Kinda off topic and might seem random (i’ve been lurking but that’s because I didn’t have a very good weekend), but through my time in Smash Bros talk, i’ve seen some ideas that kinda go completely against what’s Smash Bros is supposed to be.
Now what it’s supposed to be is subjective I guess. But what I mean by that in this context is that characters are, “as close to source material as possible “. That’s one thing I think is incredibly important anyway.
For example, and not to trigger people, Ridley. In any given Metroid game where possible, Ridley is typically at least twice Samus’s size. That’s his size. He doesn’t have the ability to change size like Bowser...he’s consistently massive compared to the main character of the series he comes from.
Now this isn’t to say it can’t or shouldn’t happen. I think Ridley could be fun. But if you shrink Ridley down to a particular size to where he’s not THAT much bigger than Samus, is he really a “natural fit” to the game?
Olimar, on the other hand, has an advantage in this case because he doesn’t have another Pikmin monster to compare to in Smash. With Smash, a rather short Olimar can get away with fighting a taller Mario (despite the fact that we have the one manual that compares him to a Nickle). It sounds hypocritical, and there may be something hypocritical to it, but that is a presentable difference there.
I do believe size matters to an extent, especially if a series has a certain size character in it anyway. For example, if Mewtwo is roughly Samus’ height, we wouldn’t expect say, Dialga or another legendary to be downsized as playable because then it wouldn’t be the same thing. That, in itself, would appear to kinda go against the grain of the image of the game.
There are other examples, like giving particular features to a character that they’ve never had in any of the games they are featured in simply to make them fit Smash. I won’t single them out though.
