Hello! We are proud to release the fifth episode of SourceCast. SourceCast is now joined with SmashCast, SmashBoard’s bi-weekly podcast to to create the ultimate weekly Smash podcast. For more information, check the announcement. Make sure to subscribe on iTunes, or Twitter to stay up to date with the latest releases.
SourceCast #6 will be hosted live on Twitch.
EST: 4 PM (12/15/2015)
GMT: 10 PM (12/15/2015)
JPN: 7 AM (12/16/2015)
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SG Choice #9 — All Stars (Third Party) by Source Gaming Team
Characters vs. Companies by TheAnvil
Sakurai is an Artist not a Businessman by PushDustIn
A Return to Form by SmashChu
The Future of Smash is Characters by PushDustIn
Case for MasterChief by Spazzy_D
Case for Lara Croft by Spazzy_D
- Smash Ultimate Development Timeline - May 16, 2020
- Straight from the Source: Koji Igarashi on Castlevania in Smash, Bloodstained - October 16, 2018
- Sakurai Discusses Isabelle, Echoes, and Newcomers - September 26, 2018
Why is Sakurai even holding this “Smash Ballot”? This shouldn’t even be a thing. He says this is a “dedication to the fans”, you mean he hasn’t dedicated the actual game to the fans? It shouldn’t take a ridiculous poll to determine that people have wanted characters like King K. Rool, because people have been demanding his inclusion since Brawl development. He should have been in Smash 4 from the start & the only reason why he’s not is because we have a narcissist in charge who feels giving an alternate color its own character slot is more important. Makes me sick.
I think Sakurai made similar ballots for Melee and Brawl. Nintendo has even said that they would use this for future games (Smash 5?), so this really isn’t all that different. The only key difference I can tell is that for the Smash Ballot, the characters have a chance in making it as DLC, instead of just in the next installment.
As for the clones (Doc, Pitoo, and Girl Marth), they were made into separate characters for reasons. Dr. Mario was made not to disappoint Melee fans, Dark Pit was made because he was given a completely different Final Smash (It would be weird seeing him use the three sacred treasures), and Lucina was made because her blade didn’t have Marth’s tipper. They were made into separate characters because clones take much less time to develop than unique characters (why do you think there were so many in Melee) and so wouldn’t cost as much development wise. Even a small difference in characteristics requires a different character slot.
Also my for the point of the smash ballot, who (besides spazzy), called Cloud Strife.
Pittoo’s final smash, AKA, Daybreak, AKA an item that appears in nearly every battle. That’s the point, his logic is all over the place. He can copy & paste Pit & give him a different Final Smash, yet how many characters have Final Smashes that suck & new got new ones? The only characters that got new & improved Final Smashes were characters he likes. I understand that people want Wolf, but what do they miss about him? He’s just going to have the Landmaster because Sakurai doesn’t want to bother coming up with a more creative move for him.
Pit’s Final Smash isn’t Daybreak — it’s the Dark Pit Staff, which is essentially just a modified version of Zelda’s Final Smash. It took practically no effort to include, and you sound ignorant complaining about it. Dark Pit getting his own Final Smash didn’t prevent any other character from getting a new one.
*Dark Pit
There is creativity, but there also is time and development constraints. Dark Pit’s development time would not have been enough development time to make King K. Rool.
Also there have been polls for every single game in the Smash series (with increasingly larger scope- it started as an internal poll, then Japanese only, and now worldwide.) – it is free market intelligence.
King K. Rool hasn’t been relevant since what? The SNES? His fans are the more hardcore Nintendo and Smash Bros fans which are actually the minority of the consumer base of Smash Bros- most people who buy Smash are more “casual” players.
Also remember different characters have different popularity depending on the region- like in Japan they believe Kirby is underrepresented while most people outside of Japan thinks Kirby is fine and Donkey Kong is underrepresented.
I am not a fan of K. Rool, but I hope he gets in for his fans (and maybe be brought back to the DK franchise.)
So…tell me. Why did Sakurai spend all that time to give Palutena 12 different special moves instead of just variations? How did he have the time to do that & why her? I’d love to see someone try defending that.
Additionally, when Japanese developers release games, they count on the west to earn them the most money because especially in the U.S. that’s their biggest market.
“King K. Rool hasn’t been relevant since what? The SNES?”
The dog from Duck Hunt hasn’t been relevant since what? The NES?
Pit hasn’t been relevant since what? Game Boy? & it’s only because of Sakurai that changed.
