LOL, of course Simon is real. Oh well; guess I'm gonna have to eat crow on this one. Good for Verge, I guess he was right on the money after all! At least Simon looks a lot more interesting than I thought he'd be, I'm sure he'll be fun to play and look forward to trying him out. Still not really my thing, though, so I'm gonna have to go with "I'm happy other people who wanted him are happy" approach.
This Richter guy actually looks cooler than Simon to me. If I play Simon, it'll probably be as Richter, lol.
Also, that reveal trailer was hilarious. Luigi in Dracula's Castle was gold, lol.
Chrom is...cool. I love Fire Emblem, don't get me wrong, and he's an Echo so it's not like he's taking time away from another character, but...I dunno, it just feels off to me. I guess I'm still trying to wrap my head around how much Smash pushes Fire Emblem now. I now it's big and all, but to push it more than games like Zelda or Kirby? Regardless, he's an Echo, and a character people really wanted, so it's all good.
Oh yeah there was also DARK SAMUS. DARK. FREAKIN'. SAMUS. Yeeeeeesssssss I wanted her so bad! MP2 is my all time favorite Metroid game, so to essentially get a character from it in Smash was one of the best possible outcomes for me. If it weren't for a certain crocodile I'll be talking about in a minute here, Dark Samus would've honestly been the highlight of the Direct for me.
Simon's stage and music look and sound dope. I'll probably play them pretty often.
Speaking of music, holy cow, there's a ton! As someone who adores amazing video game OSTs, this is a dream come true to me. The fact that songs aren't separated by stages anymore and run off of this new "by series" format is amazing to me; it's a feature I never knew I wanted!
Also, Calamari Inkantation on Morray Towers. My life is complete.
All of the new modes and stages look amazing. Fountain of Dreams and Brinstar Depths are back, and they look stunning! I'm kind of forgetting some of the specifics of the new modes right now though, so I'll have to write up my thoughts on those later when I can re-watch that part of the Direct. The mode where you swap out to different characters is really interesting though, and Final Smashes being a meter is an interesting shake up (still probably gonna be banned in competitive though).
Also hey, Classic Mode is fun again! Huzzah!
Okay...before I get to the best part of the Direct, I gotta take a moment to acknowledge a certain Wario Ware girl. I mean, I knew it was coming, but gosh darn it, I wanted so bad to be wrong, lol.
*Sigh*...
Hello darkness, my old friend...
Also, I think this Direct pretty much killed Octolings, which is fine. I kinda had a feeling they were too new anyway, and there's alway the inevitable DLC, so I'll retire my support for them until then.
I also kinda think Bandana Dee is a longshot now. Just as I expected, all the Kirby stuff is...still only from stuff Sakurai was involved in. I mean, I'm not surprised, but I am pretty darn disappointed. I've kinda given up on anything Kirby that isn't Super Star or Air Ride at this point. :/
So, to sum it up with a picture, my thoughts on the Direct up to this point are pretty much this:
Pretty good, 6/10 stuff. Nothing mindblowing, but still exciting all the way around-
K. ROOL.
Dang. DANG. K. Rool was one of those characters like Ridley where I never put him on any wishlists because I thought he was simply impossible. That it would never happen. Needless to say, I' on cloud 9 right now, lol. This honestly has made me change my mind about the ballot. I think Sakurai really did take it's results to heart as every single character inclusion in this game so far have been characters that were begged for back in Wii U and 3DS. Also, that fake out with Dedede made K. Rool's reveal the best reveal in Smash history. Truly a legend.