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Official Next Smash - Speculation & Discussion Thread

Laniv

Laniv

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Louie G. said:
So this is a positive conversation topic I want to bring up, lightly colored in some concern about who will return and who won't, but ultimately just want to get some appreciation going for Smash's "surprise" characters and how fantastic of a selection I think these characters are.

:ultgnw: :ultrob: :ultwiifittrainer: :ultduckhunt:

I feel like some of these guys, particularly Wii Fit Trainer and Duck Hunt, are severely underrated due to their slightly off-kilter playstyle but remain instantly recognizable to the masses. I remember when we used to call these guys "hardware" characters which is still fitting enough. ROB is rightfully acknowledged as being important for his role in getting the NES sold amidst a market skeptical toward home consoles, but I would say Wii Fit Trainer is very similar to this in spirit for a more modern age. Games like Wii Fit with extra peripherals and functions not generally associated with "video games" let the console appeal to a demographic that would not have bothered otherwise. I feel like Trainer gets sold short in this respect, I guess because the retro guys have more than a few years on her.

I hope all four of them can remain in the series moving forward, although I acknowledge the latter two are not some of the most popular additions. I'm not sure if the gameplay niche that WFT or Duck Hunt fulfill ever completely landed but I think they're some of the most imaginative characters on the roster. Do you guys have a favorite of these four, and do you think we'll see them continue to be a part of the series? Smash's celebration of Nintendo's rich and one of a kind history gives it so much character. I think I stand by saying Mr. Game & Watch is one of my favorite additions to the series ever.
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I hope every single one of these surprise characters sticks around forever
 
Gengar84

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fogbadge said:
even if cutting mewtwo got you gengar?
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Yeah. I’d rather have Gengar but Mewtwo is one of my favorite Smash characters too so I don’t want to lose it. I suppose if I was given the choice to cut my 10 least favorite existing characters for my 10 most wanted, I’d do it but I admit that’s just me being selfish because I’m sure my least favorites have plenty of their own fans.
 
SPEN18

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Louie G. said:
I'm iffier on ROB but I think Mr. Game & Watch is kind of THE GUY when it comes to these weirdo characters. He's the original, he's a popular character to play, and presumably he is very easy to develop due to his design simplicity and static animation. I'm gonna assume that's why he's fairly "low priority" in comparison, since he can be turned around in likely a shorter amount of time than the average character. I agree about Sakurai potentially valuing these characters more than your typical fan, although I also think the average fan is pretty protective of G&W and ROB for nostalgia sake.

It's maybe a bit arbitrary, but I remember this pre-Smash 4 whiteboard doodle posted by Sakurai and it always struck me that Mr. Game & Watch was here alongside all these other obvious staples. I feel like he's one of those characters like Falcon or Ness who have kinda just cemented their legacy through sheer persistence throughout the course of the series.





Yeah, I think about this too and personally I value this a whole lot. Granted I also recognize these characters have some of the least amount of content to offer individually, particularly ROB who doesn't even have a stage. So I'm curious if they would end up being treated as more "second class" lower priority universes since they're not quite as cohesive. I hope that's a nonissue though because each of them bring something fresh to the roster and are new worlds all the same. I think the value of the characters individually should trump the secondary stuff.

Unfortunately even in some more generous roster scenarios you can only cut so many supporting characters and third parties before the competition becomes pretty stacked and those cuts become harder to justify. Just another frustrating conundrum in this puzzle that I'm still not sure what to make of.
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Personally I would also favor G&W over ROB, but I would favor DH over both of them.
I don't actively want either G&W or ROB gone, but like you alluded to the competition is pretty stiff even when it comes to the smaller first party franchises. Like, I'd still rather make sure the likes of Kid Icarus, Punch Out, F-Zero, Mother, and Pikmin get representation over G&W and ROB, just personally if I had to choose between them. Not to mention I'd like to see more new series of kind of a similar ilk make it also. Which makes it easier to accept for me if the more nebulously defined representative niches of G&W and ROB had to go in order to make room, though I would hope they can keep all of them.
 
Louie G.

Louie G.

