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An idea I’ve had at least for Ganondorf, is that they could take his current moveset and give it to Black Shadow (Because he seems like he’d be more of a C. Falcon clone), then they could give Ganondorf dual-wielding swords or magical attacks.

It’s a compromise that gives Zelda fans a proper Ganondorf, but it doesn’t screw over the people who enjoy what we’ve gotten since Melee.

From: Potential Characters for the Next Smash Roster [Part 2]

While Tibby himself may not be the most interesting character in the Rhythm Heaven series, choosing him does present the option of referencing several mini-games in one character, as opposed to other popular picks who would be stuck with their own games. I like the direction you took it in, and while I do have trouble imagining how I’d play a rhythm-based character in a fighting game, I think you’re on the right track. As people have mentioned before me, the biggest issue is keeping the beat. If it’s his own beat that’s independent of the music, then the music that’s playing might mess with player’s timing. If it’s to the beat of the music, then he’ll end up playing differently according to what song is being played, which would complicate learning him. At the same time, I can’t imagine a Rhythm Heaven character without some sort of timing/rhythm mechanic, so I don’t know if there’s any easy way to go about it.

From: Dream Smashers – Tibby

speaking of… your comment to my comment (lol), i agree: stage variety is a problem that metroid shares with DK (it’s not only those two, though). i think that it’s fine and pretty natural to have DK provide the jungle stage, metroid the cavern stage, earthbound the city stage etc. … but with returning stages, it becomes very redundant. there’s no need for 2-3 jungle stages. why not make a stage in the brambles? or one in the ruins? you’d better represent the series and also have more variety in general. but then, it’s a problem that only, like, mario, zelda and kirby manage to avoid.
and DK feels very neglected too, even more than metroid (how come by smash 4 we still don’t have dixie? it doesn’t make any sense). but i don’t know, i get the impression that old sak gets it a bit better. donkey and diddy have a lot of references to the original games, even niche ones like DK64 or donkey konga, which is pretty cool, and in the subspace emissary i think they were by far the two characters who were funnier and felt the most like themselves. plus, the music selection is good (or at least, it was in brawl, before we got 20 DK swing remixes), with a couple of fan-favorites like k.rool’s theme and the stickerbush symphony. though, with how good DK’s music generally is, it should have like 20 tracks. i mean different tracks. but at least in brawl it was good.
metroid never really got any of this. the music looks like it’s selected randomly (no lower norfair? no green/red brinstar? no torvus bog? and instead, the fucking burning lava fish??? other series all have their most iconic tunes in), the stages all look the same even way more than DK’s ones, zero suit samus feels like they took an incredibly small part of samus’ character and of the series in general and randomly made a big deal out of it, pulling almost the whole moveset out of nothing. they never made a stage out of metroid prime, save for the incredibly generic frigate orpheon that’s a very small and unimportant part of the game. they took the character designs from other m, the less beloved entry in the series, seemingly with no reason. they even changed samus’ run from super metroid’s one to other m’s. and then of course smash 4’s ridley is completely wrong, from the way he moves, to the random transformation he never did, to the fact that you can get him by your side which feels so random… like, why can you side with ridley but not with metal face? and samus’ moveset at this point feels very old and disconnected from what the character really does. it was fine for smash 64, but now it would be the time to change it up a bit. samus isn’t this physical and limited.
it’s like the attention to detail that applies to all the other series is completely lost on metroid. it’s pretty frustating and that’s one more reason to not really trust old sak’s opinion on ridley.
it feels like he really has no idea about what metroid is about and what it is that the series’ fans love most. the locations, the music, samus’ characterization, what you feel when you fight against ridley (i’ll say it: an equal match to the death, with a very fast pace, the only boss in the series to do this, that’s also why so many metroid fans feel like he is a good pick to be playable), which games are the most beloved entries… they sistematically get it all wrong. sometimes it feels like he never even played them. DK gest criminally few things in smash, too, but i’d say it has all the essentials things and they’re made well. metroid doesn’t.

and, to give my 2 cents on wario and the fire emblem overrepresentation:
wario is fine as he is. it’s a bit of a shame for the shoulder bash (at least make it the slide attack…?), but the way he is now provides a lot of variety to the cast and he still feels a lot like wario, really. the only thing i’d change is that i’d make the overalls the default costume. i know he’s based on wario ware, but for me wario will always have that attire. plus, online you only ever see overalls wario.

