Official Next Smash - Speculation & Discussion Thread

[Hadokeyblade]

Are you guys confident in Ayumi's chances?

Only if the devs are still interested in it.

 

[Will]

Are you guys confident in Ayumi's chances?

I’m more of an Emio supporter.

 

[Diddy Kong]

If Dixie was Echo Fighter material we would've had her in long time ago. Probably around Smash 4. She is one of the Forbidden Seven and never been touched again, and if Echo was a possibility they would've done so.

 

[Kirbeh]

I’m more of an Emio supporter. View attachment 399541

You heard it here first folks. Will supports mur- gets paper bagged

 

[BrawlX10]

I’m more of an Emio supporter. View attachment 399541

I'm curious, could Emio be possible as a fighter? Or would his moveset be too much for a E10+ game?

 

[Hadokeyblade]

I think Emio would be a great assist trophy. I think you could probably base an assist on his serial killer tendency.

 

[Will]

You heard it here first folks. Will supports mur- gets paper bagged

Thanks Emio but it’s not like he was wrong Kind of unnecessary dude, take him out of the bag

I'm curious, could Emio be possible as a fighter? Or would his moveset be too much for a E10+ game?

If Joker can shoot you with a regular ass pistol but Emio can’t be a slasher villain archetype then I quit

 

[Shinuto]

It's be funny if Smash 6 is indeed a 2026/27/28 game with a development period of 2023 and 24 like some people assume and it still doesn't get gen 10 pokemon.

 

[fogbadge]

Thanks Emio but it’s not like he was wrong Kind of unnecessary dude, take him out of the bag


If Joker can shoot you with a regular ass pistol but Emio can’t be a slasher villain archetype then I quit

I mean he’s not a slasher anyway

 

[Kirbeh]

If Joker can shoot you with a regular ass pistol but Emio can’t be a slasher villain archetype then I quit

um, actually, it's a replica

Not like we don't have other characters with actual body counts on the roster already though.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

If Dixie was Echo Fighter material we would've had her in long time ago. Probably around Smash 4. She is one of the Forbidden Seven and never been touched again, and if Echo was a possibility they would've done so.

That's not how the clones were done in that game. They all happened to be Costumes first(and would've been had there not been enough time. Even Lucina was slightly changed to match Marth's height, showing there is some minor leeway in bodyshape, but not all that much). Dixie wasn't imagined as a costume. If she was going to be an Echo, it'd have been in Ultimate first.

 

[DarthEnderX]

A bit of a weird question, but it's one that's been on my mind a lot as of late. What does the next game need to have for you to be satisfied?

Ultimate Deluxe + rollback netcode

Um... yes he does? That's the entire drawback of the durability mechanic.

Really? I thought only his Neutral Special used up tomes.

Alright, I guess two characters are bull**** like that then.

I would also like to say a good netcode but I've given up on that hope for as long as Bandai Namco works on the series.

Doesn't Tekken 8 have good netcode?

How satisfied would you personally be with the following list of newcomers?

Alternatively, how would you guys feel about these characters?

Here’s my shot at the base roster.

I love that all of these have Hayabusa, but the all suffer from the problem of having too many 1P characters.

Over half of Ultimate's newcomers were 3P. I expect that tend to continue.

But I'll go the opposite direction:
1. Ryu Hayabusa [Ninja Gaiden]
2. Bill Rizer/Lance Bean [Contra]
3. Arthur [Ghosts ‘n Goblins]
4. Kunio/Riki [River City]
5. SV-001 Metal Slug [Metal Slug]
6. Jill Valentine [Resident Evil]
7. Morrigan [Darkstalkers]
8. Nightmare [Soulcalibur]
9. Kazuma Kiryu [Like a Dragon]
10. Nakoruru [Samurai Shodown]
11. Dante [Devil May Cry]
12. Estelle Bright [Legend of Heroes]
13. Zero [Mega Man X]
14. Alucard [Castlevania]
15. Raiden [Metal Gear]
16. Captain Toad/Toadette [Treasure Tracker]
17. King Hippo [Punch-Out]
18. Mii Mage

Echoes:
11e. Black Shadow [Captain Falcon]
16e. Impa [Sheik]
36e. Dixie Kong [Diddy Kong]
38e. Shadow [Sonic]
46e. Bass [Megaman]
64e. Octolings [Inklings]

It's occurred to me that my wanted newcomer list, by itself, wouldn't really make a good newcomer roster. So ideally, I should support each character individually while expecting other characters. And I can celebrate if any of my wanted characters do make it in.

