Featured Comments + Responses #4

These two have great chemistry together and I find all the interviews fascinating. If there should be an interview between Sakurai and Hideki Kamiya or anyone from Platinum, it should be Bayonetta. —Sakurai x Nomura [Part Two]

I really like these articles- I am not used to how comments are laid out on here yet. —Featured Comments + Responses #3

Odd seeing how quickly Sakurai’s opinion on characters changes overtime.

He seemed to like making a joke character that disappointed it’s fans and overall was a quick giggle, and really seemed determined to include Young Link for various reasons he thought the character excelled in, adding in a popular character last second with Ganon.

And now fast forward to 4. A lot changed from his perspective, except one thing…

We need more Fire Emblem characters. —On Character Selection: Melee

Hi Soma, great work in this thanks for the translation. Would you mind if I translate this whole interview to Spanish?
It’ll be posted in a recently opened, nonprofit, deep in fighting games related Mexican blog. —Harada x Ono: Tekken vs Street Fighter, Creator Interview 2016

It’s interesting that you feel this way, as part of the appeal of including Wario in Smash was that Sakurai wanted to include someone with an unorthodox and exaggerated moveset. I personally feel as though Wario’s moveset does capture this, and is pretty interesting and amusing. How his head grows massively for his up smash in particular for barely over one frame is an example of this.

Personally, I think having Wario snap back into place after using his Shoulder Ram would’ve looked really unpolished.

I’ll always be down for more Wario Land-inspired moves in Wario’s moveset, but how he appears in Smash currently does not feel like some sort of injustice. He’s not 1-to-1 “Wario Land Wario” or even “WarioWare Wario”. He simply feels and behaves like “Wario”. —Sakurai’s Famitsu Column Vol. 498: Letters from the Readers #44

Why would he lie to create more work for himself? It’s clear that he wasn’t happy with the move so he changed it. And if he didn’t care for Wario then why change anything at all? It’s funny that you accuse Sakurai of not playing any Wario games when he personally made a commercial for WarioWare DIY. I’m surprised you haven’t seen it, considering you “freaking love” Wario’s games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAMaZQuQ7TQ–Sakurai’s Famitsu Column Vol. 498: Letters from the Readers #44

I do agree that Sylux should join the next Smash if he’ll represent as the important character for the Metroid Prime series than Dark Samus who’s more of Samus’ clone, but I do agree with his exclusion. Metroid Prime didn’t have any new series after 3’s release, not until Federation Force was announced though. And as far as I know, Metroid Prime: Hunters didn’t seem to be a popular game than the main series, as I haven’t seen anybody playing that game, while I haven’t heard anybody mentioning any hunters from that game for the Smash Ballot. Although he has a personality for his backstory and uniqueness of something only he can do while others don’t, his existence need to be memorable and recognizable by public than being forgotten into oblivion, and that’s how popularity is important for that character to be chosen. However, if the staffs plan to bring him for the Federation Force, then maybe he’ll finally get some spotlight and Sakurai may think about it by looking carefully on his uniqueness and popularity.

