I'm unhappy with the franchise representation. I don't see anyone analyzing that, so I'll elaborate. If you really look at it, pretty much the only series that didn't get screwed over was Kirby (and arguably DK). I’m really sorry if this is very long, but I feel someone needed to actually perform an objective analysis.
I'm sure a lot of people were at least subconsciously surprised that Kirby got an extra two reps upon the revelation of D3. No one wanted MK, but we all love Sakurai for adding him. Granted, Kirby had deserved to get one more in melee, so we can consider that since Kirby got one more rep than it (should have) had in melee, then surely some of the other popular franchises would get at least that much.
Pokemon was the other series that was an apparent indication of proportional representation. We knew that Pika and Jiggs were returning because they had no reason not to, and M2 had a perfectly good moveset and excellent popularity to make up for the fact that he sucked. Everyone hated pichu, especially since it was one of the sucky clones, and there was no justification for it to return. Afterward, PT was revealed, and Lucario was almost a given due to his massive fan base (I don't get why, but I'd rather have him than other 4th gen reps). If Kirby got two new reps, then so could pokemon (which was retrospectively a correct assumption). So, pokemon's situation was that out of its four melee reps, it would most likely lose the crappy clone and gain two new, original characters (just like Kirby did), for a total rep # increase of one. It still seems very fair, despite reality. In the end Mewtwo was booted and that is probably the biggest injustice to the melee roster and our logical assumptions about brawl's.
Seeing as there were two other franchises with comparable popularity and rep count in Melee (Mario and Zelda), it would make perfect sense to do the same for them. Mario had five reps (justifiably so, as Mario is Nintendo's primary mascot). Everyone knew Dr. Mario should be out for multiple reasons, and that would be consistent with Pokemon. Mario, if any series, deserved two new reps as well: most likely Toad and Bowser Jr. I realize Toad would have needed a moveset from scratch, as well as Peach requiring a new B move, but he/she/it is the character most representative of the mario series who hasn't been a PC yet. BJ (lol) is the second, given his increasing importance in Sunshine and Galaxy. I'm trying to be as unbiased as possible in these character choices; personally, Toad would have been one of my punching bags, but he/she/it deserves it way more than ROB. And look what we got here. Not a single new Mario rep. That is a crime and you all know it is, even those who are happy with the roster.
Since the Zelda series also had three characters and a clone, it should have also lost the clone and gained two new characters. Seeing as Sheik was back despite logical discrepancies, which was clearly an OoT exclusive, it would make sense to add reps from other great Zelda games. The only thing I liked about MM was Fierce Diety Link, but as you will soon see I think that Masks Link would not only undermine PT's uniqueness, but also be just another Link. But MM is very popular, and Skull Kid/Majora's Mask was an interesting antagonist with great potential for a unique moveset. TP, being the most recent game (as well as the most critically acclaimed since OoT), deserved someone as well, especially considering Midna's fanbase. Again, no wolf link should have been necessary--if Sakurai really wanted it in he would have added it as a Link transformation--because we don't need another link. I originally didn't want Midna in, because as much as I like her, she's only been in one game. But if a TP sequel were coming out (which there really should be), she would be a very logical choice. The only other characters I can think of that might have had a chance were Tingle (I hate the fact that Japan loves him, but that will never change—and he’s in a lot of games) and maybe Din/Nayru/(Farore) (they’ve been in a lot of games as well, although no one knows who the hell they are or would like them to be playable over more interesting characters). So, the best reps with decent popularity, relevance, and UNIQUENESS would have been Skull Kid and Midna. I'm partial to the Zelda series, but I really despise Toon Link. He should have been an alternate costume, at best. I know I just said I would be unbaised, but I think he is waaaay to overrated and have to go on a slight digression to explain to you people how stupid you are about this. Young Link should have never been in Melee, and Toon Link is basically Young Link, or at least a reminder of that atrocity. And let's face it people, the only reason you like WW is because you were tired of waiting for the next OoT. You hated what they did to Link just as much as I did/do/will do, but forced yourself to like it because that was the best it was going to get (seems a lot like what is going on right now with brawl—if DC even has a long shot of happening, I don’t know why you people aren’t willing to create a large enough mob to actually try and make it happen). I ended up buying WW and upon playing thought it was okay. Until I discovered that the sailing/wind direction thing the least efficient method of transportation in existence, the Gorons and Zoras and Gerudos were replaced by stick-things (I liked the Rito, though, and Dragon Roost Island music), and when you need to collect the eight pieces of the triforce, one of them requires that you do a stupid cabana side quest and solve inane tile puzzles ad nauseum. Something like that should have been reserved for special items, not as a mandatory trial of pain. Tingle sucks, as well. The only other thing I enjoyed about the game was how awesomely the smoke was animated. Hell, the smoke should have been a character over Toon Link.
