Arle Nadja
"Hang on, who?"
Hold those abstain votes, user, and let me tell you about Arle's shot at all this.
Arle Nadja is the main character of an old franchise called Madou Monogatari, way back in 1989. It was kinda-typical dungeon crawler of its time that nevertheless had some decent quirks of its own, and did relatively well. Then its creators, Compile, had the idea using the game's setting and characters for their newest game, a take on a competitive kind of falling-blocks game. This would become Arle's new home: Puyo Puyo, which released in 1991 in arcades and on most consoles.
Puyo Puyo would turn out to be a relatively big deal in an age when falling-block puzzles had thought that endless modes would be their only ceiling. Puzzle games didn't have inclinations towards any sort of competitive multiplayer modes until Puyo Puyo showed that clearing blocks was a lot more fun when you were trying to mess up someone else with the same goals as you. This inspired a glut of copycats (and that's as much as any franchise can claim when it wants to claim "impact"), including NIntendo's own Panel de Pon.
So Arle's pretty old, compared to most candidates, and she's made her mark on the industry too. But here's something most historical franchises don't have: she's still well alive to this day! Although Puyo Puyo's since transferred from its bankrupted owner to its technical collaborator Sega, it makes enough bank to be their most profitable non-Sonic franchise! It's got its own popular mobile game, constant entries every five-year anniversary, and even a crossover with Tetris that you might've seen on the Switch store, or on Steam.
If ownership wasn't an object, Arle would be one of the best, if not the best, character you could pick for a puzzle game representative. And that's not just because of history, and not just because Arle did some work as an RPG character before - it's because Puyo Puyo is both a pioneer and example of competitive depth in a video game, the very depth that keeps it alive to this day. (What? You thought it was just because of the anime girls?) Being good at Puyo Puyo requires strategy, reaction, foresight, taking advantage of opportunity, and plenty of on-hands learning - things that translate really well into a fighting game! Arle isn't just a fighter for her own sake, but a conduit of her game's playstyle itself.
So why now? Because Smash 4 has since shown us that it's more than fine for a company to have more than one third-party representative, and then it showed us that it doesn't have to be that company's most iconic property to get in. Not to mention, Western recognition of Puyo Puyo is finally on the upswing, meaning that we finally have discussions like these. And even if she doesn't get it now, her consistent presence in her home country means that Puyo Puyo is likely going to stick around on the discussion table for as long as Smash says it's possible.
"Okay, well, if this 'Arle' is so great, how come this is the first time I've ever heard of her being on the discussion table?"
(It's true. I've looked at past RTC threads, and not one of them gave a day to Arle Nadja.)
For starters, there's the whole third-party thing. Arle's had all these pluses since before the first Smash game, but any timeline where she got in before Sonic did was inconceivable. And even after Brawl, she wasn't going to be a candidate until we knew more about the laxness of the possible third-party candidacies.
The biggest gate, though, is that while plenty of Japanese franchises have made the osmosis into Western perception over the past two decades, Puyo Puyo has managed to not be one of them. In the period of time that its original games could have been ported over into the West, Sega and Nintendo decided to instead dress up the ports with their own franchises, leaving the West none the wiser. Sega tried another localization during the GBA era, which had about as much impact as any other GBA game not from an established franchise, and then promptly gave up until the Switch era. Puyo Puyo never actually entered the West as itself before Sega came and restyled it, leaving Arle Nadja in the same boat as pre-Melee Marth for the longest time.
There's also the fact that Sega is unlikely to push this character themselves. They'll make some crossovers between it and its own franchises, or with a similar puzzle giant, but...well, you know Sonic's racing crossover games? They've got almost everyone from every one of Sega's weird, iconic, and obscure franchises - and Puyo's not one of them. Bank or no bank, Puyo Puyo is ultimately an adopted franchise, one that made its own historicity without Sega's input on the matter. The artstyle may be Sega's, but the gameplay itself still revolves around Compile's original work, as does Arle. They've tried to push her out of the limelight twice, only to bring her back anyway because people in Japan simply remembered her too well.
But even with her enduring popularity, Arle is simply not in the big leagues of icons - or else you probably wouldn't be reading this for info. She's not what Ryu is to fighting games, or what Cloud is to RPGs - that'd go to Tetris. And maybe that's because of her lack of Western recognition or presence, or because she started out as an RPG character only to be imported to a puzzle game later. But despite her franchise's present-day success, she's still asking upwards to Nintendo and Sakurai to consider her as a character, similar to many others below her.
"So, why are you supporting her?"
If you ask me...Puyo Puyo is a rare example of a game enduring thanks to its gameplay, like Tetris before it. The game's gone through ownership change, artsyle change, and all manner of additions that would've killed other games for being too off-beat. But Puyo Puyo is still alive after almost three decades, and it's still kicking in Japan, and that might be the fascinating thing about it from an observer's perspective. How many games can say that their original core gameplay is what keeps them around?
It's no secret that if Arle actually got into Smash, it'd be a clear shot to mimic what happened to Fire Emblem - suddenly, everyone would know your name, and might want to know what kind of game you come from. I'd be interested if that got to happen to a character who's been unfairly region-locked for most of her life, and what that might do to Puyo Puyo as well.
And it isn't as if Arle's just a wave-riding freeloader. She may be a magical girl, but she's got both the guts and firepower to maker her a lot better than others of her character - no stranger to fighting truly horrible things, but still a fountain of retorts in a world that takes itself too seriously. She backhands Satan on a regular basis, how's that not a plus?
And strictly speaking, 34% is still an unlikely shot.
Chance: 34%
Want: 82%
Prediction:
Lucas: 90%
Nominations:
Papyrus x5
Quetzal77
gets the noms for today.
- 65.34%