for fire emblem i think it’s just justification after justification to really make what he wants.
-“see, the circumstances really make it so that we reclutanctly have to bring roy back. we need a veteran for melee and one for brawl.”
-“but melee already has mewtwo.”
-“yes, but he doesn’t count because reasons, so we’ll just bring back the second most popular one… except of course the ice climbers, we can’t make them. and except young link, too, since there’s alreay toon link. guess it’s gotta be between pichu and roy, soooo…”
-“why not just have two veterans from brawl then? it’s still missing quite a lot of char-…”
-“SSSSSSSSSSSST.”
it applies for corrin and lucina, as well. how coincidential that the stars always line up just for fire emblem! (and kid icarus too).
plus, hadn’t he had the idea about robin, we would have gotten boring-ass chrom who already had a moveset ready. so i don’t think uniqueness really had that important of a role to play. apparently chrom would have been allowed to be “boring”. while dixie kong didn’t. bah. i’d respect him more if he just said “i fucking love fire emblem!” and leave it at that.

From: Featured Comments

Wow, I didn’t expect my comment to be featured! But you are right. Even I myself mentioned Roy being in Melee. I should have written second true (not clone) FE character. Yeah, that article did a very accurate analysis on Corrin’s inclusion. I think that Smash could have been perfectly fine with Marth, Ike, Lucina and Robin in the main game, and Corrin as DLC. Also, I believe Sakurai could have arranged individual picks differently when he realized that Roy was the only real option left for Melee and done it this way:

Mewtwo: Melee. He was even the first DLC character, so it makes sense.
Lucas: Brawl.
Ryu: Classical fighter.
Cloud: RPG character.
Bayonetta: Ballot character.
Corrin: Promotion character.
Popular Nintendo franchise newcomer. Extra points if it comes from an underrepresented franchise or one that has not received new characters lately.

I think it would have been a bit more balanced this way. I expected DLC to deliver some love to classical Nintendo franchises but, in the end, Corrin was the only Nintendo newcomer among 3 veterans, 2 3rd party characters and the ballot character, which also turned out to not be a 1st party character. Well, now lets see what the next Smash game brings to the table! Certain characters may not have made the cut this time, not even as DLC, but that does not mean there will not be another future possibility!

From: Featured Comments

“We need a popular Melee vet”
“But Mewtwo is already coming, so we don’t need another Pokemon. Toon Link is too similar to Young Link. Ice Climbers are impossible. Shit, that leaves Roy”.

I really don’t get why Mewtwo doesn’t count as a Melee vet in terms of the quota. I mean, Lucas was even revealed after Mewtwo’s trailer instead of with Roy.

“Guess you don’t like any fighting game, as almost ALL of them have clones. Ken, Ryu, Evil Ryu, Akuma… King of Fighters has a ton of clones, Mortal Kombat…and correct me if I’m wrong, Tekken does too.”

Well to be honest I don’t play other fighting games (I would like to get into MKX though). I know other fighting games do it too but it’s always been a tacky trend. It should be pointed out that Mortal Kombat decloned all its clones, even making their appearances radically different from each other. Reptile was only a clone in MK1 (where he was an unplayable bonus fight), and was immediately given his own moveset in MK2. Same applies to Smoke, Noob Saibot and Jade, unplayable clones in MK2, unique fighters in MK3. Even characters who weren’t clones but were palette swaps were given redesigns to make them more unique in later games (Ermac). It should be noted the only clones in Mortal Kombat that haven’t been decloned haven’t been playable since Armageddon (the last game before the reboot). Also, while pretty minor in comparison, Street Fighter V tried to differentiate Ryu and Ken a bit more.

Honestly would some change be wrong? Wouldn’t it be fun and exciting to see some of these characters get a fresh new spin on the them? I mean, people were fine with Bowser and Pit getting new moves, so why can’t the clones?

“So it’s not a matter or getting newer content…it’s a matter of getting content at all.”

