cracks knuckles
: "ouch"
Alright, now that I've gotten that pun out of my system, let me say that I care deeply about the Sonic series and its relation to Mario. Seeing as Sonic's only coming with himself and no stage/music/etc., I wanted to fit as much Sonic fanservice into his design as possible without venturing into the realm of reference overdose. Thing is I'm not even sure if this is going to be too much for this job; If it is, let me know and I'll think of something more reasonable in the morning.
I'm going to start with Sonic's appearance, since that's pretty much the backbone of my moveset design. This is the absurd idea I mentioned on WaWaWa's status earlier -
Sonic will be redesigned for Super Mario Smash Bros. Not an extreme redesign like Movie Sonic or anything, though; More of an in-between of his Classic and Modern appearances (
this panel from an Archie comic is pretty akin to what I'm talking about) (EDIT:
so does Satoshi Okano's take on the Blue Blur; credit to
Janx_uwu
for pointing this out!).
As long as I'm going on about his design, though, I'd love for him to get a pure Classic alt with some aesthetical differences to his moves (think the differences between Simon and Richter's Holy Water), hence why I'm going with a redesigned base form as opposed to using the Modern design wholesale. I'll be mentioning the differences the Classic alt would have as I go through Sonic's kit, but these are all aesthetical and nothing more.
Alright, let's finally get into Sonic's kit (took me long enough).
- Sonic's dash attack is a roll which transitions into his slide from the boost titles, kinda like his dash attack in Brawl.
- Sonic's Up Smash is a handstand kick which combos into a spinning jump like his Up Smash in the canon Smash games.
- Sonic's Neutral Air is the Insta-Shield (minus the actual shield part).
- Sonic's Forward Air is the Sonic Eagle from Sonic Battle.
- Sonic's Down Air is the Bounce from Sonic Adventure - Still a stall-and-fall.
- A theoretical Classic alt would have the Bubble Shield appear around him as he performs the move.
- Sonic's Neutral Special remains the same, but he now poses upon a successful hit.
- The Classic alt gains an orange aura while charging the Homing Attack as a small nod to Sonic 3D Blast.
- Sonic's Side Special becomes the Boost, although it's more of a burst option than how it's handled in Unleashed/Colors/etc. It's a burst option and a combo extender, but it deals less damage than the Spin Dash and has fixed knockback. It also has a short cooldown to discourage running away from your opponent.
- The Classic alt would gain the Fire Shield from S3&K, although again, it's merely an aesthetical change.
- Sonic's grounded Down Special is the Spin Dash... which is pretty much the Spin Charge but moved to Down Special. In the air, however, the move is more similar to the Drop Dash from Sonic Mania.
- A little bit of electricity is emitted from Sonic upon using his midair jump. S3&K reference? Movie Sonic reference? The world may never know.
- Finally, Sonic gets Wario's cool roll.
I actually really like WaWaWa's approach to a Super stance change, so I'll leave that untouched.
Finally, for Sonic's victory theme, I propose the one from
Sonic Adventure 2 (though to push the Classic alt idea one more time, he'd probably get the Sonic 1/2 victory theme if I were running the show).
Whew, that was a doozy of a submission. This may be way more convoluted than it has any right to be, but if the only Sonic representation we're getting is Sonic himself (and Christmas Village, I suppose), I wanted to go full-throttle and make it count. I probably wouldn't do anything like this if I were redesigning Sonic for a Sonic-centric/general Smash.
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Oh, and I wanna stick to the 8/16 rule when it comes to DLC alts. Wouldn't be opposed to bumping the number up to 24, though (not a fan of
forcing it, however).