So, please cut the Ridley support. He's an awesome character, don't get me wrong, but dumbing him down just for the sake of being a smasher? I'd rather not drain him of his epicness. It's bad enough to see him able to be taken down in SSE by the likes of Jigglypuff...
Sorry, but can can't let you do that Spire./Wolf
Ridley can definitely be in Smash Bros.
Here is my argument as to why he deserves a spot in Smash Bros. 4:
Ridley:
Ridley was perhaps the most wanted character among Western Smash Bros. fans, only second to Sonic himself. Ridley is a re-occurring boss in the Metroid series, and is Samus’s arch-nemesis as well as the leader of the Space Pirates, whom are the main antagonists of the Metroid series. Ridley is extremely popular and is probably the most popular and well-known Metroid character outside of Samus herself.
Ridley was popularly requested for Melee, however, since the Metroid series was still dead during Melee’s development, he never really stood much of a chance of getting in (although his appearance in the Melee intro made many people believe that he would be playable, myself included). After Melee’s release, the Metroid series would see a massive resurrection. Seven Metroid games were released since Melee’s release to Brawl’s release. In contrast, only three games of the Metroid series had been released prior to Melee.
With a massive revival in the amount of Metroid games, a massive influx of fans to the series also occurred. Many of these new fans loved Ridley just as much as the old fans did, and thus Ridley’s fanbase quintupled. Many people felt confident that Ridley would be a shoe-in for Smash Bros. 3. There was no other Metroid character remotely even in the same league as Ridley in terms of popularity or importance, with the only one even being worthwhile being Dark Samus.
However, it turned out that Sakurai had other plans for everyone’s favorite space dragon and Metroid representation as a whole. Sakurai did what he does best and picks a character noone saw coming. Sakurai decided for Metroid’s second representative to be another Samus, a sexified Samus, Zero Suit Samus. Many Metroid fans such as myself were outraged that Samus had been turned into such a sex object, and even more so that he chose her over someone much more worthy such as Ridley or even Dark Samus.
However, there were some encouraging words on Sakurai’s explanation as to why he chose Zero Suit Samus. One was the infamous “I felt there were not enough female characters in Smash” (in which everyone misinterpreted as him going to put a ton of female newcomers in the game), and that Metroid had become one of Nintendo’s biggest series and he felt adding more characters for it would be the only way to do it justice (again, everyone mistinterpreted this as him saying he wanted to put in more Metroid characters after ZSS). Many people were convinced now that Ridley was a shoe-in for a playable spot.
However, Sakurai had different plans apparently. When the Ridley music update on the Dojo came up, the words “Boss Fight” were also associated with it. This made many people believe that Ridley would become a boss, and the movement that said “Ridley iz 2 big” grew massively. However, many people, including myself still retained hope that Sakurai had enough sense to resize Ridley like he did with many other characters in the Smash series, and make Ridley a playable character and thus give the Metroid series proper representation.
However, with the announcement that there would be boss fights for the game’s Adventure Mode, more people started to believe Ridley was a boss. The fight to change minds became drastic, and many Ridley fans became desperate (may I remind you what happened to R.I.D.L.E.Y. on SmashBoards). I myself wrote up a massive analysis for my ULTIMATE Analysis topic on why a playable Ridley could work and why he deserved a spot on the roster. However, it seemed as though Sakurai put his Adventure Mode ahead of playable characters. Ridley was a boss fight, and people would later fight him again as Meta Ridley. Many of the nay-sayers, rubbed this in, and us Ridley fans just had to suck it in and sighed that we now had to wait another half-decade for possibly the next Smash game in order to possibly play as Ridley.
Ridley's exclusion was one of the biggest mistakes regarding the roster, and hopefully he will be one of debut newcomers for whenever Smash 4 is announced. Ridley has a lot of moveset potential from his wicked tail, to his flaming breath, to his savage dragony fury. Ridley has many attacks from the seven Metroid games he has been in, leaving much to draw from in a moveset.
Also, let me get out why Ridley got in over Dark Samus in my roster. Ridley is the most important character in the Metroid series next to Samus. It was Ridley’’s attack that orphaned Samus, it was Ridley’’s command that the Space Pirates landed on Zebes, it was the discovery of Ridley’’s still being alive that made Samus land on Tallon IV, and it was Ridley that started the events in Super Metroid. Ridley and Samus have a long, bitter history, much like Mario and Bowser or Link and Ganondorf. Ridley is very popular and will likely show up in future Metroid games. Dark Samus is done. She likely won’t be appearing in any more Metroid games, and does not have anywhere near the amount of popularity as Ridley.
Many characters throughout the history of Smash have been resized. Bowser, Ganondorf, Pikachu, Kirby, Meta Knight, King Dedede, all had their sizes adjusted to fit in with the other Smash fighters. Heck, take Olimar for example, he is only the size of a quarter, yet he was resized so that he was not a tiny being, despite one of the main tenets to the Pikmin series is being a tiny being in our “normal” sized world. However, no one has said that Olimar was ruined due to being resized. Ridley himself also barely needs to be resized if we are going by his Super Metroid incarnation. In Super Metroid, Ridley is only 1.5 times the size of Samus. Ridley can easily be resized to be the size of Ganondorf (who is the tallest character in the game), while in his Super Metroid positon (where he is hunched over).
The main tenet to Ridley's ferocity and the aura behind him is that Ridley’s tendency to show up when one has forgotten about him and the cruel nature of his attacks, not his size (if there is one Metroid boss that is famous for his size, it would be Kraid). Ridley is iconic for being a boss that shows up when one least expects him and for being an awesome boss fight in most of games he has been in. Really, I don’t think resizing Ridley would had any bearing on his ferocity. Look at Ganondorf and Mewtwo, they are both god-like beings in their respective series, yet they were placed into Smash as playable characters and few people complained about them being playable limited the sense of respect people had for them (however, there are/were people who complained about how terrible Mewtwo was in Melee, and how bad Ganondorf is in Brawl).
Ridley can retain much of his brutality through the right type of moveset. Ridley is a dragon with sharp claws, a pointed tail, and a mouth full of knife-like teeth. Obviously, there is a lot that can be derived from for a possible moveset for Ridley. Ridley also has the ability shoot fireballs out of his mouth, as well as create gusts by flapping his wings (or at least that was a new ability given to him in Brawl). Ridley’s anatomy and brutality has a lot of potential to bring a very unique moveset to the Smash Bros. roster.
Overall, I see no reason why not to add Ridley to Smash 4 other than the obligatory “LOL heez 2 bigg!!!!11". Ridley is all the Metroid series needs to adequately represent it in the series of Smash, and it was a big mistake to leave a character as important as Ridley was in such an important series out of the playable character roster. I think Sakurai or whoever directs Smash 4 should draw from some other bosses in the Metroid series for the boss fights for the Smash 4 Adventure Mode, and make Ridley playable. Ridley is looking to be the most requested character for Smash 4so to leave Ridley out of my roster, would be overly foolish and just plain dumb.
There are more pro-Ridley arguments I know of...
Anyway with that, I make my dramatic debut in this thread.
