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Let people expose their terrible arguments for what they truly are. Bring the truth to light. I'd rather find out if someone is just a dumbass saying "duhh anime sword bad" than have to deal with "well we don't know if he's actually popular".
Lloyd because I've only ever played Symphonia and he's super cool.
Personally, I think the results are pretty clear without needing to see them.
I think most importantly the reason Nintendo will never reveal the Ballot results because there would be a gigantic flame war between the fanbases on why said character was ranked higher than this character and how it's completely inaccurate and rigged regardless of it being Nintendo themselves showing this.
Not only were all of those characters highly requested characters, but characters people have been requesting since the Melee and Brawl days. Literally 20 to 15 years of fan outcry on these characters' backs.
Exactly. The stuff in the game seems to confirm the validity of the fan polls, while simultaneously showing that Nintendo didn't exclusively use the ballot for newcomers. They quite obviously used the Ballot results, but not entirely. I don't consider Simon, for example, a "ballot character" at all. I mean on that massive poll you linked he had less votes than Custom Robo, which didn't even get its AT back. There were obviously other crucial factors that made Sakurai pick him over several other characters who almost certainly got more votes than him. And based on the information we have, it doesn't seem like it was a matter of choosing between characters with a similar number of votes; plenty of characters, Isaac among them, have consistently demonstrated themselves to be significantly more popular than Simon in terms of Smash requests to the point where it's difficult to imagine Simon beating more than one or two of them on the real ballot. Simon was barely on the map (relatively speaking) before being leaked. Obviously the ballot never came with any guarantees that they'd pick the top characters at all; I'm not delusional. Doing well in terms of votes was never meant to be an auto-inclusion. But just because a character had a modest performance on the ballot doesn't mean that said character being on the roster is evidence of the ballot being used in a meaningful way. The ballot in such cases as Simon and others (to varying degrees) was most likely a minor contributor to their selection.
I wonder if that's just something Square prefers. They never pool from the usual VAs people know from anime, it's onscreen actors. Even with the old VAs Steve Burton is a popular character on General Hospital that he's been playing since the 90's also stars on The Young and Restless. Aerith's old VA is Mandy Moore, Rapunzel from Tangled and played Jamie in A Walk To Remember. It does feel like they wanted a fresh take for Remake while still going mainly for actors.
My brother and I used to joke about Shrek and Goku being number 1 since it seemed like whatever the US voted as first was unrealizable compared to Bayo who was claimed as Europe's first pick. Though we know now that King K. Rool won but was decided to wait till Ultimate.
I would say Lloyd because it's the one i grew up with with Symphonia on the gamecube, but I'm ok with whoever as long as we get someone from Tales Of in general and it's interesting and fun to play with, lol.
YES that list is probably the most accurate list to date, and it does help that almost every single other poll around the ballot time had similar results every single time: K rool, Ridley, Banjo, Isaac, Veterans, Shovel Knight, Geno, etc. Those are always on the polls around that date, so we really don't need to see official results to know what was obviously trending. I think we made ourselves the loudest at the perfect time if we were literally sniffing K Rool's crack on every single poll list lol, that's how high Isaac was on demand. Most likely why we are also getting a new game or an HD port or whatever soon as well. Isaac is honestly the only one so super high on results that we still need ot have as playable.
meh, Isabelle got in more for popularity among general Nintendo fans rather than for Smash popularity specifically, along with her being a relevant and important character within the incredibly popular AC franchise, which many people thought had the merits for more than one rep. She could've gotten in with next to no votes on the ballot.
Not seeing how the Smash Ballot didn't matter anyway.
If there was such a thing as a popular promotional pick, Isabelle would describe it.
Could you explain why you think this? Because Sakurai even said the reason Richter was here was because he used a lot of the moves from Richter to help make Simon's moveset so he decided to make him an echo fighter.
Because Sakurai literally went for both Belmonts over Alucard for both the East and the West specifically. To give them both some love. Simon didn't get in just because he's the protagonist either, after all. That's honestly a bit more of a coincidence.
She's not a promotional pick whatsoever. She's not literally in the game to promote New Horizons. She's got a lot of popularity on her side, and existing in New Horizons makes her relevant(but she was already relevant thanks to New Leaf's amiibo update by all means) as well. Iconic and being a mascot also help. Then you see tons of people over the ballot wanting her playable coupled with an easy ability to use Villager to make her, and she was a pretty easy addition in the end. You're making the error in assuming that just cause her trailer was used to help sell New Horizons is the same thing as being added to the game itself to promote it. There's really zero reason to believe that and there's tons of factors she had that had zip to do with requiring a new game to exist. It's arguable how much the ballot influenced her inclusion. But a new game wouldn't have made a remote difference here. Villager existing first as is played more of a role, hell, Amiibo Festival actually was used for her moveset's creation, so it clearly played more of a role too.
