I think I've finalized my roster. I'd like some feedback. Next to each newcomer, marked with 2 dashes, is my reasons for choosing that character over others. I've got an even 50 characters, and the unlockables are split evenly; that is, there's 25 starting characters, and the 25 unlockables are marked with a star. And yes, I edited most of this into my last post, but it's a new page, and I don't think anybody saw it, so here we go.
Mario row:
Mario
*Luigi
Peach
Bowser
*Bowser Jr.--Bowser Jr. has been a very major character as of late, appearing in ever major Mario game since his conception. To review, that's Mario Sunshine, NSMB, Galaxy, NSMBWii and Galaxy 2. He's also made major appearances in spinoff games. This, coupled with his villainy(We really need more villains and females, and this roster reflects that), is more than enough to secure him a spot. Also, no, he would not transform into Shadow Mario. That was only one game, and it was last gen. Since then he has had 4 major appearances to draw moves from. And it'd be stealing Zelda's gimmick.
Mario Spinoff row:
Donkey Kong
*Diddy Kong
Yoshi
*Kamek--Kamek is practically THE villain of the Yoshi series, the only other notable foe being another 'the same character but a little younger' type character(See Young Link and Pichu). As stated, we do need villains, and with the huge amount of Kongs and Kremlings in DKCR, I somehow doubt K. Rool or Dixie is going to get in. In addition, unless we get another Wario Land game, the only really probable Wario character, Captain Syrup, will not have had a game in a while. In addition, Yoshi is the most overlooked of the 3 series from SSB64 that only ever got one character, and because the sheer amount of Yoshi games almost triples that of Mother, I'd say Yoshi, like Metroid and F-Zero, is damn well deserving of another character.
Wario
Legend of Zelda row:
Link
Zelda/Sheik
Ganondorf
*Toon Link
*Toon Zelda/Tetra--I chose Tetra/Toon Zelda because we need more females, and the only other viable character for the Zelda franchise, Tingle, has his own series of 4 games so far, and deserves to represent his own Sub-series(Which he does, on this roster). Toon Zelda had a major role in Spirit Tracks, the most recent Zelda title, and until Skyward Sword is released, or at least until more is known about that Blue Girl, I'd say this is the most likely choice.
Metroid, Various row:
Samus/ZSS
*Ridley--This should be pretty self-explanatory to most. Ridley is the main villainous character of the Metroid franchise, and his normal size, in both the Melee intro and in Metroid, is about the size of Bowser. The only size issue is his wingspan, but that's honestly not too big of a problem(C wut I did thar). Like I mentioned, Every franchise from the original SSB deserves at least 2 characters. Since Other M came out recently, I'm sure that Metroid will get another character, and considering Metroid as a whole, I'm sure it will be Ridley.
Villager--Despite what anyone says, Animal Crossing, even with an item, assist trophy and stage, deserves a playable character. I mean, it's obvious Sakurai's a fan. I mean, a series with no playable characters got a stage, Item AND Assist Trophy? Not to mention the billions of Animal Crossing trophies; I mean, seriously, not only does he have a Tom Nook trophy, but also Tommy and Timmy Nook? And Perry, and Phyllis, and Wendell, and the Able Sisters? And how many Smash Bros fans know who Katrina is, eh? It's obvious Sakurai favors the series, and it seems like the only reason there isn't a character is due to his lack of imagination for a moveset. Well, the Villager, that's your character, uses a wide variety of tools and items in the games. Slingshots, Axes, Fishing Rods, Butterfly Nets, Balloons, Watering Cans, Shovels, Pitfalls, Furniture and Bags of Bells can easily be implemented into a moveset. And even better, if you have Animal Crossing Save Data, maybe you can play as your personal character, whereas if you don't, you get a selection, mostly of appearances on boxarts, such as flattened hair and a Red #1 shirt based on the City Folk Box art as his Red costume, or a Hat and a Clover shirt for his Green costume? Maybe have a costume in Tom Nook's worker clothers or something, I don't know! And like Wario, you could choose to be female, or male.
*Tingle--Tingle is arguably the only really 'important' Zelda character that isn't another variation on Link, Zelda and Ganondorf. And really, there's only so far you can go before you've moved past Link, Toon Link, Young Link, Dark Link and Four Swords Link and are now seriously considering Link to the Past Link, or Link's Awakening Link. Tingle has, if you're considering a timeline, more appearances than any particular Zelda character besides Ganondorf. The most any one Link has ever appeared in 4 times, and that's OoT Link, the one that appeared in OoT, MM, SSB and SSBM. Some claim that this Link also appeared in LA, but that's debatable. And even if you're not counting SSB, than the most any one link has appeared is twice, being the same one, although tied with Toon Link(WW, Spirit Tracks is a new Link and zelda), TP Link, Classic Link and C-Di Link. Besides that, Tingle is hugely popular in Japan, and in case you forgot, this game is Japanese.
