Characters ARE Smash Brothers. If you take out the characters and replace them with generic polygons, I'd leave the franchise in an instant as I'm sure most people would. If you take out any of dedede, diddy, wario, meta knight, snake or sonic the game would be horrendously worse. Those six characters pretty much make the game, being the only REALLY good addittions. There aren't that many left for SSB4, but we at least need Ridley, K. Rool and Megaman, the only real options we have left for iconic characters like that. If those three don't get in, I'm going to be more excited about the changes to the past characters then the new characters.
The whole point of the give is fighting with your favorite characters. It very much so matters. Everything else is a side dish, besides the game's multiplayer value, which we've had ever since SSB64.
I'd rather have SSB64 with 60 characters then SSB4 with 50 characters.
If you took out Dedede, Diddy, Wario, Meta Knight, Snake or Sonic, the game would feel a bit more empty, but not worse. Now that we are so used to them being in the game, it would feel odd having them non-inclusive in the next title. Honestly, what's better or worse is merely opinionated. If you took out Mario, Link, Donkey Kong, Bowser, Falco, ROB, or Ganondorf, the game would be worse in my opinion. Yes, those are my preferred characters, but if they were removed, YOU would not think the game to be any worse.
But, what's truly
bad for the game? Is it the removal of the supposed 'uniquely-played characters', or the best known and beloved characters like Mario, Donkey Kong, and Link? Because truthfully, all of the characters are very genuine and play so very differently from one another (sans a few similar characters). Pichu, Dr. Mario, and Roy (and Young Link to some extent) were cut because they weren't genuine, so the series really didn't lose anything, especially with the addition of better and more unique characters in Brawl.
As for "there aren't that many [characters] left for SSB4." Sure there are. There are TONS of characters left for SSB4, Nintendo characters aside. At this point, if you added any more Nintendo characters (sans a few like the most commonly mentioned - K. Rool, Ridley, and the like) it would just feel overly-gimmicky. Who
really cares about Lip? She had what, one, maybe two games in Japan only? For the record, Brawl had no Japan-exclusive characters (except Marth to some degree, but his franchise is now well known in America) so why should we expect more in SSB4?
Here's the solution to adding more new and genuine characters to Smash Bros -
go for 2nd and 3rd party characters. Is it a bad idea? NO! Smash Bros has dropped its "Nintendo All-Star" concept at the doorstep with Brawl's induction into the series. Yeah, Sonic is close to Nintendo, but is Snake really
that close to Nintendo? Not really. And don't try and counter that with, "well he debuted on the NES and had a GCN appearance," because he's still pretty distant from Nintendo. So, who to choose for SSB4?
Well firstly, I believe that 2nd and 3rd party characters
exclusive or mostly exclusive to Nintendo consoles should be first priority, unless its classic heroes like
Bomberman and
Mega Man. What other iconic, timeless heroes could make appearances?
Earthworm Jim, Rayman, or even [and this is pushing it a bit]
Lara Croft. Those are just a few big names though. What about lesser-known characters like
Katia from
Lost Kingdoms (for the record, she was on Sakurai's poll for possible Brawl characters), or
Pax from the upcoming
Mushroom Men? Perhaps even
Blob of
De Blob could somehow sneak his way in. The point is, Brawl closed the door on
Nintendo All-Stars and opened it to
second and third party characters with the inclusion of Snake and Sonic. You cannot deny that, and it's pretty obvious that's the direction that Smash Bros is headed in.
Thank you for your time,
Spire
.......................
