Geno is the type of character who I feel is quite literally never gonna make it in. Simply because of what Sakurai Said in regards to Geno. He said, and I quote, “I think he could be interesting. He has a Gun for a Hand, and that could be incredibly unique.” This makes me suspect that Sakurai likely reused several of his ideas for Geno into Mii Gunner, since Mii Gunner was added after Geno was considered for Brawl. Just a theory, but I do think it does make sense considering Square would likely never give Nintendo the rights to use Geno as a Fighter.
Man, I guess Megaman will never be a fighter in Smash because he has a gun for a hand. He'd be too similar to Samus in that regard.
Also, you kinda skipped and messed up a bit of that quote there friendo. Let me grab the whole thing for you.
"Geno was actually a character I wanted to include as a fighter. He has a gun for an arm, and just seems like he'd fit absolutely perfectly into Smash.
I was hoping I'd be able to put him in as far back as Super Smash Bros. Brawl, but unfortunately that never ended up materializing."
So, he didn't say he was interesting, he said he 'seems like he'd fit perfectly into Smash' and one reason for that is 'he has a gun for an arm.' You also missed the part where he was 'hoping to get him as far back as Brawl' which is an incredible statement alone as it shows Sakurai has been interested in the character being in his game over a decade.
Before it gets brought up, this is where people like to say 'Well, if he really still wanted him in his game, he would have done it by now. Clearly, he doesn't want him anymore' to which my response is simple: since when has someone wanting something meant it went exactly their way? Just because Sakurai wants it doesn't mean it's going to happen as he wishes it, and his desires and priorities can and will change. Again with the example I gave with
Delzethin
if you were making a game of your own and your community wanted Foreman Spike and you actually approached Nintendo for guest characters in your game, would you still pursue Foreman Spike if it became clear Nintendo was willing to have Mario or Link show up in your game?
To break it down further, in this scenario, Foreman Spike is what your community is asking for, but Mario or Link is a much more popular choice that would please and attract more people than Foreman Spike would please within your community. Do you sacrifice that amazing opportunity? Not if you have any sort of business sense. In reality, Geno is Foreman Spike and Cloud, Hero, Sephiroth and Sora were Mario and Link...except that's not even true entirely, because the community actually wanted Sora. Thus, and even better example would be your community heavily wanting Mario and Foreman Spike, but Mario seems impossible to get, only to work out later on.
Geno and SMRPG are niche, although it turns out many a child played this game back in the day and it has a rising cult following. He just does not compare to all these big names and franchises, and Sakurai would be a fool to turn them down to get Geno, no matter how much Sephiroth being chosen partially to patch FF7 content in Ultimate irritates me. The funny thing is, people even in this thread right now think that Lara Croft, Neku or Crono are on this same level but don't wish to recognize the major faults that these characters have that make them fall behind in competition with Geno. Nobody wants to talk about how The World Ends With You is incredibly niche and got it's biggest boost when it was in Kingdom Hearts, or how Chrono Trigger is a once-in-a-lifetime-longshot that didn't recreate the magic and is a dead franchise as much as SMRPG, or how Lara Croft is no where near as popular as she used to be and has been very much changed from her nostalgic design that many would consider offensive in some form or that aside from the reboot the sales for the series plummeted. The only one I can agree with is that 2B is a big deal and has gotten very popular within the past few years, but I'm not sure whether or not that recent success after a massive failure that canned the series for years will be enough for Sakurai to value the character over the massive demand Geno has.
Not only do people not want to talk about these factors, but no one is bringing up how fan mock polls both during the time of the ballot and afterwards seem to have a very small picture of what actually took place in the real Smash Ballot, as Sakurai mentioned Sora was #1 and Banjo was #2, something that was very consistent fan polls as well with these two placing incredibly high...which one could assume and thus make the argument that other characters who consistently placed high in multiple mock polls likely did well and placed in relatively similar numbers in the actual Smash Ballot. Geno was very consistent in Top Tens and Top Twenties in many of these while often placing Top 5 or Top 3. Hell, Sakurai's own words in that same interview suggest Geno did very well.
"Yes. He's incredibly popular. Even though he's an old character, we keep getting loads of votes and requests for us to put him in the game. Even though he still isn't in as a playable fighter, I made sure he'd be in as a Mii costume so his fans would at least feel that they got something."
He didn't say he did well or he did okay: he said 'we keep getting loads of votes and requests for us to put him in the game' and 'He's incredibly popular' which is not something you would say if a character didn't get very many votes. Additionally, we got a Mii Costume for the character at a time when Geno fans were relatively quiet, and it's for a character that everyone thought Nintendo just forgot about or didn't care about up until that point in time. What would be the point in making a Mii Costume for a character that wasn't popular enough to make money off of it and, even more so, what would be the point of making sure Geno fans 'feel like they at least got something' if the demand for the character was super low? Wouldn't you just ignore that and get a different costume?
Also, you have no backing for your assumption about Square working with Nintendo around Geno. In fact, all the evidence is against that idea that they wouldn't cooperate. For starters, we never would have gotten the original Mii Costume in Smash 4 if Square didn't cooperate, nor Beware The Forest's Mushrooms to play for both trailers. We also got Spirits of both Geno and Mallow in base Ultimate as well as an icon well before the return of the costume, and Piranha Plant's Palutena's Guidance refers to both Chewies and Smilax/Megasmilax which are both variations of Piranha Plant unique to SMRPG. if working with Geno or what Square owns from SMRPG was a problem, none of this would have been able to happen.
You also have no backing for saying that Sakurai basically took elements from Geno and put them into Mii Gunner and became satisfied with that result. This isn't a weird situation where a lot of moves look very similar to an actual characters like Lloyd, and if you were right, Sakurai would have done a terrible job in this regard. Where does Mii Gunner fire off their fists, shoot their fingers like bullets, retract their hands to fire weapons or shoot stars at anyone? I don't remember Geno having a reflector or an absorption field, and the only bombs he used were from the party's general item inventory. None of Mii Gunner's side or up specials correlate with Geno at all, and all the neutral specials reflect other characters in the game rather than Geno who fires beams instead of balls or energy or grenades. Can Mii Gunner boost their attack and defense? Where is Geno Whirl? Does Mii Gunner have Timed Hits? Can Mii Gunner rain beams of rainbow energy from the heavens? Can they turn themselves into a cannon and fire out their soul in a giant explosion?
It's clear to me that you've never played SMRPG nor have you done extensive research into the character and what they can do, and that's fine, but you can't say things in confidence the way you did when you lack such critical information. Everything about Mii Gunner screams accomplishing these feats through modern and future technology. They share more traits with Samus and Snake than anyone else, and even then they are rather unique. This is in complete contrast to Geno, who does everything through magic and star power while utilizing an action figure body that is modifiable but also a wooden doll and not something more modern.
Man, feels good to talk about ma boi again. Just kinda came flooding outta me there.
SSGuy
, for the love of Star Road, how many times do we have to go over not attacking the characters that other people want? Remember what you make the Geno fanbase look like when you do that. It's one thing to do it in jest or as a joke, but actively slandering the characters and the people who want them is NOT COOL.