This thread is no place for that kind of maturity!

 

[Gengar84]

Ultimate Deluxe + rollback netcode

Really? I thought only his Neutral Special used up tomes.

Alright, I guess two characters are bull**** like that then.

Doesn't Tekken 8 have good netcode?

I love that all of these have Hayabusa, but the all suffer from the problem of having too many 1P characters.

Over half of Ultimate's newcomers were 3P. I expect that tend to continue.

But I'll go the opposite direction:
1. Ryu Hayabusa [Ninja Gaiden]
2. Bill Rizer/Lance Bean [Contra]
3. Arthur [Ghosts ‘n Goblins]
4. Kunio/Riki [River City]
5. SV-001 Metal Slug [Metal Slug]
6. Jill Valentine [Resident Evil]
7. Morrigan [Darkstalkers]
8. Nightmare [Soulcalibur]
9. Kazuma Kiryu [Like a Dragon]
10. Nakoruru [Samurai Shodown]
11. Dante [Devil May Cry]
12. Estelle Bright [Legend of Heroes]
13. Zero [Mega Man X]
14. Alucard [Castlevania]
15. Raiden [Metal Gear]
16. Captain Toad/Toadette [Treasure Tracker]
17. King Hippo [Punch-Out]
18. Mii Mage

Echoes:
11e. Black Shadow [Captain Falcon]
16e. Impa [Sheik]
36e. Dixie Kong [Diddy Kong]
38e. Shadow [Sonic]
46e. Bass [Megaman]
64e. Octolings [Inklings]

This thread is no place for that kind of maturity!

I think they’re going to go heavy first party for the base game and heavy third party for the DLC. My list was for the base game. Check out the spoiler tag for my thoughts on DLC. Way more third parties there.

 

[RileyXY1]

I think they’re going to go heavy first party for the base game and heavy third party for the DLC.

That's what they did for both Smash 4 and Ultimate and I think it's gonna be the same for Smash 6.

 

[Wonder Smash]

I think she has a 50/50 chance. The FDC series seems to have been doing well with its recent resurgence, but I'm not sure that'll be enough for Ayumi to be playable.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too. It's good that the game is at least localized.

 

[DarthEnderX]

Ditch the echo labeling. At the end of the day, they're still clone characters.

And that labeling makes people hate them 10x less. It would be dumb to get rid of it.

 

[ninjahmos]

And that labeling makes people hate them 10x less.

Does it though?

I mean, people hate clones in Smash anyway, and I'm pretty sure Sakurai just decided to call them Echo Fighters to shut people up. I don't think removing the label would make much of a difference.

 

[DarthEnderX]

Does it though?

Yes. The reactions to Echoes were WAY less negative than the reactions to clones used to be.

It's purely psychological, but calling them Echoes and having them share a Smash number makes them feel like less of a wasted slot in the minds of casual fans. Because it makes it clear that they aren't using a slot.

I'm pretty sure Sakurai just decided to call them Echo Fighters to shut people up.

And that's exactly what it did.

 

[Guynamednelson]

Does it though?

Considering the rest of Darth's post, no it doesn't.

 

[KingofPhantoms]

Does it though?

I mean, people hate clones in Smash anyway, and I'm pretty sure Sakurai just decided to call them Echo Fighters to shut people up. I don't think removing the label would make much of a difference.

I think it's less the fact that they now have an official name and term for the type of movesets they have, and more the fact that it's also been made explicitly clear that they don't take up development time that could be put towards other characters with fully unique movesets (in other words, they're bonus characters, not characters that came at the cost of unique newcomers) that actually helped more people either warm up to them or dislike them less.