Well, I wouldn't call the plant an icon. Recognizable, sure. But not an icon.
Which is literally what Sakurai said. so it doesn't matter what our opinions are on that. He's not wrong. Since iconicness is literally based upon recognizability. PP is known to all. That makes it an icon in the end.
I'd say the primary reason is for the "looking at both sides of the seas to please everyone." The echo part is more of a good way to make both easier. Simon basically has a moveset because Richter existed, and vice versa. This isn't much different from Zelda/Sheik who both required each other to get in, since they were tied at the time via a unique moveset mechanic. That was Sakurai's core idea for the princess and the ninja. The fact they got split was a 3DS factor, though it did help with balance. It also helped Zelda was awful on her own, and he was well aware people played them separately too. Pokemon Trainer was done differently, forcing them as a team, so you couldn't play one over the other(and thus, was handled better overall. It still had issues, but they got the point across by actually forcing switching).
I really doubt they'd add two unique Castlevania characters at once just for the sake of pleasing "both sides" as you say. If there was no suitable Echo than it would have been just Simon.
I really doubt that they're as tied together as you say. Based on the information we have, Simon was far and away the most popular choice for Castlevania and he was gonna be the rep pretty much no matter what happened with Richter, especially if they actually were looking at the ballot at all. Richter was just a bonus that happened to work out well in terms of pleasing Japan. Sometimes there's a happy circumstance and you don't have to make a hard decision. Cool. But in the absence of this they haven't been averse to picking characters who appeal to one region. There's no reason to think that Simon couldn't have stood out on his own.
I don't. That's why Lucas didn't replace Ness in Brawl either. To appeal to both sides.
Fan polls are not the ballot. I'm not going to treat that as good information. That doesn't mean anything in the end when we have a more clear statement via a translation. "Both were chosen via the ballot." That sounds pretty clear to me if not obvious. Of course they could have been chosen without the ballot, and if that were the case, Richter getting in for echo status specifically would make sense. But that's not really accurate. Ballot was the deciding factor in the end.
Really, everything about Castlevania is literally said to be related to the ballot. It's pretty hard to believe any other reason. "Castlevania was highly voted on" is pretty clear. Though I can agree that a lot of the content in general could be related to being a massively influential franchise, along with Sakurai liking it. However, he's pretty clear that Alucard, Simon, and Richter were straight-out ballot-related. Alucard would've been playable if he didn't want Simon and Richter as is, which makes it clear which ones are specifically ballot-related.
Do you mean long ago as in Smash 4 for Ridley? Cause that's the only time he was considered. If so, fair(also, Sakurai does talk about moveset stuff and why he's a stage hazard). If you mean long ago like Brawl, that's never been a thing. He was asked after Brawl was released if he thought about putting him in Smash and he gave a pretty clear no. Along with joking about his size and balance(which actually turned out to be his later thoughts down the line).
Someone pointed it out above, but there's a direct quote from Sakurai where he says Castlevania as a series was a popular request. I'm sure Simon was the most popular request, but by a somewhat slim margin, with Alucard trailing behind him. He's also been a fairly common request among older fans who played the original games. Castlevania was pretty commonly associated with Nintendo back in the day (see: Captain N).
Actually, Sakurai tried to get Erdrick and Luminary in the base roster. Didn't work out(he did mention both of these, not just Erdrick).
She has yet to be in even after Brawl, so it might not be an Echo factor either. He tried to make her a partner character. He may be sticking to that, which isn't illogical. He doesn't often change his ideal plan for a character(if he got beyond the consideration stage. Villager never got any work done on them, so there was nothing to go off of. Just reasons they didn't work at the time, but now something came up. So they're not a similar case). And he can make the partner mechanic work now. It was just Brawl and 4 where they're impossible(it failed in Brawl, and 4 had 3DS issues). Ultimate also had King K. Rool very likely as higher priority, and if he's sticking with the partner idea, that means outright he has to spend a lot of time on making that work. King K. Rool is one character and requires a lot less resources and time in comparison.
I mean Lucas was a semiclone so not a full unique and maybe not the best example. Two fully unique Castlevania characters would have definitely been overdoing it in a lot of people's eyes.
They can cite the ballot as a reason all they want, and I'm not saying it had no influence, but I don't see how you can justify Castlevania over other franchises/characters based on the ballot alone. There had to be other major factors that helped it other than that, to the point where, in the end, the ballot barely mattered anyway.
Sure, Smash 4. That phrase was fairly vague. But whether it was Brawl or Smash 4 it doesn't really change what I was saying.
I meant No. 3 in votes which is certainly not a certainty but from all that I've seen it seems reasonable that he'd be right there if not close to it. I did say "if you're willing to think optimistically."
