Relax Alax and Source Gaming once again team up to provide information on Smash’s development! If you haven’t seen our previous video, click here. Full transcription and sources after the jump!
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Smash is a renowned and loved series for many, many reasons. One of the biggest ones is when fans can dream to see their favorite characters join the battle. This has been true since Melee and even up to today with Smash for 3DS and Wii U.
Today, we’re going to delve into Smash 64 and Melee, and find out which characters were considered, planned and scrapped for each of them. These distinctions are important, as a considered fighter could just be a stray thought, a planned character is locked into the roster but later not developed and scrapped character is a developed fighter but removed later for unknown reasons.
Don’t mistake these, don’t believe Wikipedia, don’t believe Reddit, and think for yourself – don’t be sheep!
Because truth is such large part of what Source Gaming is, we’ll also dig out the rumors surrounding each character see where those stand. All these findings were oh-so neatly organized by the wonderful Push Dust In, the founder of Source Gaming and collaborator of this series. I highly recommend you check out Source Gaming if you love Smash Brothers and want your own fill of Smash Trivia! The post that inspired this video will be updated with new information and sources as they become available, so check it out!
With that out of the way, let’s turn the volume to max, grab some snacks, and do an air slash – THIS IS SUPER SMASH FACTS
Super Smash Brothers 64 is where we’ll begin our quest, and it itself has a plethora of rumors and even facts about characters that were PLANNED for this game.
However, Meowth, Pit and Sigurd being included in included in this Smash Bros., were just rumors as no true sources could be found despite them having been accepted as folklore across the internet.
What is correct is that Mewtwo WAS planned to be included in the roster. Though no hard evidence is found on how much progress was made on him, email responses from Sakurai in a hypothetical “If there was a Smash 2” poll indicate he was at least planned. There could have been other characters planned but, well, we’ll never know as they were buried in the back of the mind of Masahiro Sakurai.
Now scrapped characters that were developed are the iconic Bowser and King Dedede. From Sakurai’s extra information on the poll’s webpage, the two were developed for at least half of the games development, with Bowser actually being quoted to be in the game as late as November 1998.
And if you thought that was a lot, ooooh man, we’ve got plenty more to go, as we slide into the sequel to Smash 64, the renowned party platform competitive all-star fighting game that lives on even today – Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo Gamecube.
Of course, a sequel to Super Smash Bros. 64 warranted a lot of attention and excitement. This anticipated was rooted in how many characters would be added into this new iteration. Where for Smash 4’s speculation there were limited amounts of plausible fighters was decreased, Melee was an open book. And this is shown from the amount of characters considered to be included in sequel. And seriously, there is a lot.
Takamaru, Mach Rider, Ayumi Tachibana, Banjo and Kazooie, James Bond, Balloon Fighter, Urban Champion, Bubbles and Excitebike were all at one point were CONSIDERED to be included in Melee.
(Note: We will have the English version of this page in the very near future!)
Because all of these characters were merely considered, nobody knows for sure how serious, or for how long the considerations were…. “considered”..
Popular candidates that stuck out from the Nintendo 64 library of games, James Bond from Goldeneye 007 and Banjo-Kazooie from, well, Banjo-Kazooie, were not included for Other “Adult Reasons”…
More or less, it was because they were owned by Rare, and these “Adult Reasons” were copyright. Further, James Bond would have the actors likeness as well as shooting real weapons.
In a recent NicoNico interview, Ayumi Tachibana from the Famicom Detective Club series was considered for a roster position in Melee – of course, your understandable “who the hell is she?” is the reason she wasn’t included. Sakurai recognized her lack of overseas familiarity so the Smash road ended for her at a trophy.
Other than these characters, the rest of the named suggestions were all turned down for everyone’s favorite Inuit grapplers, the Ice Climbers. This is because Sakurai found great importance in including fighters from different background from Nintendo’s history. So where we got Ice Climbers, we may have missed they chance to get Bubbles, Urban Champion, Takamaru and ExciteBike.
As for other characters such as Toad, Wolf and Saki Amamiya, no concrete evidence can determine whether they were truly considered at all for Melee.
Now, just to remind you folks, that all of these characters were merely CONSIDERED for Melee. These next characters were PLANNED to be included in Melee. That’s right, there is potential that Wario could have been a high tier and could have kept up with Fox McCloud! Think of that, think of that.
Alongside Wario, the other planned characters are of no surprise – Lucas, Snake, and Sonic – YUP! All characters that eventually made it into the series.
Snake and Sonic weren’t added simply due to time restraints at the time, while Lucas wasn’t added because Mother 3 was in “development hell.” It’s even stated on Ness’ character page on the JP Melee website that this is the reason he isn’t included. Out of them all, Wario had the best chances of being on the roster, as he was dominant on the Smash 2 polls and Sakurai has stated himself that if there was more time, he would have been first to be included.
And, because Push loves Wario, I’ll mention this false rumor – it’s said that Sakurai didn’t include Wario because he was going to be a Mario clone, and thought “he deserved better.” This is not the case. He wasn’t included because of the fact that, again, time was scarce. Melee’s development was notoriously short, which we can also pin most of the technical oversights on. But, we are not going to get into that today. Cut,cut,cut to the next part.