And as a response to the people who argue that Toon Link and Link are different people, I think that's a stupid argument to have him in brawl when there are plenty of better Zelda characters. Yes, supposedly there are multiple links throughout the history of the Zelda world, and Toon Link is not the same person as Link, but that doesn't change the fact that they are both blond-haired, green-garbed, sword-wielding elfoids. I know there are countless websites trying to place the Zelda games chronologically so as to determine exactly what relationship exists between links, but that's a load of bullshiit. Nintendo doesn't care nor think about that--they will create however many different reincarnations of basically the same character just to sell their games. And when you think about it, "The Legend of Zelda" implies that all of these games are just tales told recounting the epic efforts of some ancient, mythological hero who probably never existed the way the tales describe. It doesn't matter whether they are factually consistent with each other, as long as they somehow tell a story of how great the idealogical hero "Link" is. But the point is, they are all basically Link. So to you Toon Link fans, I say thanks a lot for screwing the Zelda representation over and giving us yet another Link. My sole consolation is that you only get another clone, and hopefully it will be below sea level tier. Thank you, Sakurai, for showing the fans how stupid they are (as well as not adding wolf link or masks link as a fifth rep).
Now that that's over, let's look at the other, less popular franchises. Donkey Kong deserved at least one new rep. Diddy was the obvious choice. Dixie Kong fans: you're on crack. Every franchise with three reps or more gets a villain--K. Rool was the obvious choice for a third rep. I'd say that DK has about the same importance and popularity as Kirby, so it wasn't that far-fetched to have three characters. People realized, however, that for various reasons this had a very good chance of not happening despite K. Rool's general popularity and the fact that he is a villain. Those of you who say that people are bytching about their favorite character not getting in are fabricating that: do you see anyone complaining about K. Rool not getting in? I would have liked him in, yet I'm not posting a load of crap about how I hate the roster because K. Rool's not in. It's the fact that so many "shoe-ins" (K. Rool being an "almost shoe-in") not making it into brawl that so many people complain. The roster just doesn't make sense from a fan standpoint, as I am slowly proving (I'm really sorry this is so loooooong, but I think this needed to be brought up since no one else has).
Next comes Metroid. Let's face it. Ridley is the only slighted character people knew HAD to be in brawl. Especially after Kirby got two new reps. Samus was a given, and the ZSS thing was a little bonus; few consider her a completely separate character (as with Zelda). Metroid is certainly important enough to get two new reps, more so than Kirby, but the problem is the lack of decent characters. The next most likely person would have been Dark Samus. I don’t mind Dark Samus, and I know that it is a completely different character than Samus, but even if it had a completely different moveset it would feel like a sort of cop-out clone. Seeing the roster now, it still probably would have been a clone. I think it would it would have done best as a color change. But there is no excuse for Ridley not being a PC. Once again, Metroid only has one selectable PC in the roster when there was no reason it shouldn’t have gotten two. It is very safe to assume that it would never have gotten three this time around (for those that consider ZSS a separate character, then Ridley would have made it three) as while it doesn’t possess the characters to fill that, another series could have taken that slot.
Yes, I’m talking about Star Fox. By rights, it’s huge list of like five games makes it only deserving of maybe two reps. Fox is one. Falco would always be the other. The problem is that it has disproportional popularity. I don’t know why, but it’s useless to fight it. So even though SF only deserves two reps, Sakurai added Wolf. I don’t hate wolf, but with the Falco/Fox clone issue and the fact that Wolf looks way too much like Fox, cloning was going to happen. Hence the landmasters and similar movesets. The sad thing is Wolf was always going to get in over Krystal because he is more important to the series and is a much-needed villain. But the landmasters are inexcusable. And if Sakurai was willing to add a rep to a franchise that didn’t deserve it, I ask why he didn’t just add two, especially when the first was a half-@$$ed de-clone and so many people wanted Krystal in brawl. He said he wanted more females, and as people are saying only too often: she would have used a staff. I don’t think Krystal deserves to be as popular as she is, but the fans wanted her and using a staff-wielder would have made up for her lack of importance to Star Fox. And that extra Metroid slot had to be given to someone.
F-Zero deserved another rep. The series is generally a flop, the characters remain in their vehicles the entire time (hence difficulties in moveset creation), but goddammit it deserves two reps just as much as Metroid deserves three. There are definitely enough characters to choose from, and I think that might be why none were chosen. The three most likely candidates were Samurai Goroh, Black Shadow, and Jody Summer. Jody is just another generic blond who has less fanbase than the other two, so she was least likely to become playable. I think most people were rooting for Samurai Goroh, as he has the potential for a more unique moveset (and he’s a samurai, which is freakin’ awesome). If Black Shadow had made it in, he would probably be a Ganondorf clone (lol). It really depended on whether Sakurai wanted a more complex character for SSE or just a pure evil mastermind. Either way, we deserved at least one more F-Zero rep (maybe two, if you account for SF’s four reps, but considering that would have been allowed due to Metroid’s lack of characters, that argument loses potency).