& I kind of have to agree, when Sakurai’s own pet project has more characters than Donkey Kong, that is pretty alarming, & neither of them are Medusa.
Palutena’s custom moves… Probably because he had just finished working on KI Uprising and so knew a lot about the game. I honestly would have preferred moves like this across the board, but Palutena really needs them the most. Duck Hunt and Pit are retro characters, in the same vein as Ice Climbers, G&W, and Rob. Sakurai brought back the KI series, not just Pit. DK has recent games, with its own set of villains, so it can’t be “revived”.
When I sent the poll to my boyfriend he kept asking if it was for Smash and I said just vote for gaming as a whole. I wonder if people voted in context of Smash instead of gaming as a whole.
He also didn’t vote for tetromino because it isn’t a character, etc.
It makes me wonder about how people voted.
I grew up restricted from Video Games till playstation so I feel like my choices were based on how important they were to the industry and if non gamers/more casual players I knew would recognize the characters.
Dark Pit Staff acts more like Light Arrow than anything. I would compare Daybreak to Zero Laser, or at least half of the direction Final Smashes. Addressing each final smash that changed in order
Charizard:Removed from Trainer
Dedede:waddle Dee army can’t really KO. At all.
Kirby:Kirby Return to Dreamland is now the new Kirby, cook Kirby has no KO power
Lucario:Mega Evolution is now a thing
Luigi:Similar to Waddle Dee army, can’t KO at all
Pit:First game in 25 years, and Palutena is now a fighter. No KO power
Rob:Can rack up to 300% damage, but no KO potential.
Zero Suit Samus:Now separate fighter from normal Samus. No KO power.
Every final smash change is either because the initial move lacks KO power, a new feature that everyone loves in the origin game, or a lack of being able to transform.
Again, Palutena’s different special moves getting axed wouldn’t have made enough time to make a fully fledged newcomer such as King K. Rool. I don’t understand why she got those specials either but I always thought it was because she was the only newcomer without any real unique gimmick or play style so they gave her all the customs to set her apart? Who knows.
I know some people think their is “Sakurai Bias” but he was also the guy who purposely made Kirby bad in Melee so people didn’t think he was making his own characters overpowered and how he didn’t add in King Dedede or Metaknight until Brawl- the Last Smash game where HAL had helped with development. Sakurai goes tot the original creators of characters and asks for permission for artistic liberties with the character such as in design (He asked Miyamoto for changing Olimar’s space suit,) situations they will be put in (Snake’s choke grab,) and playstyle (Most notably in the 3rd party characters, Pokemon, and FE characters.)
It makes sense that, like when he was with HAL, characters that he and his team or studio are involved with are easier to use since it requires less work okaying the way they are portrayed in Smash. He also has said he designed things in Uprising with things like Smash Bros. in mind and how it would play in a different setting. Another reason we see so many Uprising enemies in Smash Run on the 3DS is the fact that the models and animations as well as assets for them (like lasers and sound FX) are already done and optimized for the 3DS. Uprising was just really convenient to use for the development team.
King K. Rool would also be the second Western designed Nintendo character in the roster after Diddy Kong- I am curious if he met with Steve Mayles when adding in Diddy in Brawl (Rareware’s famed character designer responsible for Banjo & Kazooie, the modern Kong family, etc. nd now working at Playtonic games.)
We definitely are running out of Nintendo all-stars from the past to add in Smash so honestly K. Rool (or some other DK character) is probably going to come eventually- for all we know he can make an appearance in tomorrow’s direct.
Dang man. That’s some fighting words right there. xD
You have no idea what you’re talking about. Dark Pit did not prevent K. Rool from being included. It probably took a few days to make Dark Pit into his own character. It’d take months to add K. Rool.
I think you are looking at this “Smash Ballot” in the very wrong way. Smash Ballot was never meant to be a voting poll; officials didn’t even stated it that it is. Smash Ballot is more like a submission box, where fans not just giving out characters as requests, but ideas for the officials. Whether those characters may not make it in the DLC, they still can keep it as ideas for the future games, possibly for Smash 5 IF they’re planning for it.
This is something that every fans are taking things as a misunderstanding. Hardcore fans tend to make up of some rules or information that the officials (including Sakurai himself) never even said before, such as only characters in Nintendo platforms are allowed, anime/cartoon characters are acceptable, Sakurai hates Ridley so he can’t join in, etc. Nobody from the officials ever said that, but fans tend to believe in those nonsense, as this means they’re hyping irresponsibly.
