Pacack
Super Pac-Fan
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2013
- Messages
- 8,066
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- US (Mountain Time, -7 Hours)
- NNID
- Pacack
- 3DS FC
- 0688-5284-6845
Welcome to the Support Thread for Nintendo's Coaster Rabbit!
FAQ
Who?
Coaster Rabbit is the rabbit character featured on a version of Nintendo's Rabbit Coaster Game, a toy released in (approximately) 1964 which was their first known venture into the toy market. Up until the mid 1960s, Nintendo had existed purely as a card company. However, Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi visited the United States Playing Card Company in 1956, and was shocked to find that even the biggest playing card company in the world worked in a small office.
He decided at that point to pursue other ventures, among them a taxi company, a "love hotel" chain, and a food company. All of these ventures failed except for toymaking, which had found moderate success with their "coaster" games. They produced several varieties of Rabbit Coaster along with Drive Game, My Car Race, Nintendo Punch Race, Nintendo Ultra Coaster, Nintendo N&B Block Coaster, and Nintendo Mini Rabbit Coaster. Together, these games make up a significant portion of Nintendo's early toys.
However, it wasn't for another few years that Nintendo really found its footing in the Japanese toy market. Competitors like Bandai and Tomy were already well-established, and it took some more innovation to get Nintendo's name out. Then, in 1966, Yamauchi was inspecting one of his company's hanafuda factories and found a maintenance engineer amusing himself with an extendable arm he made himself. This was none other than Gunpei Yokoi, who would go on to design the Game and Watch, the D-Pad, the Game Boy, and produce Metroid and Kid Icarus. Yokoi's invention, the Ultra Hand, sold a record-breaking 1.2 million units at about 800 yen each, a resounding success for Nintendo.
That's cool and all, but why should this character get into Smash Bros.?
The previous three (four counting SSB3DS as a separate title) Super Smash Bros. games have included characters that personify a part of Nintendo's long-running history.
Mr. Game & Watch was inspired by the characters found in Nintendo's Game & Watch games, which became Nintendo's first major financial success (selling 43.4 million units) and first handheld, cementing their place in the video game industry.
R.O.B. was an accessory for the NES which was used to market the console as a novel toy to retailers and consumers in a market which had reservations about home video game consoles following the North American Video Game Crash of 1983. The inclusion of R.O.B. with the system convinced major retailers to sell the console, ultimately leading to the success of the NES and the revival of the entire Western video game industry. (Source)
Duck Hunt is a character which is a little less obvious about its historical ties. However, I would argue that the character represents not only the extremely well-selling Duck Hunt video game, but also the light gun as a whole. This included much earlier points in Nintendo's history, including the Beam Gun, Laser Clay Shooting System, Wild Gunman, and Duck Hunt products released in the 1970s. These products, while technically not "video games" are an early example of electro-mechanical games, which greatly contributed to the rise of the early arcade industry.
Nintendo was the predominant producer of light guns for the home in Japan at this time, and they had obtained a contract with Magnavox to produce the light gun peripheral for the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. Nintendo's involvement in the project gave them direct insight into the soon-to-be burgeoning home console market and to the North American video game market in particular, which likely influenced them to bundle a Light Gun (alongside R.O.B.) with the NES in North America. In fact, if it weren't for the Light Gun connecting them to Magnavox, Nintendo may have not decided to enter the home video game market at all.
If this trend continues, then it makes a lot of sense to go back to Nintendo's first successful venture following their card-making, as that directly led to Nintendo's experimentation with electronic toys (and later video games). Nintendo's first toy character is a real contender for the historical character if one happens.
How would it fight?
Well, thankfully, Nintendo has plenty of history to pull from when it comes to toys. Just going off of toys that Nintendo has referenced in their games, we can pull from the Ultra Hand, the Ultra Machine, the Love Tester, the Ultra Scope, the Ten Billion Barrel, and the Chiritori. If you want to look into more niche references, then I'd recommend you look here.
It would be easy to make a moveset with an Ultra Hand grab, an Ultra Machine down-b, and Ultra Scope Up Smash. I'll probably be making a full moveset in the near future, so keep up with this thread if you're interested in seeing that.
Supporters
Pacack
(Thread Owner)
ZagarTulip
AwesomeAussie27
TheBeastHimself
Pacack
(Thread Owner)
ZagarTulip
AwesomeAussie27
TheBeastHimself
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