Earthbound/Mother is also incredibly disappointing. I don’t see how a series with only three games deserves two reps while Metroid and F-Zero only get one, but when Lucas was revealed I think we were willing to allow it as long as Ness wasn’t a clone of him (the cruel irony of it all: Ness…a clone). It would still have been hard getting over the fact that they look the same and Ness could easily have been a color change (more irony), but Claus was always out. Yes, he looked different from Lucas (unlike Ness, although he is supposedly Lucas’ brother), and he had potential for a unique moveset (unlike Ness), but if Mother/Earthbound only had two reps, they would only get a villain PC if there weren’t any deserving protagonists (like with Metroid). Ness is another deserving protagonist. But we are all angry because Sakurai gave Earthbound/Mother another rep and didn’t bother to make it unique. Just another half-@$$ed clone.
Fire Emblem got screwed over the most. It has a plethora of various characters from many different titles, so the choices were endless as to which main characters would make it in and how they would play. And look what we got: two blue-haired, sword-wielding sissies. Yes, they play differently, but they are hardly representative of Fire Emblem as a whole. Those of you who wanted Ike in, I hate you. Those of you who wanted Marth in after Ike was confirmed, I hate you more. You are about as original as Disney sequels. For those of you who wanted him in because he was “the first lord,” there were plenty of other lords that were DIFFERENT from Marth/Ike. For those of you who wanted him in because he kicked @$$, it would have made much more sense to have Lyn in with his moveset and stats. Ideally, Sakurai wouldn’t have been stupid and just had given Ike Marth’s moveset so this predicament wouldn’t exist about Fire Emblem only being represented by sword-fighters and instead have people like Sothe (new Wii game hype, just like Roy, only better cuz he has a dagger) and Micaiah (ZOMFG!!!! WHERE’S HER SWORD?!?! Oh…duh). Additionally, FE, given that it has a fair amount of games, could have used a third character, making the decisions to “cut” characters a little less grueling. And Marth’s a pansy.
The independent and retro series were generally fine (with one HUGE exception). Yoshi had no reason to not come back, and Wario had every reason to join (although I find his three costume changes excessive). Olimar was a shoe-in. He only has two games, but people love him and I love pikmin slaves. I don’t think Animal Crossing even deserved a stage, but if Tom Nook is as violent as I hear, I guess he wouldn’t have been too out of place in brawl. There was only one other series that I feel deserved a character—with one character on the presumed starting roster from a starting series and an AC secret rep looming in the shadows, only one more seemed reasonable. Isaac from Golden sun deserved to be in brawl because of his extreme popularity in Europe. I had never heard of him before, but if characters who are specifically popular to Japan (like Ness and Marth) can get in, then I figured this would be a smart political move for Sakurai—to prove that he listens to all of the fans, and not just the Japanese ones. ICs were on thin ice (lol, I made a funny) popularity-wise, but it was pretty certain that Sakurai wouldn’t throw away such a unique character(s). The same went for G&W; even though he sucks and I don’t think he is as integral to Nintendo’s history as people think he is. There was a huge toss-up between a crapload of one-time games. I think the most popular were Pit, Balloon Man, Sukapon, Takamaru, Ray 01, Lip, and Mach Rider. Realistically, only two or three would make it in max. This made sense as both Pit and ICs were revealed on the Dojo, and we figured that G&W wouldn’t be the only secret retro character, and if the game were as good as it is being hyped (along with the above projected reps), two more newcoming secret characters was realistic. Seeing as they all had nearly equal fanbases, no one really cared which—Sukapon would punch stuff, Takamaru could take Marth’s moveset so we wouldn’t have any more FE swordsmen/women, Ray could do cool robotic stuff, Lip could sit there and look cute. All had excellent potential. And we got R.O.B. I really hate R.O.B. He’s not even a character. He might have saved Nintendo the first time, but there are many other characters who have continued to save it multiple times. Nintendo wouldn’t continue to exist without such games as Zelda, Mario, and Pokemon; yet Sakurai would deny Mario and Zelda the right to a new character in exchange for R.O.B. Everyone would not have minded R.O.B. so much if it weren’t at the expense of so many REALLY GOOD AND POPULAR CHARACTERS, both retro and current.