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Sucumbio said:
I wonder if the competitive side gets any consideration when they're making the roster.
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I would say the extent of this may be that tournament results and who is getting the most consistent showing in bracket could be a good indicator of who is popular to play. I don't believe anyone should or will get cut because they aren't popular in tournament - especially because balancing is a factor and it would be unfair to scrutinize a character for... the team's own poor balancing. They're not cutting Little Mac and Ganondorf just because they're not getting results, and those characters are also particularly popular in a casual setting. But I think the most popular characters in tournaments, on top of those who appear often online are a decent metric of who may be particularly missed in a roster purge.

Like if they had to decide whether it was worth it to bring back... I dunno, Wolf. I'm not sure if Wolf will return or not, but he is apparently one of the most popular characters in the game. Part of this is because he's a good character, but the other part is because people genuinely love to use him. In this context I think the competitive scene should be taken into account, to keep characters that have made a name for themselves in this sect of the community. This clearly does matter to the team - if it didn't, Sakurai wouldn't have slipped into talking about frame data and we wouldn't see balance patches in response to the community's discoveries. I know Nintendo doesn't exactly help the case but it's clear Smash 4 and Ultimate have been accommodating this scene.

And a side note, I think the competitive presence of characters like Fox or Meta Knight in previous games have made them more synonymous with the Smash "brand". Not that Fox or MK are in any danger of being removed, but I think their viability have made them uniquely iconic. This may be the saving grace for characters more "on the bubble" like Falco or Sheik, who are similarly iconic of the Melee scene.
 
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Quillion

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I think the competitive community needs more consideration on the core gameplay, less on the roster since it's the casuals who want to see characters coming together.
 
SPEN18

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Yeah who gets used in competitive is primarily determined by viability, not by who's most popular or beloved in the larger scheme of the fanbase. That's true across pretty much all competitive games, not just Smash. It's way too subject to the game-to-game balancing variabilities to really glean anything substantially useful to the rostering process. Not to mention how small a portion of the player base is more than passingly involved in competitive; so even if popularity in tournaments actually did correlate to overall popularity, it still wouldn't be based on a big enough or representative enough sample size.

I could see them taking into account the data from online. At least that involves more casual input and a larger number of players. But even then the results are likely to be too scattered to use as a primary factor in setting priorities for vets. Of course with EiH we didn't get to see how this played out between Smash 4 and Smash 5.
 
CapitaineCrash

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Louie G. said:
So this is a positive conversation topic I want to bring up, lightly colored in some concern about who will return and who won't, but ultimately just want to get some appreciation going for Smash's "surprise" characters and how fantastic of a selection I think these characters are.

:ultgnw: :ultrob: :ultwiifittrainer: :ultduckhunt:

I feel like some of these guys, particularly Wii Fit Trainer and Duck Hunt, are severely underrated due to their slightly off-kilter playstyle but remain instantly recognizable to the masses. I remember when we used to call these guys "hardware" characters which is still fitting enough. ROB is rightfully acknowledged as being important for his role in getting the NES sold amidst a market skeptical toward home consoles, but I would say Wii Fit Trainer is very similar to this in spirit for a more modern age. Games like Wii Fit with extra peripherals and functions not generally associated with "video games" let the console appeal to a demographic that would not have bothered otherwise. I feel like Trainer gets sold short in this respect, I guess because the retro guys have more than a few years on her.

I hope all four of them can remain in the series moving forward, although I acknowledge the latter two are not some of the most popular additions. I'm not sure if the gameplay niche that WFT or Duck Hunt fulfill ever completely landed but I think they're some of the most imaginative characters on the roster. Do you guys have a favorite of these four, and do you think we'll see them continue to be a part of the series? Smash's celebration of Nintendo's rich and one of a kind history gives it so much character. I think I stand by saying Mr. Game & Watch is one of my favorite additions to the series ever.
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Wii fit is genuinely one of my favorite Smash 4 newcomers. I think yoga pose is such a simple but cool concept for a fighting game characters, and I think a lot of people forget how absolutely massive Wii fit was at the time. The game was out of stock for a long time in many stores in North America. It wasn't just a game, it was a cultural phenomenom.

