, I don’t think it helps their specific chances though.

 

[dream1ng]

I think Astral Chain will probably show up on the next thing.

 

[NintenRob]

ARMS may not have anything new because it's still Switch. Traditionally, Nintendo likes to keep these franchises, especially the multiplayer ones, as one person console. Obviously exceptions exist but I never expected to see ARMS 2 until the Switch 2.


That's what's most exciting about switch 2. All those games Nintendo holds off for a new console generation are finally gonna have another chance to shine!! I'm so ready for the new

 

[Gengar84]

I’m going strictly off visual design because I haven’t played the game, but I think Kid Cobra is probably my favorite ARMS character. Master Mummy and Twintelle pretty cool too from the starting cast. From the DLC, I like Misango and Dr. Coyle. I have no idea if any of these characters are popular (other than Twintelle) but Dr. Coyle gives me the impression that she’s the main villain from what little I’ve seen. I wouldn’t mind seeing one of these in the next game if Sakurai can find a way to make them fun to play as and against. I feel like they kind of missed the mark with Min-Min in that way.

 

[NintenRob]

What I want from ARMS 2 is an actual story and single player. You have these cool characters, let me see them actually interacting.give me something

 

[Gengar84]

What I want from ARMS 2 is an actual story and single player. You have these cool characters, let me see them actually interacting.give me something

Yeah, I’d consider trying it if it had a campaign of some kind. The art style isn’t exactly my thing but I do like a few characters. I think it’s mostly just Spring Man that gives me a bad first impression whenever I think of ARMS but when I actually look at the full roster, some of them are pretty cool.

 

[chocolatejr9]

Maybe they should find a decently established indie studio and let them make the new games

This is only half joking actually, nowadays it seems like there's a decent amount of indies being contracted to work on big franchises, like the Dead Cells devs working on Prince of Persia and the Blasphemous devs working on the new Ninja Gaiden. Hell, Nintendo's already let the Cadance of Hyrule team work on a Zelda spinoff just because they thought the concept was really cool. I don't think it's a guarantee Nintendo will contract indies to work on some of their games, but given it's actually already happened I think it's at least a possibility.

I'm not sure if they count as "indie", but hear me out: Hazelight Studios working on an Ice Climber reboot. That company's whole gimmick is two player co-op, Smash made the Ice Climbers popular despite their source game, Popo and Nana work well for said co-op, Hazelight has experiance with platformers... you guys see where I'm going with this?

 

[dream1ng]

Development of more ARMS hinges a lot on Mario Kart. And that game has likely been in development since, in all honesty, late Wii U years. Not full development, and it may have changed course (heh) at some point, but there's no chance they were just going to throw MK8D on the Switch and call it a day for MK. But once it destroyed the charts, there was no real reason to replace it, and they could just push development of the new MK.

It's obviously going to be the priority for the system launch window, but it's been in development so long it's possible the team has been able to also make more progress on ARMS. If not, after MK next releases, it seems likely the team will split into working on DLC and working on other stuff. That other stuff could be more ARMS. I think the IP wasn't all Nintendo hoped it would be, but it was still successful enough for another go. I guess we'll see.

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

Ya know how we were talking about Bayonetta's future? Well platinum games seems to be in more hot water than we realised

https://bsky.app/profile/knoebel.bsky.social/post/3ld7quakiyc2p
"Seems like there is a "mass exodus" at PlatinumGames.

-Kenji Saito (Metal Gear Rising)
-Takahisa Taura (Astral Chain)
-Masaki Yamanaka (Anarchy Reign)
-Abebe Tinari (Bayonetta Origin)

Removed PlatinumGames from their social media bios."

I'm not exactly sure platinum has much of a future left, and this after Kamiya already left. Makes me wonder how much Nintendo cares about Bayonetta, are they willing find a new studio? Are they willing to be the active party in getting a new one made? Will Kamiya want to make Bayonetta from another studio?

It's worth noting that while Nintendo publishes Bayonetta, Sega is the owner of the IP, so the onus is on them to find someone else to develop its games. Either way I'd say it's been downed and there's a real chance of it flat out dying.

This puts the hypothetical Astral Chain 2 into question as well since it's either in development hell or hasn't started yet. The latter would mean that Nintendo has to see if it's worth it to find a new studio to make the sequel.


As for the ARMS discussion, I've said it before, but ARMS 2 is very likely coming, but won't be here until at least 2027 because the dev team is focusing on Mario Kart 10 right now.

Development of more ARMS hinges a lot on Mario Kart. And that game has likely been in development since, in all honesty, late Wii U years. Not full development, and it may have changed course (heh) at some point, but there's no chance they were just going to throw MK8D on the Switch and call it a day for MK. But once it destroyed the charts, there was no real reason to replace it, and they could just push development of the new MK.

This kind of makes sense, but I also wouldn't rule out the possibility that the title they were working on during the Switch era was Mario Kart Tour, making the development of the new game happen during or after the Booster Course Pass.

 

[TheFirstPoppyBro]

Whether it happens with Platinum or not depending on their future, I imagine Nintendo would eventually make an Astral Chain 2 because they scooped up the full rights from Platinum, which to me says they wanna do SOMETHING with it at some point.

Granted, they did basically trade Wonderful 101's rights to Platinum in return which is how that rerelease went to Steam and PS4, so it may have been a case of "okay if we give you this one we share in full, you give us that one we share in full", but still.

 

[dream1ng]

This kind of makes sense, but I also wouldn't rule out the possibility that the title they were working on during the Switch era was Mario Kart Tour, making the development of the new game happen during or after the Booster Course Pass.

