According to Sakurai?
And while we're on this talk on Dragon Ball, what do people think about the idea of Alex Kidd for Smash? His game was originally supposed to be a Dragon Ball game before they changed it. It reminds me if Mega Man originally supposed to be an Astro Boy game. Or even Donkey Kong originally supposed to be Popeye.
Just imagine how that all those characters that were originally supposed to be licensed characters all in one game.
Alex Kidd's cute, and I do think he's always a good character to have around in SEGA-specific crossovers, but yeah I'd be a bit disappointed if he was the next SEGA character. He's a bit plain mechanically, and he wouldn't grab me as much as a lot of other candidates. I'd rather they go for a series like Puyo Puyo, VF or Sakura Wars, which are much more significant to the history of the company while also bringing more interesting styles in my opinion. Even if we went the "retro mascot" route, I'd much rather see Opa-Opa - Japan
loves Fantasy Zone, he's practically omnipresent in almost any kind of legacy material SEGA does, he's sort of a "face" for their legendary streak of 80s arcade hits, and he's super distinct mechanically and visually. Would love to see him.
To branch off the topic of unorthodox Sega character picks though, how would everyone feel about Akira being playable? Sakurai seems to have a reverence for Virtua Fighter, with costumes in Smash 4 predating any other Sega series and Akira being chosen as an Assist Trophy (and one of the most fun ones, to boot). Sonic even has a deliberate Virtua Fighter reference in his moveset.
He's far from my first pick for Sega, but I think there's a precedent for it and I would honestly kinda eat it up if they stuck with this low poly look that Sakurai seems committed to. Do you guys think he'd maintain the more retro look if he was added?
I'm not the most well informed on Virtua Fighter but I feel like I've been neglecting it within the Sega conversation and it deserves more than that. At the very least I feel like Virtua Fighter is a sleeper pick for the next fighting game series in line.
Yes, yes yes yes yes YES. I would love to see it happen. There's a very good reason VF is the only other real "classic" SEGA property represented in Smash - much has been said of Puyo Puyo's massive Japanese arcade success around these parts, and rightfully so, but if there's any other SEGA-adjacent series that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath in that regard (aside from more "casual" affairs like UFO Catchers, card arcade games, or their arcade conversion of Tetris), it's VF. It was a goddamn
sensation - insanely popular in its day, topped the arcade charts and won awards for several years straight, and massively influential too: it birthed the 3D fighting game, yes, but during the rise of the polygon era, this was one of the major titles that felt like they were really putting their foot down and declaring that 3D is
here and 3D is the future. VF2 was one of the first games to use motion capture tech for its characters, the Saturn's early success in Japan was based in big part off of the promise of "hey you can play Virtua Fighter on this thing" (and the Saturn port of VF2 is still their highest-selling console game over there to this day), and the thing that pushed Sony to go with making the PlayStation 3D-focused after a long period of indecision was them seeing VF and being like "ok yeah, this is the future." It was an absolutely ginormous success, is still treated with major reverence by the company and fans, and is maybe among the most iconic arcade games of all time over there.
So yeah it's a big deal.
But....all of this is me talking about why I think it deserves to be in and why I want it in. Not so much....how likely it is. I think it has the credentials, but I kind of have a sneaking suspicion that Sakurai feels the assist is the best role for Akira. I don't have much to base that off of, maybe it's what others have said above IRT implementation, but it's a gut feeling I have. There's also the matter of business - Ultimate Showdown was by all accounts a success, and despite some major criticisms it did show that there is still an audience for VF.....but since then it's been kind of radio silent, aside from the occasional Japan-only event and the producers cutting interviews going "trust us we have Stuff going on". In the meantime, SEGA has been hammering it in harder than ever that Sonic, Persona and RgG are their big 3, and while we
have seen a major intitiative towards doing stuff with their old IP, it's currently very catered towards the US market. I've heard from others that there may be a possibility of internal staff just taking their sweet time with it due to the philosophical conundrum of following up on a series that's historically prided itself on innovation, but point is I'm currently unsure on what they're planning to do with stuff that's kind of on that inbetween tier of activity - not an evergreen pillar, but not a long-dead series that can be leveraged to show that You're Back In Business either - and I do unfortunately feel that VF finds itself there. Let's hope for the best.
As for design.....I do agree that the white gi isn't the most appealing option. About the retro look, I do wonder if they'd be willing to go for such an extreme level of throwback when designing a character - we've had other third-parties take heavy and very literal aesthetic inspiration from their classic outings as well, but this would almost be like making Mega Man his actual NES sprite. I feel like a good middle ground would be to give Akira his red and blue gi he wears sometimes:
I think this is a distinct, appealing design that helps Akira stand out from the other fighter dudes much more immediately while still feeling like a living breathing incarnation of the character. If nothing else, I do feel like the polygon look
has to be in there somewhere - probably as an alt.
If nothing else, I'm super grateful we've gotten significant content for VF that does a great job of paying tribute to the series and SEGA's arcade heritage. I'd obviously like to see Akira playable, but what we have right now is pretty great too.