The third party reps were a huge DUH!!! For everyone. Apparently it is really hard to get third party reps in an exclusively Nintendo franchise, as Sakurai literally revealed ALL OF THEM for hype before the game came out. Even though he implied that he would get maybe one or two more, it makes perfect sense now that he couldn’t afford to keep Sonic and Snake secret and would have revealed any others, no matter how awesome they were. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to get more and failed, but that’s his fault for saving it until the last minute (I mean, it was only a few months before brawl came out that he managed to get Sonic). It was also apparent that these were going to be the third party companies' icons, not just popular characters, so there was only going to be one “mascot” from each company—no Simon Belmont/Bomberman or Tails/Nights. For most, there were only three other companies that deserved reps: Capcom for it’s rivalry, Squeenix for its contributions to the NES and SNES, and Rare for its contributions to the SNES and N64 (under Nintendo). Without going into too much detail here, the obvious mascot for Capcom was Megaman, and Rare’s was Banjo-Kazooie. I really dislike Megaman and can’t see why people like him (he looks like a gay Samus), but he was the most likely given his popularity. Banjo-Kazooie deserved it simply because they were made for brawl. They were incredibly unlikely, however, as everyone knows about Microsoft’s possissiveness. Square Enix was an issue, because its rep would be from FF. Sorry Crono and KH guys, but this is “mascots” we’re talking about. I like Geno, but he was a main character in one game, and cannot be considered an “icon” to the Mario series nor a “mascot” of Square Enix. Get over it; he’s superfluous. Cloud, the most recognizable, was also the least deserving. All of the known characters from FF1-6 were only in one game (except Cid, whom all SE fans know doesn’t deserve it), and anything that was in more than one was as close as possible to a mascot, but hardly a “character”. Hence, chocobo, black mage, and mog just weren’t interesting enough to be made into characters, even if they were in a crappy Mario sports spin-off. Maybe chocobo, but that would be stretching for a movset. It would have been easy to just not choose, made even easier by the fact that SE would probably never release rights of FF characters to a fighting game with Dissidia in the making. Thus, with only one or two more third-parties, we were expecting Megaman (ugh) and hopefully but probably not Banjo-Kazooie. Sakurai should not have gotten our hopes up on that, even though it was only one character.
Again, we weren’t angry that we didn’t get the characters we wanted, we just didn’t get enough of the ones we wanted and got too many that we really didn’t want. It was inevitable that some popular characters wouldn’t make it in and one or two unpopular ones would—we just didn’t expect the roster to turn out this shiity based on the Dojo updates. But since I’ve bothered to type this much, let’s see about how big this hypothetical roster would have been that all realistic people were expecting.
6 Mario reps
5 Pokemon reps
5 Zelda reps
2/3 DK reps
3 Kirby reps
2 Metroid reps
3/4 Star Fox reps
1/2 F-Zero reps
1/2 Earthbound reps
3/4 Fire Emblem reps
4/5 Independent reps
4/5 retro reps
3/4 third-party reps
Total: 42-50 characters
Now those of you who are saying that only 50+ characters could have satisfied the “whiners” out there, try and use some of your fake logic to prove that 42 = 50. And even then, we were aware that some cuts might be made in some places (a Mario/Zelda character here, Lucario there, *cough* Ness *cough*), so we weren’t even expecting that many. Even 35 characters might have been acceptable, but the real issue here is that they are shiitty choices for characters and representation. And when you look at it, Sakurai was being a fascist pig when doing it. I would normally say nationalistic, but you can’t be nationalistic about a company. He catered to Nintendo’s wants by putting in R.O.B. He catered to his own wants by adding both D3 and MK. He catered to his/Japan’s wants by adding Lucas. He catered to Japan’s wants by adding Ike and keeping Marth, and not putting in Ridley. Then he went mad and screwed over Mario and Zelda. Overall, I think the roster is pathetic because Sakurai really didn’t listen to the global opinion on who should be in brawl—he just listened to Japan/Nintendo/himself. If you look at the three characters who didn’t make the cut in the game rip (other than Mewtwo, which was brutal) (assuming the rip is real, which it could be), it reveals that he still didn’t know wtf he was doing; how could he have thought that Dixie, Roy, and Toon Zelda/Shiek (probably Tetra w/ sheik moveset) would be acceptable replacements for K. Rool, Lynn, and Skull Kid? He really fuccked up the roster this time and after seeing SSE in play footage I’m really angry at him for creating it at all. The cutscenes are great, but everything in between is substandard sidescrolling with pretty but monotonous backgrounds. It’s very boring. And with all of the enemies that no one cares about, he could easily have eliminated them, added a few more classic enemies, and used the extra time to make some more PCs. I think everyone on this site should push for DC, because if Nintendo really listens to the fans like it says it does, we could potentially increase that roster to what it should have been. If it doesn’t, then we know why the roster sucks.
I don’t expect anyone to read all of this, even though it is mildly interesting. I would prefer it if those of you who do flame do so, however, because if there’s one thing I hate, it’s stubborn ignorance.