I was aware of these statements even before this conversation started. I still don't think the ballot was the primary reason for Castlevania's inclusion, though I acknowledge (in part due to Sakurai's statements) that it had at least a modest ballot performance with some impact on the roster decisions.
Ugh I really don't like the partner mechanic idea. I doubt that he'd still be sticking to that, especially since Diddy has been in the game since Brawl now and is unlikely to undergo such a major change. I don't think he'd exclude Dixie altogether at this point just because of that but you're right that he could still be committed to it.
That reads like Castlevania as a series did well meaning it was most likely characters like Simon, Alucard, Trevor, Soma, and possibly Dracula himself who did well. Probably Alucard did the best but as he said fans expected a Belmont. So yes in the sense that Castlevania at all is here due to the ballot that is why Richter is here but it's really the reason he was included with Simon instead of just Simon is as Sakurai said the moveset.
That wasn't the point. He was directly kept in because it was an overseas thing that people wouldn't know of. People don't know Richter overseas. Simon's nowhere near that popular in the East compared to Richter. Richter literally is Japan's Simon.
Doubt it. Here's the thing; when they say the ballot literally got those 3 characters in, the ballot got those 3 characters in. You can easily justify Castlevania, a massively influential series due to the ballot alone. There's a massive amount of overall votes for the series as a whole. That's more than enough. The fact it also was relevant via the TV show helps a bit too, but that didn't do much either. Being relevant or irrelevant wouldn't have changed anything besides maybe less content if Konami was barely using the franchise. But since they were constantly using it, it was easier to get content.
There's also zero reasons for Sakurai to look at fan polls. A poll for people who took the ballot and noted who they voted for is a lot more telling than random write-in fan polls. The numbers could be skewed due to specific rules.
But it is wrong if you talking about Brawl. He couldn't have been in that game because Sakurai never once thought he should be. It was 4 at the earliest. So it does matter a lot. It's still a pretty long gap between the games, but admittedly also fairly short. 5 years isn't a long gap compared to others, really.
That's why I said who was higher for Sakurai's picks via popularity. Geno clearly is higher for him than Isaac. But yeah, I can concur that Isaac had more votes.
...The reason he was included is literally said to be the ballot, dude. There's no point in denying the facts. The echo factor helped, but his incentive was "appeal to both sides" first. The rest was how to make the moveset work, a secondary factor. Sometimes the moveset was the core influence, but that's clearly not the case here.
But it wasn't though. He literally said Castlevania was popular in the ballot not Richter. In fact Sakurai always pointed when a character is more popular in one region then another given that and his comment about him being unknown I'm fairly certain we are super lucky to have Richter as well. Which is fine with me he was my personal favorite Belmont but that's an uncommon as he's not the most recognizable Belmont even in his home country where they got the the better version of his game.
...And he literally said "I chose Richter and Simon due to the ballot." Same thing with Ridley and K. Rool.
I mean that was Push paraphrasing. The actual article doesn't say Richter and Simon were chosen explicitly because of the ballot. I'm not the one changing words. I'm just the one not ignoring his other statements to prove a point.
I don't see how that example with Ness/Lucas applies to this situation, though. If Lucas had to be fully unique from Ness, then I doubt that they would've been so willing to keep both. I'm not saying that appealing to one side of the Pacific or the other is unimportant, but it's unlikely to be enough for them to add two fully unique third party characters from the same franchise at the same time.
I don't think the number of votes were so massive and I have said why. If you don't like the sources of information that I used, then okay that's up to you.
I never said that Sakurai would look at fan polls. I said that they're a useful source of information for us and they have some impact on my perception of things, but if you don't trust them, then okay. They have proven to be pretty accurate so far, at least in my view, and they're also "the best that we have" in some sense. But that's just my view of things.
Exactly. Like I said many posts above… if literally every poll around the time the ballot one was done had Isaac, krool, banjo, veterans, etc, all near the top every single time, then it's not really that bad to assume that the official ballot might have looked somewhat similar and the chances are definitely there. The big trending names were all over the place during that specific time, the official ballot didn't happen in an alternate reality with a complete different set of fanbase asking for complete different things lol. And yeah we literally got almost everything near the top that aligns with some of the most popular polls back then like the dojo one in that google sheet, so it's definitely no coincidence that we got such things so far.
I dunno I read between the lines as more of a:
Maybe side smash is Ramses' fist?
That could work. It actually fits rather well, especially the Venus factor too~
inb4 this is what people speculating about bayonetta being used as a base for a DLC character leads to
I thought Pound as his neutral B or down b, but smash attack works fine. Just let it spike.
I'd rather all hand Psynergy be grouped with side special or on his grab. Move as a windbox into command grab into Pound, ect for throws. Like the entire Assist Trophy's moveset being on one special or grab button.
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