I’m well aware that unique characters wouldn’t be made in the time spent to make clones. As weird as this sounds, however, I honestly would prefer not to have that content at all. Clones have have always caused trouble, especially in Melee where most of the seeds were sown. Now the first part of this is speculation, but I feel the reason Jigglypuff made it over Mewtwo in Smash 64 (we know Mewtwo was planned) was because she took less dev time because she could use Kirby as a base. Granted, Smash 64 had a limited budget so it was probably too hard to make Mewtwo in the time they had, but this decision has led to Jiggs returning every game instead of Mewtwo (who in terms of the actual Pokemon franchise is way more important). But in Melee the clone binge at the end had a big impact on characters and the effects of linger to this day. Four of them were cut in Brawl (with good reason) basically proving how much of throw-away additions they were, and the two that weren’t were Ganondorf (who if never added in Melee, most definitely would have made it into Brawl with a unique moveset) and Falco (who got in over Wolf in Smash 4 despite being less unique than him compared to Fox). Brawl made a good effort to cut down on the clone stuff by cutting most of them and the new ones being more unique. But then Smash 4 went backwards and did what Melee did, and all three overrep their series (I mean, sure Mario is the biggest franchise so it should have the most characters, but Bowser Jr and Rosalina did a good job, bringing Doc back was unnecessary) and meant we got less alternate costumes for characters (more alts would have been great). Sakurai has single-handedly damaged Dark Pit and Lucina’s reputations as characters thanks to Smash 4, and I guarantee if they were alts like intended they wouldn’t have been hated. I mean, Koopaling fans love the Koopaling alts, even if they aren’t their own characters. And then Roy as DLC. Five dollars for a clone character? What a rip. And while were on this subject, Roy’s return was the fault of clones; he only made it into Melee due to the clone binge, and having some fans in Melee is the only reason he came back (in the Fire Emblem fandom, he is one of the least popular lords in the franchise). He never got in on his own merits; if Sakurai never added him in Melee he’d have never made it into Smash.

There is three reasons I am against clones. The first is that they tend to be tacky filler that only exist to pad out a game’s roster, going for quantity over quality, and making things more of a grind like challenges that require you to beat a mode with every character. The second is because they sometimes tend to be characters nobody had demand for or aren’t popular and wouldn’t have gotten in on their own merits (Dr. Mario, Roy, Pichu, Dark Pit). And the last, and probably the most important one: Wasted Potential. Even ignoring Ganondorf, as a fan of Wind Waker I am disappointed about Toon Link not utilising the Deku Leaf, Skull Hammer or Grappling Hook in his moveset. It just reeks of wasted possibilities, to have different Links spanning different games and eras only for them to use the same items. And Hyrule Warriors has all three Links that are playable in Smash and none of them are clones. And while Wolf has mostly unique normals, it’s pretty lame how his specials and Final Smash are cloned, instead of doing something more unique to match his personality and brutality (such as giving him weapons from Assault). And Lucas is so close to being a fully unique with his only clone moves being his Up Aerial, Down Tilt, Forward Smash, Specials and Final Smash, and his specials are available as customs for Ness, and yet they couldn’t even go all the way and complete him in Smash 4. He could had new moves like PK Earth and PK Beam or something.

Also, to prove how pointless some clones really are, they could have easily added a unique custom option for Marth that removes his tipper at the cost of losing the sweetspot. No need to make another character for just that.

From: Featured Comments

Have to agree with Spazzy_D about the Wii U being Nintendo’s worst home console. It had a good run and I certainly don’t regret my purchase, but I feel its library of games is ultimately outclassed by those of all Nintendo’s other home consoles.

From: SourceCast #22 — The Wii U’s Report Card w/NintenDaan and Ash Paulsen

I am aware of why the prices of the two games are different, which still doesn’t justify how the Wii-U version is fairly priced when it’s 20 dollars more.

Yes. He’s promoting games, but he always has been promoting the heck out of Fire Emblem even when it was still flopping in the United States. It wasn’t until Awakening came out & Nintendo decided to make free downloadable demoes for their games that people actually got to see how great it was.

Well believe it or not, it wasn’t a coincidence that Sakurai decided to make one of Pit’s colors in Brawl all black and dark.

The Wii Fit series is a casual utility for individuals to lose weight. You can’t really say that it’s got a great “story” and “characters” like the rest of Nintendo games. As I said previously, not just any character should be qualified.

I’m not going to repeat what i just said about Fire Emblem.