What I still disagree on is people still voting for Ridley. Sorry to bring up a different subject to this article, but Sakurai already did explained his exclusion, but it seems people are still blind and deaf enough that they refuse to understand as they want to stick with their own mind. Ridley is too big and that is true; there weren’t any records that his size are freely changeable. His gigantic size represents how vicious, fearful, and monstrous he is for being a memorable boss, and that’s what Ridley’s meant to be. Sure, there were times that Bowser has changed his size throughout many Mario series, but this is the difference between Ridley and Bowser’s case. Seriously, Mario Universe is a strange place that can go against physics, where Donkey Kong can punch down a moon straight down to their enemy’s fortress, Wario turns his home into a video game company and create games in mere seconds, Yoshi swallows a fireball and spit it back, etc. Super Mario series are meant to be a fantasy game, and Bowser’s size can be changeable from huge to average by magic. Possibly his giant size is due to magic, while his average size you see in many non-action Mario games could be his REAL size. On the other hand for Ridley’s case, he doesn’t have an ability nor “magic” to change his size. Sure he was small back in the NES era, but that’s due to lack of memory data; he could’ve been originally big, but couldn’t due to NES’s lack of power. That can be said to his SNES era too since he wasn’t big enough because of the limited data power. His size after the GC era became a perfect size of who he really is, and that wasn’t later shrank smaller afterwards as it stood there to identify his real appearance. Eventually, changing their size isn’t the point of choosing characters for Smash; it’s whether their purpose of their appearance is eligible to be chosen for Smash, and that is something both Sakurai and their creators need to agree on. And even if Ridley was playable and rather kept in that size, there will always be a technical difficulties, and that’s something that isn’t easy to fix it, which the 3DS’s lack of machine power and Wii U’s 8-Player Smash will always be the main obstacle for that problem. As I said this many times before, Smash isn’t MUGEN which you can just put anybody and everybody in one game as it doesn’t matter whether they’re unique or simply generic, or terribly weak as in easy-to-kill-in-one-hit to ultimately (and boringly) OP as being invincible and invulnerable to kill, since there’s no rules and limits to protect for MUGEN. Sakurai isn’t that stupid to make that happen, and he know what’ll work best than how any amateurs like us think of. Making a character isn’t really easy as anybody thinks, and that’s something many people really need to understand that what Sakurai doing isn’t an easiest job in the planet, as there’s no such thing as an easiest job. —The Case For: Sylux

Excellent review, Wolfman_J, however I have one problem with it:

“The only thing you get from battles is money, and the only possible use for money is to buy stickers (which, again, can be found in levels).”

This isn’t true, they play a vita role in the battle system by allowing Mario to play a slot machine to earn more chances to use more than one sticker in a single turn. This is very important, especially against the later levels since this game never gives Mario any party members aside from himself (if we ignore Kersti who gives Mario the ability to use stickers), so he’ll need as much firepower as he can get.

Aside from this, your review pretty much matches how I feel about this game. It’s experimental, but also downgraded and disappointing in various ways. The sad part is that the idea of a Mario RPG without any experience points and finite attacks was interesting to me, but Sticker Star didn’t execute the concept very well. In the end I can only hope the next proper Paper Mario game returns to form, and actually nails what it sets out to do. —The Forgotten, the Maligned: Paper Mario: Sticker Star

The criteria of having a recent character narrows down who the alternatives may have been:

Someone from Codename S.T.E.A.M.
Inkling
Someone from Xenoblade Chronicles X (probably Elma)
Captain Toad (he debuted a while back, but not in a starring role)

Codename S.T.E.A.M. Was probably considered too much of a bomb to be worth promoting. Inkling may have been considered too resource intensive to develop in a way that does them justice (squid transformation, an ink mechanic). Captain Toad is defined by an inability to jump, and regular Toad has already been passed over in every Smash game.

So that just leaves Elma. Maybe her use of firearms crossed the line into realism too much? Or may maybe Sakurai just thought Corrin’s dragon transformations had more to offer. —A Case For Corrin: Why Corrin Was Chosen To Smash

This whole thing just seems iffy to me. It just seems way too soon after Smash 4. I believe that if Sakurai wanted to add something to Smash 4, he would have done so and not just held it off for the next game. He said the whole reason that DLC was wrapping up was that he couldn’t keep the development team together forever, but if the development timeline for this Smash 5 is to be believed, then it’s been pretty much constant so far. I remember someone mentioning cross-platform play between Smash for Wii U and the supposed Smash 5, and that was just a hypothesis to be fair, but if they did add new stages and characters, wouldn’t that be impossible without re-adding those characters and stages to the Wii U version? And that would end up de-syncing the compatibility between the Wii U and 3DS versions since as far as I recall, they were supposed to at least have the same characters on each. I’d love to see a new Smash game, but I’d much rather wait for solid information before I start jumping to conclusions. Heck, we barely have enough information on the NX as it is, and we’re already talking about the games. I guess that is one of the high points of the Smash community though, we’re always hungry for information. —Smash for NX rumour Discussion (Video)