Jesus, I sleep for a whole day, catch up on 4 pages worth of discussion and some **** goes down.
Anyways, I agree on Ganondorf being added into Melee being a bad idea. I love the character but I'd rather he be a magic throwing, sword wielding powerhouse rather than...a powerhouse with purple effects on his moves.
I also saw a post that mentioned this a bit but...if anyone recalls before, I made a post saying I preferred Brawl's cast over Sm4sh's. Part of that is because Brawl still had a large focus on adding characters that weren't super brand new: Meta Knight, Snake, Dedede, Wolf, Sonic, Wario, Diddy Kong, Olimar, R.O.B., Toon Link, all of the Pokemon Trainer's Pokemon, Zero Suit Samus, Pit and then the far more recent newcomers were Ike, Lucario and Lucas. Then you get to Sm4sh and you have Corrin, Dark Pit, Greninja, Lucina, sorta Palutena (she's been around since the NES Kid Icarus but hardly anyone would've wanted her till KI:U), Robin, Shulk. It's not all bad, we also got Bayonetta, Bowser Jr., Duck Hunt, Little Mac, Mega Man, Miis, PAC-MAN, Rosalina, Ryu, Villager and Wii Fit Trainer as characters who weren't super new. But we got enough that the floodgates have opened where so many people are like "Omg, a new game came out, maybe now this character can get into Smash" and "Nah, that character can't get into Smash, they haven't been in a game of their own in ages". I find it unfortunate since I look at Smash as more of a collection of Nintendo All Stars than as a 'what's the most recent character we can desperately want in here?'. It's been going on since Melee with Roy but it only got really bad with Sm4sh. I know it's all speculation in the end and you can want whoever you want into Smash but I'm not personally a fan of the 'must add the newest thing' mentality.
As for the costume discussion, really just more like what Alph was. A whole separate character but with the same moveset. Dry Bowser was brought up, I'd accept Chrom as an Ike alt if he isn't part of a Final Smash again, Galacta Knight even though that's a bit of a stretch since he lacks a cape and has a shield, other Pikmin captains like Louie, Brittany and Charlie, Daisy for Peach, Eliwood for Roy, perhaps Knuckles or Shadow for Sonic, Isabelle for Villager. Of course, many of these would be better off as actual characters but in the event that they don't have enough time. And for anyone who wants to bring up how Daisy can't float like Peach can and mention how Dark Pit got to be his own character due to the Three Sacred Treaures, every Koopaling turns into Shadow Mario and uses the EGadd paint brush as their final smash despite that being Jr's thing.
I'm also still surprised that so many people dislike Sm4sh's Classic mode. 64 and Brawls' were incredibly repetitive. If I recall correctly, Melee's was okay. Just add the minigames and don't force 8 player Smash on the player and I'd say Sm4sh's Classic is perfect. You get to pick your own way to progress with how many opponents you want to fight and what stage you want. I'd also take out the random giant and metal opponents and just make a phase where you have to fight someone as metal or giant, just like what they do for customs.
Not really ever gonna see me jump in on newcomer discussion since pretty much every character I 'want' isn't so much a want and just a 'that character'd be cool to add but whatever if they don't'. Most I want is Black Shadow and that's just to give Ganondorf a proper Luigifying or Ganon, Toon Zelda, Tetra or Toon Ganondorf.