I remember Dark Pit in particular getting a ton of hate in Smash 4 when the roster was first unveiled, and for a while afterwards. Compared to that, I didn't see much backlash to the returning Echoes nor the newly added Echoes in Ultimate at all.

 

[BrawlX10]

Thanks Emio but it’s not like he was wrong Kind of unnecessary dude, take him out of the bag


If Joker can shoot you with a regular ass pistol but Emio can’t be a slasher villain archetype then I quit

I haven't played Emio's game, so idk what his moveset could be like, but i think they might be warry to include him if it would be hard to make him and his moveset suitable for a E10+ game. but alas....we have Ridley which is technically a serial killer and has kind of a scary design for young kids, so idk lmao. maybe it doesn't matter.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

Echo Fighters are just a dub name, when they're called Dash Fighters in Japan. Because they're fast and easy to make. Echo can refer to things like "it's the same", essentially, referring to their nature. It just sounded better. It's not some petty thing to shut people up. They're logical names(moreso in Japan) too. Being they mostly play the same(some are a bit less minor differences, and some are almost identical), Echo still works in that way.

Plus, people know they're a kind of clone, so the label doesn't really change much at all. The only actual difference is he revealed one hard rule(their bodyshapes must be pretty much the same) that other clone types don't need to follow. That's kind of it. We can at least infer they're not going to get massive differences either thanks to the Echo terminology, but that's not a whole lot of information either way. Especially since Ken feels a lot more arbitrary than the rest when it comes to the labeling.

 

[Guynamednelson]

Dash Fighters in Japan. Because they're fast

It has nothing to do with "dash" and "fast" both involving high speed. The symbol they use is ', which in Japan is called a dash and is meant to indicate that something is derivative of something else.

For example, Street Fighter II Champion Edition is called Street Fighter II' in Japan, but the American localizers didn't understand that and/or thought Westerners wouldn't, so they added something that looks more like a proper subtitle.

 

[Kirby Dragons]

Are you guys confident in Ayumi's chances?

Not particularly. I wouldn't be surprised if we see her, but I also wouldn't be surprised if we don't see her.

This thread is no place for that kind of maturity!

You right, you right.

We need Midna, Dragapult, Bandana Waddle Dee, Maxwell, Crazy Dave, and Athena Asamiya. All other choices are rubbish.

 

[Ivander]

No, I think the term Echo Fighter did make people stop complaining about the actual Echo fighters, since people did not complain about them nowhere near as much compared to Dr. Mario, Dark Pit and Lucina got with Smash 4. And it certainly got people more invested in adding Echo fighters to their fan rosters.

But the complaints are now elsewhere. Instead of people complaining about the actual Echo Fighters, people now complain when somebody doing a fan roster has a character as an Echo of another character who clearly has alot of differences. Basically, people complain less about the Echo Fighters that are in, but now complain about others trying to force in as many "Echo Fighters" as possible without regard to the major differences or the potential of the fighter themselves.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

It has nothing to do with "dash" and "fast" both involving high speed. The symbol they use is ', which in Japan is called a dash and is meant to indicate that something is derivative of something else.

For example, Street Fighter II Champion Edition is called Street Fighter II' in Japan, but the American localizers didn't understand that and/or thought Westerners wouldn't, so they added something that looks more like a proper subtitle.

"Because they're fast and easy to make."

The way you quoted it lost a lot of context. It sounded more like the characters themselves are "fast", which is quite different. Please actually quote what I say next time. Don't shorten it.

Anyway, that just makes Echo Fighter a very accurate translation within the context of what they meant. Thanks for pointing that out.

 

[BrawlX10]

What character do you think could be the Joker of Smash 6 DLC? (A surprising 3rdparty character that opens the first pass)

 

[DarthEnderX]

I think it's less the fact that they now have an official name and term for the type of movesets they have, and more the fact that it's also been made explicitly clear that they don't take up development time that could be put towards other characters with fully unique movesets (in other words, they're bonus characters, not characters that came at the cost of unique newcomers) that actually helped more people either warm up to them or dislike them less.