I do hope that one day we could have another "Wii fit" moment in the fanbase. A character that make so much sense and is fun to play, but that was not predicted at all by the community. But honestly it feels that Wii fit trainer was a "you had to be there" moment. Because today, there's a lot of request for casual or more niche characters like Ring fit adventurer, Style savvy, Labo man etc. so I don't think that the feeling of the Wii fit trainer announcement at e3 2012 could be replicate another time.
 
HyperSomari64

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Quillion

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You gotta admit, it's still baffling that Sonic is neither the first franchise to get more than one playable character nor the first to get more than one unique playable character.

Some part of me is still glad that Sonic isn't getting special treatment just because it's the most popular third-party franchise (since popularity alone is a bad metric to select characters), but I still feel for Sonic fans here.
 
Louie G.

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Quillion said:
You gotta admit, it's still baffling that Sonic is neither the first franchise to get more than one playable character nor the first to get more than one unique playable character.

Some part of me is still glad that Sonic isn't getting special treatment just because it's the most popular third-party franchise (since popularity alone is a bad metric to select characters), but I still feel for Sonic fans here.
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I'll preface this by saying, I think NOW is the time. If we don't get another Sonic character next game, providing the roster isn't cut in half, I will officially think we're overdue for one. But I think it's perfectly reasonable for Sonic not to have been the series to break down these barriers during Ultimate, as much as it makes sense on paper. Expanding on these third party series is still pretty new to us and most series haven't had the right opportunity - we didn't start getting unique additions until DLC, anyway.

Richter was the first to break the mold, and from what we know Simon and Richter were developed in tandem and borrow from one another's moves. That's a unique scenario which clarifies why they were added as a duo. After that is Ken - and aside from Street Fighter certainly being big enough to justify it on its own, I just think Ken makes the most sense when exploring the concept of "echo fighter"... he practically invented it. Everyone expected him, every leak had him real or fake, and for good reason.

Of course it should be mentioned there's another obvious echo who did not make the cut... Shadow the Hedgehog. This might be a bit of a sticking point, but I don't think this was really in the cards. In my opinion, Shadow's necessary changes making him more suited for the role of a semiclone rather than an echo fighter, but we can split hairs about this all day. I guess this moment was Sonic's best chance to expand and it was not capitalized on for one reason or another. Personally I think it would be a bit questionable for Shadow to be in the game before at least one of Tails, Knuckles or Eggman but I'm unsure if Sakurai would feel the same, that's likely just a personal hangup.

Then there's Sephiroth, which is where I really want to make my case because it's the one that matters the most. Final Fantasy and Sonic are actually about equally popular. In fact, Final Fantasy even edges Sonic out by about 20 million games sold. With that in mind, alongside Japan's relative indifference toward Sonic, it doesn't surprise me that it was given first dibs... well, Sephiroth's reveal surprised me, but it makes a lot of sense. It's also worth mentioning that frontrunners like Tails, Knuckles and Shadow don't really stand out as "DLC" type characters with their similarities to Sonic and unlikeliness to receive any overt gimmick or meter. And Eggman was never a particularly popular choice until Sephiroth showed up, opening the conversation up to third party villains.

I think if we continue to expand on third party universes in this way, which is inevitable IMO, Sonic is likely next up to bat. Unless we see Chun-Li first, who I think pretty much stands on her own as gaming's leading lady and I think that would be treated like a really big deal. There's room for both and quite frankly that's what I'm expecting - my gut has always said Tails, but we have four solid options.
 
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UserKev

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I would love Knuckles. In terms of gameplay, he's the most relevant and Smash friendly. The glide, digging mechanic, and taunts, etc. Knuckle would be at home. There's a urge in me that want to believe. He has a Mii costume, which says something.
 