Now even though we didn’t get these characters in Melee, it’s a surprise that we got so many of them at all. Some of the ones that made it onto the roster did so just barely. Like barely. As I’m sure you’re aware, Smash Brother games have “Clone characters” in them, which are characters that take many traits from their parent character and are adjusted slightly to be make into unique ones. In Melee, we have Dr. Mario, Pichu, Falco, Young Link, Roy, and Ganondorf – ALL characters that made it onto the roster very narrowly. The luckiest of them all was, actually, Ganondorf. As he was added later than everyone in development and was ultimately put on because of his popularity in the Smash 2 polls. This is why one of the most iconic villains became the clone we’ve all come to know … er… love.
Hey … I have a video on that … right here! look-
Note: Frostwraith has just written an epic article on Ganondorf. It goes in depth about Ganondorf’s animations, and the rationale behind his design choices. Check it out!
And just like that, that is it for part one of our lost characters of Smash. But stay tuned, because our next part will go into Super Smash Brothers Brawl -an entry of the series with some of the most interesting findings about its roster all starting with the Forbidden 7.
Thanks for watching guys, and I will see you on the flipside!
Do you guys have any suggestions for what articles we should make into videos? Let us know in the comments!
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- Sakurai Discusses Isabelle, Echoes, and Newcomers - September 26, 2018
Thanks for this guys. It is extremely informative.
I honestly think Ayumi may have been one of the more heavily thought about characters. Famicom Detective Club was a fairly popular game at the time in Japan. Not on the Earthbound or Fire Emblem scale but it was praised for it’s innovation for being highly text focused and interactive.
Granted she never had any potential fighting styles thought about but it sounds like a valid reason to exclude her. I bet the reason he hasn’t really looked at her since is because other more popular games in the genre have appeared.
I also found the Bowser “confirmation” from Miyamoto hilarious. He should have kept his mouth shut.
You guys addressing false rumors is a great way to go about things. I had heard of a story that Meowth was going to be in the original but have struggled to find the source. I have also heard Balloon Fighter actually had a working model in the beta of Melee. I’m guessing this is another lie going around. See the person spreading it here.
http://www.serebiiforums.com/showthread.php?183984-Super-Smash-Bros-Melee-Balloon-Fighter&p=5216904#post5216904
I would have absolutely loved to see Ayumi in Smash, but I’m sure she ran into the same problem Villager did originally. That said, if Famicom Detective Club wasn’t a dead series, I’m sure she could work now (after all, we have Villager and Wii Fit Trainer in Smash, and Phoenix Wright in Marvel vs. Capcom 3.)
Also, there’s that whole “obscurity outside of Japan” thing that Takamaru ran into…
I think Wii Fit Trainer has killed any “this character cannot work” theory. Depending on if Sakurai is making the game Takamaru has much stronger chances next time because he has been considering him as far back as Melee.
Little Mac was an assist trophy in Brawl and got promoted so Takamaru has limited problems next time. Sakurai really seems to want Takamaru in but it seems he is concerned about popularity. I think the next game is the perfect time. If he folds and makes it anyway (which I’m sure he will).
Ayumi is competing with more popular choices like Phoenix Wright and Professor Layton so her chances are based on the shock factor or if Nintendo ever decides to localize the games.
I’m really looking forward to the Brawl one because Sakurai was more open to talk about cuts and considerations that go around.
I hope Takamaru does get in the next one… his game was on the Famicom Disk System, so it’s probably safe to assume it’s retro, and it had crossovers with Samurai Warriors and Captain Rainbow, so that’s already a little bit more involved than, say, Duck Hunt was. The only thing really hurting Takamaru is that his game was not released internationally, but then again, Samurai Warriors 3 with the Murasame Castle mode was, so it’s not like he’s COMPLETELY unknown. Plus, Assist Trophy too.
I’m not really counting on Ayumi ever making it in unless we either: a) Get a localized version of Famicom Detective Club like Earthbound Origins or b) The series is revived in Japan. Both scenarios seem highly unlikely at this point. So, go PW and PL? (I’d think Layton would be more likely than Wright also.)
Can you imagine what would happen if James Bond was in Melee??? That still baffles me, especially considering the fandom’s aversion to suggestions of non video game characters in Smash.
Well, the whole reason Bond was even considered was because of Goldeneye on N64. That game kinda took on a life of its own, despite obviously being based on the movie. It was also one of the most popular games on the N64 and pretty important to the innovation in the FPS genre.
That said, if Rare was still a second-party developer to Nintendo, I could’ve seen Joanna Dark getting in Smash. She would have been the solution to Bond in Smash that Perfect Dark was to Rare’s FPS games: she’s a Rare-created character (so no copyright red tape) who uses futuristic and alien weaponry in her game (“no real guns” solution for Smash, room for innovation in FPS), yet Perfect Dark retained the same basic gameplay that Goldeneye did.