Hello! We are working very hard on translating the Melee website. We decided to ramp up our translation focus on the character introduction pages in order to give everyone a better picture of Melee, and its character. Special thanks to soma for providing assistance with this translation.
All comments were originally written by Sakurai himself. You can see Sakurai’s individual picture comments by hovering your mouse over the image. Originally pictures were given their own page, but for the sake of brevity I combined them. The original page can be accessed here. Translator notes are marked by [TN].
Bowser:
Updated: July 24th, 2001
I have to write about the new characters too.
And so, Bowser!
With a frame that’s several times larger than your average character, you can almost hear the ground shake as he walks and unleashes slow but destructive attacks.
Now that I think about it, when I hosted the “Characters you want to appear in 2,[TN1]” he was the runaway winner.
Balancing him has been very difficult.
If I want to express his character, he ends up with a lot of attack power, a lot of defense, and he’s hard to launch, and he becomes way too strong.
Properly express the unique traits of a character, but make them balanced.
It makes my head hurt a little.
But, as of now, his Fire Breath feels really good to use.
(Images taken during development)
There are already people saying that Bowser is the strongest character, but as is usually the case the character that’s the strongest at the beginning usually ends up pretty weak in the end.
1. Bowser rises.
2. Whirling Fortress. A spin attack that can also rise into the air.
3.A terrifying full-body press. P– please stop!
4.Bowser Bomb is from Super Mario Bros. 3.
5.Koopa Klaw. Please don’t eat him.
6.Fire Breath. You can keep holding the button to keep breathing fire.
| Special Moves | |
| Neutral Special: | Fire Breath |
| Side Special: | Koopa Klaw |
| Up Special: | Whirling Fortress |
| Down Special: | Bowser Bomb |
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“There are already people saying that Bowser is the strongest character, but as is usually the case the character that’s the strongest at the beginning usually ends up pretty weak in the end.”
Looks like Sakurai inadverdently predicted Bowser’s low tier placement, haha.
I’m not surprised Sakurai had trouble balancing Bowser. Even as someone who never looked up tiers until I was into Brawl, he never really felt “right” to me. Smash 4 was when he finally did feel “right,” and I see him at least no longer as low on he tiers as he was in Melee or Brawl.
“There are already people saying that Bowser is the strongest character, but as is usually the case the character that’s the strongest at the beginning usually ends up pretty weak in the end.” Wow…nailed the head on that one lol
“Please don’t eat him”, isn’t that the same thing he said with that pic of Charizard biting an Waddle Dee? lol