Alright, time to start picking apart
Wizzerd's roster. Rather than do the whole thing at once and fill the thread with giant quote towers I'll just stick to one character at a time. First up is Paper Mario.
I don't think he'll get in.
He doesn't look happy about that.
Anyway, the very first thing I want to establish is that
Paper Mario is Mario. No one in the Paper Mario games says "Hey, Paper Mario! Paper Bowser kidnapped Paper Princess Peach!" They're the same people in a different art style. Yes, there are some differences in moves based on the general RPG aspects of the games and a few new ones based on the 2D-ness, but overall it's the same. I know a few of you might try to debate this point but you're arguing semantics that most people (including Sakurai) don't care about or notice.
It seems the majority of his support comes in the arguements of "he'd have a unique moveset" or "he'd be unique by being 2D" or "we got two Links and we've had two Marios before, why not this one?"
Moveset: Chances are much more likely for him to end up with a clone moveset than an original creation. You all know Sakurai's track record here. He doesn't care about making sure every possible aspect of a character is properly represented, only the core elements. Mario's moves have been well defined, even if that means we don't see what he's fully capable of.
Unique appearance: I actually haven't heard this one too often but obviously it's kinda crappy when he's just regular Mario + Mr. Game & Watch. Similarly, I've heard people suggest he should pull out a Hammer as a Side B or fold into an airplane from his Up B so he could slow his descent. Looking kinda familiar.
Twosies: First off, I know most of you know the Melee story with the clones, but
here's the link to the big post Sir Ilpalazzo made that explains some of it (scroll down a little to see it). I'll just mention these two parts:
-Dr. Mario (part of the reason he was chosen was because someone wanted to put his music in the game)
-Young Link (although he was just an “afterthought” character, Sakurai seems to consider the idea of having both an older and younger Link important)
Now, I don't know if he's saying Sakurai himself mentioned the "two Links are important" bit or if he's just thinking that since Toon Link made it into Brawl. Either way we have two Links and I don't think that's going to change any more than I expect Wario to lose his overalls permanently. Two major sides of the Zelda series, two Links. The Dr. Mario reasoning is pretty flimsy but he wasn't in Brawl so whatever, spur of moment thing I guess.
Paper Mario has three games to his name in a series with well over a hundred games. A hundred games! And most of them are on the best-selling video games of all time list. To stand out in this series, you have to make an absolutely huge mark. Does Paper Mario do that? No, not really. I mean, the games are great, but there's only three of them (or seven if you group it as "Mario RPGs"), and they haven't sold nearly as well as any of the platformers (then again, most other series' games don't). The bar is way too high here.
I would say there is some hope for Paper Mario as either a last second clone like Doc or as an alternate outfit like Wario's overalls, but there's no reason to. If Sakurai had to have either, I guarantee he'd just use Doc. Easier to reskin/touch-up the model and it doubles as a callback to Melee. Plus I found this awesome picture:
Sweet.
Wizzerd if you respond to this, don't break it up into five million little sentence quotes. Those suck to read. Keep it in paragraphs like Pieman does so I don't go crazy trying to remember the context.