Exactly.

What character do you think could be the Joker of Smash 6 DLC? (A surprising 3rdparty character that opens the first pass)

Estelle Bright.

She gets talked about here, but I'm pretty sure casual fans would be like, "Who the ****?"

 

[TheFirstPoppyBro]

I think it's less the fact that they now have an official name and term for the type of movesets they have, and more the fact that it's also been made explicitly clear that they don't take up development time that could be put towards other characters with fully unique movesets (in other words, they're bonus characters, not characters that came at the cost of unique newcomers) that actually helped more people either warm up to them or dislike them less.

I remember Dark Pit in particular getting a ton of hate in Smash 4 when the roster was first unveiled, and for a while afterwards. Compared to that, I didn't see much backlash to the returning Echoes nor the newly added Echoes in Ultimate at all.

You know, really thinking about it after this reminded me, Dark Pit was such an anomaly of a character in Smash 4 lmao

Like he was in the Palutena trailer but only barely at the end and despite being playable, he didn't get any kind of fanfare like Lucina got or even a splash screen. He was just sitting there under our noses the entire time since Palutena's reveal, but we didn't know he was playable until the ESRB leak lol

 

[PersonAngelo53]

Yuri was an awesome protagonist but I feel like he’s got the least interesting moveset potential of all the options on his own. I’d love to see him take a page out of Clive’s book and act as a Rosalina style duo with Repede. That would be really cool even if it’s not entirely accurate to the gameplay of Vesperia.

I can see Yuri getting a mii sword fighter costume at the bare minimum if we get a different playable Tales of character.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

You know, really thinking about it after this reminded me, Dark Pit was such an anomaly of a character in Smash 4 lmao

Like he was in the Palutena trailer but only barely at the end and despite being playable, he didn't get any kind of fanfare like Lucina got or even a splash screen. He was just sitting there under our noses the entire time since Palutena's reveal, but we didn't know he was playable until the ESRB leak lol

It was probably timing. Palutena's Trailer was likely already done, but Robin's was not at the time, so they were able to do them differently.

Redoing any trailer is a lot of work as is. I think what's funnier is Dark Pit wasn't labeled as a Newcomer or Veteran on the website too. XD

 

[PersonAngelo53]

Exactly.

Estelle Bright.

She gets talked about here, but I'm pretty sure casual fans would be like, "Who the ****?"

Haha, yep indeed Estelle Bright could potentially be that Joker or Terry like announcement for the next smash.

 

[Golden Icarus]

The echo label made sense, but I’d prefer that they leave it behind. I can appreciate the transparency. The willingness to outright state that these are low effort, non-unique characters. And given that about half of Ultimate’s base game newcomers were echoes, it probably would have gone over poorly if they refused to acknowledge that they were any different from a full blown newcomer.

But the label’s also tacky, loosely defined and entirely unnecessary. Clones exist in most fighting games and we’ve had them in every Smash game. Weird time to suddenly give them a name. Also weird seeing characters like Doc and Pichu being considered unique, while Ken is labelled as an echo. I understand that it has more to do with how the characters were designed in Ultimate and less to do with how specifically unique they are, but the line between echo and unique fighter still feels arbitrary at worst and unintuitive at best. It almost makes me wish there was a separate label like “semi-echo” or “former echo” but at that point…yeah just ditch the label there really is no need for it.

Not to mention most people would probably prefer Smash 6 to have a higher focus on quality over quantity, since quantity was the entire hook of Ultimate. From Melee to Brawl every clone was either cut, or made more unique and I’d like to see the same thing done with the echoes. Cut most of them, but give the ones that stick around some new moves. That way they can “earn” unique character status, so that the term echo truly has no more reason to exist.

 

[BritishGuy54]

Talking about echo fighters…

Who are the most realistic options for new and veteran echoes?

 

[Wonder Smash]

Haha, yep indeed Estelle Bright could potentially be that Joker or Terry like announcement for the next smash.

