That's why he shouldn't be given so much authority. Someone needs to tell him, no, we're not giving this character special treatment. Clearly, no one did that with Joker as he got plenty. He's not even the most iconic third party. Far from it.
I mean, most other characters have three different victory screens, Joker just has some variations of a single one, so yeah, he's just different, but I don't see why giving character's "special treatment" is a bad thing? Don't we want characters to be more unique and bring more variety to the game? Why can't the director of a video game express creativity or passion for his project or specific franchises? I don't think at any point Sakurai has necessarily given too much of a damn about how fair he appeared in treatment outside of the whole Kirby newcomers in Melee thing from years ago. And "fair" in this context is horribly impossible to define and completely variable depending on the individual.
Anyway time for my genuine unpopular opinions:
- There's no such thing as "fair" or "balanced representation." Unless you're completely willing to base everything in Smash off of sales, there's no metric to pull that off and actually achieve anything that resembles that notion. And Smash would be a goddamn disappointing travesty if that's how we played things. Goodbye Ice Climbers, Mr. Game and Watch, ROB, Lucas, etc. People should rally for more content or franchises they like, absolutely, but pointing fingers at all of the content that isn't your personal pick or preferences achieves nothing to that end. Subtraction from the game isn't generally going to result in benefit somewhere else and should generally be considered more of a negative. We're always going to rely on some main director to make decisions and will end up with content in different ways and places.
- World of Light gets genuinely really fun once you beat the first map. I enjoy the small overworld puzzles you have to solve and the boss fights start ramping around then. The final map is specifically a really cool balancing act to fight both Dharkon and Galeem in the end, with one of the most genuinely cool rewards in using the Master Hand officially.
- Speaking of which, I don't know if this is super unpopular, but I definitely don't see it mentioned too much. I want a "Master Hand Smash" mode where you can freely play the Master Hand like on that stage. Maybe give the option to fight as Crazy Hand with a different move set to add some variety and be able to add little modifiers. It would be such a cool addition to the game since it's basically already there and it would make finishing World of Light more worthwhile overall too.
- Even if I mostly despised playing on them, I do wish we had gotten Icicle Mountain and Rumble Falls back as stages. I like having the option for the chaos from time to time and having stages like them show up with random and completely changing how you play the game would be great.
- Move set should matter as much if not more than the character. Move sets are the defining feature of Smash characters and are responsible for the bulk of gameplay variety. Well known characters are cool and all, but I don't think the character alone should be enough. Their moveset and how they play should be of more importance to communities than I think they are generally given.
- On that same note, minute character differences make a big difference and I think very few characters in Smash actually play like one another. What it takes to be successful with one rarely translates over to another so easily. Even Marth, Lucina, Roy, and Chrom should all be played with those differences in mind and I generally end up playing them quite differently from one another because of those differences.