To reply what you said to Magcargo Man about clones: Games have evolved. Simple as that. Half of Tekken 1’s roster was clones, but now we are at the point in fighting games where data has greatly expanded & clones are no longer necessary. Tekken 7, Mortal Kombat X, Street Fighter V, Dead Or Alive 5, Blazblue: Chronophantasma, no clones to be found. Sakurai is the only developer that still cuts corners with them.

From: Featured Comments

I wanted to take my time in responding to both Sakurai articles, and I missed the chance to be featured on either of them >.< Oh well, still gonna finish up and post those comments.

But, if I may elaborate on my comment that did get featured, since I don’t think I worded it well or used the right examples…
Let’s look at Bowser. He’s often shown as being way bigger than Mario is, but if you look at most of the games where he has a significant size difference over Mario, he’s usually using a Grand Star or some other power source to increase his size. In his normal form, he is still larger than Mario, but to a more reasonable scale. Ganondorf has had multiple different incarnations throughout the series as well, though as I haven’t played many games with him in it, I couldn’t tell you if he’s had a significant size change between them. Even if different versions have had different sizes, it’s important to note that Smash has been using his Twilight Princess version since Brawl, and while I never finished Twilight Princess, I’m fairly certain that Ganondorf retains a consistent size throughout the game, meaning that as far as that version of him goes, his other depictions aren’t relevant.

Ridley, on the other hand, is consistently shown as “way bigger than Samus”. The only time I can think of where that’s not true is the NES Metroid game, though I’d personally chalk that up to limitations of the NES. Even in Super Metroid, Ridley is still a lot larger than Samus, and he’s crouching in all the pictures I can find, meaning he’s even bigger than he looks. There isn’t really a precedent for a character as large as Ridley to appear in a Smash setting, especially when you have to consider how the game would function with four or even eight of him on a stage at a time.

When I word things like this, I don’t want to give people the impression that I would be opposed to a playable Ridley. Sakurai has a track record for making the unfeasible feasible, and maybe he could figure out a way to make Ridley work without compromising his design or character in the future. I just want to give context as to why the “Ridley’s too big” argument is actually a valid one that needs to be taken into consideration before you consider Ridley as a playable character.

From: Featured Comments

I will concede that maybe I shouldn’t have used the word ‘favorite’ in my comment, I meant to say that there are people who would like to play as those characters. Also, last time I checked, both Kid Icarus: Uprising and Fire Emblem Awakening sold well. VGChartz says Uprising broke 1 million sales, and Awakening reached 2 million, though I do recall SmashChu mentioning that the site’s methods of getting those numbers were questionable. To say that Sakurai threw in Dr. Mario isn’t entirely accurate, since there is data of him that implied he was worked on for Brawl, but was eventually cut for whatever reason. When I mentioned Ken and Ryu playing similarly, I said that in the sense that they still have the same special moves; Hadouken, Shoryuken, and Tatsumaki, though I do know that even those moves have their variances and their standard and super attacks do differ.

Also, if I may piggy-back off this comment while replying to MagcargoMan…

To your first point, I was trying to explain why I don’t find that argument to be a good one. Smash is unique in the way that it handles characters, to the point where I don’t think holding it to the expectations of other fighting games is a fair standard. In the same sense, I wouldn’t hold Mario Kart to the expectations of standard racing games.

To the next one, they *were* alts. Sakurai mentioned this in the past. Lucina, Dr. Mario, and Dark Pit were alts of Marth, Mario, and Pit respectively, but since they had extra development time (and I guess since they already had the models ready), they upgraded them to separate characters. He mentions wanting to do the same with Alph, but there wasn’t enough that could separate him from Olimar. I’m honestly not sure why this is brought up so often as a point of contention, because from my perspective, you’re asking to downgrade the characters from where they are now. If they were alts, they’d essentially be even more clones than they are now, the only difference is you don’t see their icons on the character selection screen. You do bring up a good point with Bowser Jr. though, since that’s seven clones added to the game that no one complains about, yet there are three others that seem to draw all the attention.

And to your last point, Ganondorf isn’t quite in the same boat as other clones in my opinion. Even back in Melee, when only two or three of his moves were different from Captain Falcon’s, his playstyle was still radically different from Falcon’s. He has received a few animation changes since then to further separate him from Falcon, which puts him in semi-clone status right now rather than the full clone he was in Melee. Though I do get the argument, some people would rather have a completely different Ganondorf.

From: Featured Comments