I guess for the next Smash, Estelle could be Joker while Adol could be Terry.

 

[RileyXY1]

The echo label made sense, but I’d prefer that they leave it behind. I can appreciate the transparency. The willingness to outright state that these are low effort, non-unique characters. And given that about half of Ultimate’s base game newcomers were echoes, it probably would have gone over poorly if they refused to acknowledge that they were any different from a full blown newcomer.

But the label’s also tacky, loosely defined and entirely unnecessary. Clones exist in most fighting games and we’ve had them in every Smash game. Weird time to suddenly give them a name. Also weird seeing characters like Doc and Pichu being considered unique, while Ken is labelled as an echo. I understand that it has more to do with how the characters were designed in Ultimate and less to do with how specifically unique they are, but the line between echo and unique fighter still feels arbitrary at worst and unintuitive at best. It almost makes me wish there was a separate label like “semi-echo” or “former echo” but at that point…yeah just ditch the label there really is no need for it.

Not to mention most people would probably prefer Smash 6 to have a higher focus on quality over quantity, since quantity was the entire hook of Ultimate. From Melee to Brawl every clone was either cut, or made more unique and I’d like to see the same thing done with the echoes. Cut most of them, but give the ones that stick around some new moves, so that they can “graduate” to unique character.

I think it had more to do with how many new ones they added. Melee added six new clones and Smash 4 added two, and people massively complained then. Ultimate also added six new clones and to top it all off for the first time ever in the base roster the number of new clones outnumbered the number of unique newcomers with a ratio of 6 to 5. So to avoid similar backlash Sakurai came up with the term "Echo Fighter" and reclassified all the clones Smash 4 and Ultimate added under that label except for one, that being Isabelle.

 

[MagnesD3]

If Dixie was Echo Fighter material we would've had her in long time ago. Probably around Smash 4. She is one of the Forbidden Seven and never been touched again, and if Echo was a possibility they would've done so.

Id rather have a Diddy/Dixie combo character.

 

[Arcanir]

OK not all character relations are created equal:

• The starters are introduced as trios, but quickly break off.
• Legendaries are almost always a part of their duo/trio/quartet.
  • Exceptions are standalone legendaries, Cresselia because they didn't really do anything with it, and Phione, which is just a big oddity in the first place.
• Team Star Fox has 4-6 members depending on the game, but it doesn't feel necessary to have all of them, or even the core 4, as cool as that would be,
• Rex needs Pyra to make sense as a choice, and while solo Aegis makes less sense, it doesn't not make any sense. Even so I don't think Solo Pyra would have worked near as well, and Rex is still there to show the connection, just not in playable form.
• Can't really comment on Alph.
• Min Min doesn't even belong in this conversation. She has 0 connections to the other ARMS fighters.

Legendaries can easily break off like the Starters. Suicune got to be a version mascot and still got higher billing then the other two Beasts in HGSS, Unite, and Pokken, Zacian has gotten the star treatment in things such as Unite and the TCG while her brother gets scraps, and even Miraidon is currently in Unite with Koraidon nowhere to be found yet. When it comes to advertising the initial versions they get equal billing, but they will play favorites if there's a clear standout among the others.

Whether it'd happen in Smash is not certain, but I don't think they'd be above picking just one if it stuck out to them.

 

[BrawlX10]

She gets talked about here, but I'm pretty sure casual fans would be like, "Who the ****?"

My two casual friens didn't know any of the dlc fighters except Steve and Kazuya, and the latter only known as "the guy from tekken", i think people overstimate how much the average casuals would recognize, specially in countries outside Japan and America.
That didn't stop them to main Terry and Sepiorth, colness factor and cool movesets are can be draws for some casuals even if they dont know the characters, "oh this guy looks cool, bro" it's all it took my friend to pick Terry.

 

[dream1ng]

I think people are overestimating the prevalence/familiarity of Estelle/Trails or underestimating the prevalence/familiarity of Joker/Persona if they're being equated. The entire former series has sold about the same as just Persona 5.

I think a closer example to Joker would be 2B.