MKT had like five different developers, it wouldn't have required that whole team to be working on it.

 

[fogbadge]

Well FWIW, Nintendo has full ownership of that one, and as we saw with Brothership they ARE willing to find a new dev to take over should the worst case scenario happen with the old one.

didn't the new dev team consist of a lot of members from the old one? same with the another code remakes. so I think it's a case of nintendo find where the original developers work now

 

[Inue Houji]

Long time since I've been here.

Okami is back!!
Is Ammy actually a possibility this time around?

Would be amazing, though I'm already overjoyed just by the impossible sequel actually happening.

 

[Garteam]

So how does everyone else feel about Secret Level? I’m not sure if I’m just not looking at the series the right way because I find it hard to get invested in. If I pretend they’re just long cinematic video game trailers then maybe I’ll like it more.

This show is transparently Amazon's attempt to test a bunch of disguised pilots for one or more series focusing on a single game or series. It's not a terrible idea, honestly. There are a lot of video game IPs that may have the potential to support a full series that are also too obscure to get a show right away. You have to introduce Unreal Tournament to (ironically) baby boomers before they tune in for HBO's Unreal Tournament.

The problem is people like recent video game adaptations because they're source-accurate and reverent. Sonic 1 was effectively the first video game movie (barring one or two exceptions here and there) that was not afraid of its source material. Most of Secret Levels episodes don't hit that hard because they care more about being artsy and angsty than just giving people what they came for.

I am cautiously optimistic about the Mega Man episode, though. Most reviews of Secret Levels from institutional journalism outlets like the Washington Post cite that Mega Man is the only episode that really works, as that's allegedly the only episode with any sense of hope. Mega Man has a ton of potential for multiple shows and films, due to the expansive scale of the various sub-series. It would also be very nice to have a really solid Mega Man adaptation to go with Mario and Sonic.

 

[LiveStudioAudience]

So how does everyone else feel about Secret Level? I’m not sure if I’m just not looking at the series the right way because I find it hard to get invested in. If I pretend they’re just long cinematic video game trailers then maybe I’ll like it more.

Secret Level just feels like a concept out of time. In an era where many adaptations are generally embracing the source material and aren't embarrassed to be related to such media, Secret Level just kind of reeks of an anthology series that wants to be seen as a sophisticated and mature version of these franchises; certainly nothing that resembles those silly and childish video games.

It might have been vogue with where the sensibilities were re: gaming TV shows and movies 10 years ago, but now? Just comes off as a novelty.

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

Secret Level just feels like a concept out of time. In an era where many adaptations are generally embracing the source material and aren't embarrassed to be related to such media, Secret Level just kind of reeks of an anthology series that wants to be seen as a sophisticated and mature version of these franchises; certainly nothing that resembles those silly and childish video games.

It might have been vogue with where the sensibilities were re: gaming TV shows and movies 10 years ago, but now? Just comes off as a novelty.

To be fair, these are the same writers behind Love, Death, and Robots, which from what I've seen is super artsy fartsy. In this sense I'd say that it's less that they weren't comfortable with the silliness of the source material, but they gave a bunch of IPs with a lot of silly elements to people who are trying to make interesting thought pieces.

Then again I saw a clip from Love, Death, and Robots where the robots thought that cats were explosive because of the "cat activation noise" meme so maybe they weren't as serious as they seemed.

 

[Kirbeh]

Ngl, I didn't watch TGA and just browsed the announcements afterward so I didn't know the edgy Pac-Man game was tied to a show. I'm less excited for it now...

 

[Ivander]

Ngl, I didn't watch TGA and just browsed the announcements afterward so I didn't know the edgy Pac-Man game was tied to a show. I'm less excited for it now...

It's the opposite. The Show was based off the game, as the show's developers were told by Bandai Namco to go wild with it and get people thinking, "What did they do with Pac-Man?" Considering the Pac-Man episode was only a couple-few days away before the game's announcement, the game had to have been getting made first and more than likely, Namco wanted to use their Secret Level episode as a prelude/advertisement for what was to be announced.

 

[HyperSomari64]

Call me a dumbass, but I think there will be DLCs and Expansion Packs for this Shadow Labyrinth, based in the other episodes. Maybe as separated stories to keep the anthological feel of the cartoon.
But who knows, maybe is some story expansion.

 

[LiveStudioAudience]

Call me a dumbass, but I think there will be DLCs and Expansion Packs for this Shadow Labyrinth, based in the other episodes. Maybe as separated stories to keep the anthological feel of the cartoon.
But who knows, maybe is some story expansion.

The DLC ending reveals that Shadow Labyrinth is in fact a video game that teenage Pac Jr is playing in Pac-Man 2 the New Adventures:

 

[Scrimblo Bimblo]

To be fair, these are the same writers behind Love, Death, and Robots, which from what I've seen is super artsy fartsy. In this sense I'd say that it's less that they weren't comfortable with the silliness of the source material, but they gave a bunch of IPs with a lot of silly elements to people who are trying to make interesting thought pieces.

Then again I saw a clip from Love, Death, and Robots where the robots thought that cats were explosive because of the "cat activation noise" meme so maybe they weren't as serious as they seemed.

Ouch. I've seen a couple of seasons of Love, Death and Robots, and yeah "artsy fartsy" is a very apt description. They try to be all existential but most of the times it's just veeeery shallow imo.
Some cool graphical ideas though, which is probably all we're going to get from the videogames show too.