S

Stratos

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If I read correctly about The Super Mario Bros. Movie, it was originally going to be a Nintendo collaboration with Sony, but eventually Nintendo partnered with Universal Pictures' Illumination. Where I want to get down to is if Nintendo actually works with Sony or some other company to make The Legend of Zelda movie. I mean is The Legend of Zelda movie really going to be with Sony or is Nintendo going to partner with another company to work with? However, if they are to make a live action The Legend of Zelda movie, it will surely be very good or they will rethink it and make it an animation which will also be good since it will be under the supervision of Shigeru Miyamoto himself. If I understand correctly about the Super Mario Bros. live action movie of 1993, it was originally going to be faithful to the Mario franchise games, but from what I've read they changed it for some reason that I also didn't understand why and so when it came out this movie with this script in 1993 as it is known, I would say 99.9% was NOT to call it a movie of Mario franchise. For the anime movie The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach that was released only in Japan in 1986 I have to say that it was pretty good if you exclude some errors it had. But as you know the pinnacle of success is The Super Mario Bros Movie that was released in April of this year. The Pokémon movies were all good and when I say and write "all" I mean all. Now it remains to be seen if The Legend of Zelda movie will actually be made into live action or animation.
 
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HyperSomari64

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After the E3/Beta logo of Yoshi's Woolly World in Smash 4's Stage Selection Screen, I don't think Smash would ever represent scrapped content (this also includes canceled video games).
 
RileyXY1

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Sucumbio said:
I wonder if the competitive side gets any consideration when they're making the roster.
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I think that it did determine which Star Fox character (other than Fox himself) got to be in Smash 4. I think that Falco returned over Wolf simply due to the former's fame in the Melee competitive scene. The competitive players were also the reason why Dr. Mario was made his own separate fighter in Smash 4 as opposed to being an alt, as Sakurai openly stated that demoting him to an alt would just be an insult to all the players that mained Dr. Mario in Melee.
 
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HyperSomari64

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  • A picture from the canceled Mother 64 in the light reflection of selected Melee trophies.
  • The E3 2014 logo of Yoshi's Woolly World in SSB4's stage select.
I wonder if Unused Content (and Canceled games) are valid for Smash.
 
S

Stratos

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I like that some people thought of a character made of Tetris pieces, although it might not happen, but you never know. It will be interesting anyway because Tetris is also a famous game as far as I know.
 
Kirbeh

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I don't think the competitive scene influences the roster selection, but that's not to do with some competitive/casual split. Competitive players will pick whoever is viable, regardless of who they are, and even then, there are plenty of character loyalists who pick characters because they like them before taking viability in consideration.

At the end of the day, competitive players are still Nintendo fans, their wants character wise overlap with casuals. It's gameplay where the divide actually happens. And most casuals don't care too much on that end of things, so long as they can play their favorites and partake in multiplayer chaos.

Funnily enough the biggest schism within the community isn't the major competitive vs casual audiences, it's really just the die-hards that bother to post on boards like this one or make videos about it on YT.

We're the ones doing all the discussing, speculating, and bickering amongst ourselves for leaning one way or the other.

fogbadge said:
so anyone wanna talk mallow?
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Sure, why not

Perkilator said:
An unused concept for Shadow from Sonic Adventure 2’s development.
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Normally I'm i favor of bringing back unused ideas/concepts that get left on the cutting room floor, but I can't say I feel that way about Terios. He looks too much like Sonic and even edgier than Shadow but doesn't quite stick the landing, so it ends up being really goofy looking,
 
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HyperSomari64

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Kirbeh said:
Normally I'm i favor of bringing back unused ideas/concepts that get left on the cutting room floor, but I can't say I feel that way about Terios. He looks too much like Sonic and even edgier than Shadow but doesn't quite stick the landing, so it ends up being really goofy looking,
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It worked for Feels the Rabbit in Sonic Superstars.
Are there any unused content from the franchises represented in Smash that should be rescued?
 
Kirbeh

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HyperSomari64 said:
It worked for Feels the Rabbit in Sonic Superstars.
Are there any unused content from the franchises represented in Smash that should be rescued?
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I mean you could probably fill a book with cut content from any given game series, possibly several volumes for something like Mario. What should be given another shot, will depend on who you ask. If you want to go with a specific franchise to start with, we could do some digging around, or did you have something in mind already?
 
HyperSomari64

HyperSomari64

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Kirbeh said:
I mean you could probably fill a book with cut content from any given game series, possibly several volumes for something like Mario. What should be given another shot, will depend on who you ask. If you want to go with a specific franchise to start with, we could do some digging around, or did you have something in mind already?
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1700784102669.png

Uncle Kong skin for DK.

Also, do canceled games count as "unused content"?
 
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