The Ridley disconfirmation apocalypse could be upon us…
”Masahiro Sakurai” said:
“Pic of the day. Out of the blue, here's a new stage--the Pyrosphere from Metroid: Other M! An enemy from Samus's past may appear at any second…”
I’m 50/50 on this quote. It could very well be a disconfirmation of Ridley, but we also have to remember that it could be just like the “up until now” quote detractors used to say Ness is deconfirmed. Personally, I’m leaning towards the former, but we shouldn’t discount the possibility of Ridley being playable yet. But just in case Ridley does get disconfirmed, here are my thoughts on this just so that I don’t have to be around for the storm that comes up:
I’m scratching my head over why Ridley would not be in Super Smash Bros. 3DS and Wii U. Pretty much any argument used against Ridley has been destroyed by supporters. There are countless evidence supporting that Ridley’s size can change. Just pull out any size comparison arguments and you’ll see what I mean. Ridley’s size has changed throughout games and the Melee intro proves that Ridley can size down to an acceptable height. Plus there’s Olimar… who appeared in both Brawl and 3DS.
Another argument against Ridley would be “Ridley isn’t popular in Japan”. While this might hold some value, clearly Sakurai has heard of the massive Western demand for Ridley. And on top of that, Little Mac was a very highly requested character in the West who was also practically ignored in Japan and yet he’s pretty much in. Ridley has even more demand and still failed to make the cut.
Sakurai has also proven to change his mind with previously rejected character. The Villager for one is going to be playable in the next Smash and so is the Mii. So it’s not like Sakurai is incapable of changing his mind on Ridley.
Another arguments detractors will use is that Ridley is too difficult to program. Now if this was several months ago, I could see why, but thanks to Mega Man’s confirmation, I’m not really seeing this either. We have to remember that Sakurai is the same person that said that adding third-party characters and the universe they come from are in some form, harder than making the game itself. That means that Mega Man was an extremely difficult fit for Sakurai and he had to struggle to get Mega Man to fit within the environment of Smash. Licensing process might have been relatively easy, but fitting him in I would imagine is a much different story. So if Sakurai can fit Mega Man in, who should technically be more difficult to fit in than make the game itself, Ridley can definitely fit in even with the challenge surrounding his inclusion.
With that said and factoring in his huge importance to the Metroid franchise, it really does surprise me that Ridley isn’t playable. Not saying he was guarantee or anything, but I still expected him. So what is the reason why Ridley isn’t in? All I can really go on here is that Sakurai for some reason doesn’t consider Ridley worth the effort.
I really would like to hear form Sakurai as to why he excluded Ridley from this game. A disconfirmation isn’t enough, I’d at least like to hear reasons especially since he knows what kind of storm that he is going to cause in the community as well as the scars that will form because of Ridley’s disconfirmation. At least then we’ll know why it turned out like it did so even if I end up inevitably disagreeing, at least it’s better than nothing.
But then again, we’ll have to see what happens within the next few days. We can’t say for sure whenever or not Ridley is in the game; we just have to play the waiting game.