Dark Pit was never meant to be a prevention of K. Rool’s inclusion, and that argument is strongly false. You just don’t know how long it takes to create a character. Clones are simple and quicker to create, as it just swap the skins of the original character and adjust its power level, that’s all. However, new comers takes a lot of time to create a character from scratch. As you didn’t noticed, new comers takes few months to create, approximately 4-5 months of production. Plus the chosen character must be unique; something that only that character can do as others can’t; such as Ryu’s command moves, Cloud’s Limit Break, Little Mac’s KO gauge, etc. Although it’s important for that character to be popular and iconic, that’s not enough. Sakurai just can’t choose anybody or everybody if that character’s not unique but simply generic. I don’t know about K. Rool’s case, but maybe his exclusion is Sakurai had difficulties on what he could add to him, or avoided him as he might end up becoming a clone of someone (maybe Bowser?). It’s not Sakurai hates him; he have his own reasons too and it’s understandable.
Eventually, I’m not a fan of K. Rool, nor any DK series. But even if K. Rool became a DLC character, I’d be welcoming him anyways, as I still think the final roster will be perfect in the end.
The actual form said differently.
Yes, IF, because Mario alone is all the drawing power Nintendo needs.
I agree, Sakurai makes the rules up as he goes along. I never believe anything the man says, except for when it’s in regards to his own characters. Instead of K. Rool, he’ll just end up creating a new Kid Icarus character that is big & sluggish like K. Rool, then put him in Smash. Okay, thanks for clarifying that with me.
Again, don’t believe everything the man says. He wants us to feel sympathetic for him every time he forcefully brings up how hard he works, even though most of his job involves just bossing his triple-digit team around. I don’t see why people are under the impression that he does _all_ the work, & the bigger the team he has, the shorter the time it should take to complete tasks.
Because Dark Pit is unique. The specific features you mentioned are called gimmicks, & if my memory serves me, Palutena, Greninja, Pac-Man, and the dog don’t have any, & in some cases I prefer they don’t. Sakurai is supposed to be a “creative genius”, though. Is it because K. Rool is just too pathetic of a character, or is it because Sakurai is just too incompetent? If he can think of moves for a dog that laughs, why can’t he think of moves for a heavy-set character, which the roster has very few of, & also suffers from DID? There are only 3 “big” characters in the whole roster, there are over 10 characters with swords & Sakurai has no problems adding many more.
if i could say super smash bros for wii u and 3ds is so good right now but people still think melee is the best people really should pay attention to smash wii u/3ds because they are new i do know people have been asking if there’s going to be a new smash bros but if that happened what ideas would they come up with there’s nothing else new they could ever come up with so i think its best to stop making smash bros and keep smash wii u and 3ds the most populated game ever and also on Nintendo Miiverse people want wolf as DLC but who knows if that will happen we have to see on Tuesday when they have the smash bros video.
Didn’t mean to reply for the second comment and I can’t edit comments on here. Sorry about that.
Again Shovel Knight kind of shows people voting with Smash in mind. To me Commander Video and Quote were the first few Indie games that really jumped onto the indie scene and become more popular and withstood time unlike most indies that get forgotten in a year or two. Shovel Knight’s legacy isn’t for sure yet. Let shovel knight grow to see if the series dies or continues.
Maybe we should wait before calling recent/popular game characters “all stars.” Most all stars also have their series in the best selling video game franchises of all time too and some games are fads and fade into obscurity.
Minecraft is kind of in a league of its own in terms of Indies. Also I feel like it’s mascot is kind of the creeper similar to dragon quest’s slime or pokemon’s pikachu, etc.
Also Jack Frost from SMT has had his own game- On the virtual boy of all things! I think sometimes mob monsters work in smash if Pokemon can work.
(Also Katamari has a single Japan-only DS puzzle game. Too bad Pac-Man’s taunt didn’t reference him since he was Modern Namco’s mascot alongside pac for a while.)
That being said I am not sure if we will see more third party characters in DLC… Would be nice to see some fan favorite Nintendo characters finally get in.
i am really hopping for a Melee past stage in smash bros wii u because there is more brawl past stages then melee and i think it would make melee fans happy if a past stage is to be seen. also i think a Pokemon fighter would be good to see as well because pokemon z is coming out and it would make smash fans happy. super smash bros wii u and 3ds are full of content which is very good and one of the best smash games ever so that would make anybody super happy.
“Laura Craft”? What happened there, some kind of autocorrect shenanigans?
Some sort of typo…that no longer exists.
One is fixed, but not the other. Now it says “Lara Craft”.