Before the Ridley fans start shouting his name, He will never be in sm4sh as a character. Not only because the size thing, but also because he's already in it as a boss.
I don't see any merit for the "Ridley can't be in SSB4 because he's already in as a boss" excuse; aside from legal issues and arising technological restraints (and maybe Masahiro Sakurai's opinion regarding "representation", which still has the potential to change) - essentially nothing stops Ridley's potential playable appearance; plus there's no "rule" that says Ridley (or any character) cannot be present in a
Super Smash Bros. game as a boss
and as a playable character. We have Toon Link being present twice in
Super Smash Bros. 4 (the playable form and the
Spirit Tracks Spirit Train background element) and Donkey Kong present twice in
Super Smash Bros. Brawl (the playable form and the 75m form - there's discrepancies on whether the "75m Donkey Kong" is actually Cranky Kong, but without getting specific, all one could casually glean is that there's a Donkey Kong you can play as and somehow another Donkey Kong in the background). And the developers even went out of their way to include 2 Ridleys in a "boss format" for
Brawl when one Ridley would've easily sufficed - sure they probably saved
some time in reusing the model, but they still used different attack patterns/animations for Ridley and Meta Ridley.
Anyway, as others have mentioned, if Ridley isn't included on the roster, no other
Metroid character inclusions seem warranted at this point in time. Dark Samus
maybe, but I'm honestly fine with her/it being relegated to an alternate costume for Varia Suit Samus. In any case, even deep-seeded opinions have the potential to change within a year. I still await the day for Ridley's inclusion in playable form within
Super Smash Bros., in which he would have
finally surpassed size arguments, "redundancy" arguments, and stubbornness. We have seemingly-redundant ports/remixes of "Jungle Level" (although not detracting from the awesomeness of the original song and the
Brawl remixes),
"3" 2 Marios, 2 Links, 2 Pits, 2 Battlefields, and, what, 10+ somewhat-similar Final Destination "costumes" (AND Mii costumes of Link and Megaman when the characters themselves are already in the game)? 2 Ridleys in
Super Smash Bros. 4 hardly seems like a problem..
Why do I feel like I'm going to be seeing "SKREEEEEEEEEEE" a lot more in the future on Smashboards?