Isaac--Yes yes, I'm well aware that the Japanese aren't big fans of Golden Sun. But Golden Sun is quite popular in America, and considering its 3 games, it should get equal time with Mother. The only reason I don't have 2 GS characters is because there's other, more deserving series that need reps(See: Tingle, Animal Crossing, Starfy). Not to mention that no other character on the roster has earth-based abilities; we've got Aura powers, Darkness powers, Fie, Ice, Electric, Generic Magic, Water, Plant, and Wind-based elements on the roster in Brawl(See: Lucario, Ganondorf, Bowser, Lucas, Pikachu, Zelda, Squirtle, Ivysaur, Link's Boomerang), but nobody uses Earth. Also, nobody is a dual Warrior/Caster type(Although hen Ganondorf is decloned, he'd better be that too) yet.
Kirby, Various 2 row:
Kirby
*Metaknight
Dedede
Olimar
*Starfy--Starfy, despite being slow to get out of Japan, made it as far as to got an AT appearance. The games are pretty much iconic of the GBA, and also already have 2 games out for DS. I'd say this is probably not the best character choice, but there's really nothing else. Kirby isn't worth of another character, and there hasn't been any sign of a new Custom Robo or Chibi-Robo game. I've added 4 Contemporary-type series to this game, in contrast to Melee's 1(Fire Emblem) and Brawl's 2(WarioWare and Pikmin), mainly so as not to overrepresent existing series. For example, it's not fair to give Kirby or Starfox 4 characters, when that's only one away from something like Mario or Pokemon. So, I went with a more contemporary feel to this game. If it doesn't float your boat, that's fine, but keeping it at aat 50 characters really forces me to choose between things like Starfy and Ray, things like Toad and Bowser Jr., things like Blaziken or Pichu(Hint; neither). I decided Starfy is more relevant, and combined with his moveset potential, I think we could have a good choice on our hands here.
Starfox & F-Zero row:
Fox
*Wolf
*Krystal--I originally had both Falco and Krystal, but I decided that the unique, female, main love interest character has a bit more relevance that the same-y, sausagefest, secondary sidekick character(One of a few sidekicks, others being Peppy, Slippy, and Krystal herself). And I didn't want a moderately sized franchise have almost as many characters as Nintendo's 3 biggest franchises ever, Mario, Zelda and Pokemon. So, due to fanbase and the reasons mentioned above, I chose Krystal.
Captain Falcon
*Samurai Goroh--Well, pretty much everyone here agrees that F-Zero needs another character, for the same reasons as Metroid and Yoshi, right? So why Goroh? Well, it's obvious Nintendo likes him more than Black Shadow; he's portrayed as cooler, better, and stronger than Black Shadow, he was in Melee's intro, and was in Brawl as an AT. Not to mention that being a heavyset Samurai, he's basically got a moveset right there, whereas Shadow would probably end up adopting Ganondork's old moveset(Misspelling intentional), and nobody wants more clones, right?
Pokémon row:
Pikachu
*Jigglypuff
Pokemon Trainer(Squirtle/Ivysaur/Charizard)
*Zoroark--Do I even need to explain this? It would only wast my time and effort. If you really need an explanation for him, go ahead and ask.
*Plusle and Minun--Now, I debated over this. I personally prefer Blaziken, but unless May somehow gets prominently featured in the anime again, that's rather unlikely. I also really wanted a 3rd Gen rep, as 1st, 2nd and 4th have all gotten characters, but 3rd Gen was skipped over. Until recently, I was against Plusle and Minun, especially when people's reasoning was them being found in the Brawl data(Lolno, that was Every Player, aka Random). But I recently saw a roster with a nice reason for having them, that being to represent double battles; after all, Mewtwo represented Legendaries, Pichu represented babies, and PT represents your player character, so why not have another Pokemon character representative of some aspect of the games? And I'm not thinking that there's a character trio for Triple Battles, and even so, it'd have to be another 5th gen.
Fire Emblem, Mother row:
*Marth
*Ike
Sigurd--Sigurd is the main character of the most popular Fire Emblem Game, not to mention, it is very possible that his game will get remade, much like Marth's games.
Ness
*Lucas
Retro row:
Ice Climbers
Pit
Little Mac--Little Mac is a popular retro character, at least here. He's even got a recent game, though I still consider him retro. And he's got plenty of moveset possibilities, he's from a fighting game after all.
*ROB
*Sukapon--He's the grandfather of Smash, and acts as my 'WTF' character, a la ROB and Mr. Game & Watch. He's the main character from Nintendo's first fighting game, and also represents Nintendo's Games not to make it out of Japan.
Third Party, Various 3 row:
*Mr. Game & Watch
*Sonic
*Snake
*Megaman--Mega Man has quite a history with Nintendo, and Capcom is one of Nintendo's biggest 3rd party supporters right now. If any new 3rd party characters get in, it's him. And this is Classic, not X, or Volnutt, or .exe, or even StarForce. Classic just has more history with Nintendo, really.
Mii--C'mon, this is a no-brainer. Beat up Mario...as YOURSELF? Dream come true right here. I promise you, if Miis are on the next console Smash is on, and since they're already set to be on the 3DS, the first next-gen machine, I wouldn't say they're going anywhere.
So, give your opinions, and Ciao!
EDIT:
I am all in favor of the Glove as an item. Also, what if it were used for something other than boxing? Then it might be...*Puts on Sunglesses*Grope on a Rope.
YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!
