Were Captain Falcon and Ness popular before Smash?

[KCJ506]

I'm just curious on what people here think because I've come across various people insisting that they well known before their Smash inclusion and others saying that they weren't. I have to agree with the latter people. These two are really more known for their Smash inclusions than their own games.

I apologize if this isn't the right forum for this.

 

[FamilyTeam]

I don't know if this is the right place, either.
But looking at the context of when Smash 64 came out, I think Ness probably wasn't very popular while Cpt. Falcon atleast had some followers, since F-Zero still had quite a few games starring him.

 

[KCJ506]

I don't know if this is the right place, either.
But looking at the context of when Smash 64 came out, I think Ness probably wasn't very popular while Cpt. Falcon atleast had some followers, since F-Zero still had quite a few games starring him.

That's true, but the thing is, the character of Captain Falcon was really more fleshed out in his games' manuals than the games themselves. In F-Zero X, all you get of Captain Falcon is a static image when you select the Blue Falcon (the exact same treatment given to the other 29 racers). I'm pretty sure the original F-Zero for SNES didn't even have that.

I mean, if you were to mention Captain Falcon to the average gamer, the first thing that would probably came to their mind would be "Falcon Punch!" which has become a meme and is likely more known for that than his games where he doesn't even set foot outside of his vehicle.

 

[Wintermelon43]

While F-Zero was popular before smash, Captain Falcon himself wasn't since you barely see him, and most of what is known about him is in smash only. Ness....... idk how popular earthbound was before smash, but I think it was mainly in japan that it was popular; a lot of the rest of the world popularity might have came from smash iirc, similar to Fire Emblem and Kid Icarus (Well Kid Icarus wasn't really popular in japan either but you get the point)

 

[Xermo]

Unknown to a western audience maybe. It's not hard to believe people first encountered these characters in their respective titles before smash; and it's especially blasphemous to assume earthbound is unknown outside of smash when the game currently leads a trend of ****ty "mother-like" indie games.

Nowadays only people who've never dove into Nintendo's history of games are only aware of fzero and earthbound through smash, and that's pretty understandable considering those games are dead in the water.

 

[FamilyTeam]

Nowadays only people who've never dove into Nintendo's history of games are only aware of fzero and earthbound through smash, and that's pretty understandable considering those games are dead in the water.

Somehow I get the feeling I know what you're talking about.

But yes. Earthbound is popular, but that's actually a more recent thing, because it really was not received well on launch. Captain Falcon was always there on the F-Zero titles one way or the other, but you would have to kind of look it up to know anything about him.

 

[KCJ506]

Yeah Earthbound sold like crap in 94/95. And barely anyone in the west cared for the series until after Ness appeared in Smash. And while Captain Falcon was always in the F-Zero games, you'd only see him in the manual of the original. The first time he actually made an in-game appearance was in F-Zero X and still you barely saw him there. So honestly where are most people gonna know him from? His games where he doesn't even set foot outside of his vehicle and only appears as a picture or his trademark special move in the Smash games which has become a meme?

Granted there are people that knew about them before the original Smash came out, but honestly those numbers pale in comparison to the amount that know about them post Smash.

 

[JamieTheMunchlax]

IIRC, Captain Falcon was intended to be a big mascot of the NES, with Link and Samus. Pit was going to be one too, but that didn't wok out either. The MOTHER series is AMAZING, and my second favorite franchise after PKMN, but it had awful sales. MOTHER was translated, but never released until the VC version. It actually became the best selling eShop title for a while, until beat by MOTHER 2. MOTHER 2 did poorly at first because of a lack in advertising and a lack in interest of JRPGs at the time. As said before, it beat MOTHER and became the best selling eShop title. MOTHER 3 was never localized or translated, and is only playable in a fan translation, with no localization whatsoever.

tl;dr version: Falcon was intended to be popular, but that didn't work out. Ness' series did very poorly in sales, but were fantastic games. However, Ness became iconic through Smash Bros.

 

[Elin]

To be honest, no. Not outside of their own circles, at least.

Ness especially. Earthbound sold so poorly at first, thanks to it's... peculiar marketing strategy. It didn't help by the time the original Smash was released, Pokémon was already gaining tons of steam, making the franchise stand out as Nintendo's flagship RPG. Though that's only in the West. I doubt Japan didn't know who Ness was, with the franchise being slightly popular over there. At least Earthbound is now a cult classic in the West.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but from doing a great amount of research on video games from the SNES-N64 era, I can't see them being that popular in the mainstream circles pre Smash, especially with characters that have intensely popular franchises like Mario and Link.