Vidya Thoughts

Note: This article is by my brother, Drew

It is often said that the roster for Super Smash Bros. is a Hall of Fame for the entire video game industry. Is it? Would any such institution enshrine Dark Pit? Can you imagine a bronze bust being carved to depict Chrom? Did you even play Arms? For the record, my answer to those questions are as follows: No, no, and yes but I didn’t like it very much.

I have a decently good feeling that most people reading this would provide the exact same answers, with the only exception being the five people who liked Arms and have made it a core part of their personality to performatively beg for Arms 2 out of every Nintendo Direct. 

The roster for Super Smash Bros. is not a Hall of Fame, nor is it even a Hall of Very Good. If anything, it is a collection of premium action figures that shares a plastic storage container with the kinds of cheap plastic ephemera that one might get in exchange for tickets at Chuck E Cheese. You know what I’m talking about! If you have children of your own, you are probably reading this when you should be sifting through such a trove of worthless garbage to make order out of chaos. I’m doing the same thing!

Let’s procrastinate together: I’m going to categorize every member of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s roster based on how I believe they were ultimately selected for inclusion. Some characters are Tom Brady, other characters are Tom Brady’s friends, and other other characters have only ever heard of Tom Brady. Like Tom Brady’s children!

Additionally, I’ve provided speculation on how much I expect each group to grow and change in the very near future. Or kind of near future. Distant future? Don’t make me wait too long. I’m clearly bereft of productive tasks to engage in!

Quintessential Nintendians

This is not a very interesting category, so let’s just blow through this: Close your eyes and think about Nintendo. Boom! We’re done here.

Oh, what’s that? You didn’t picture Inkling, Olimar, or Shulk? You may have a case of the olds, my friend. These are the public faces Nintendo likes to present when showcasing their wares in the modern day. The holy trinity of Mario, Zelda, and Metroid has diversified, even if longtime fans have not. It is hard to imagine any one of these characters ever being absent from any future titles that may be released down the road. Technically, Pokemon Trainer was left out of the Wii U/3DS games, but that was due to hardware limitations. Even then, Charizard kept the spot warm until handheld technology caught up with Sakurai’s ambitions. 

Growth Potential: Unlikely! The Switch wasn’t a hot bed for new IP from Nintendo, and I don’t think any characters transcended their current place in the lineup like Villager/Isabelle did with the releases of New Leaf and New Horizons. I will personally use this space to petition for the Go board from Clubhouse Games to make the cut next time. I will not settle for an Assist Trophy.

Smash Hall of Famers

So maybe Super Smash Bros. isn’t a Hall of Fame for video games, but it is a Hall of Fame for itself. Hidden characters from the original game like Ness, Jigglypuff, and Captain Falcon don’t seem likely to go anywhere, even if their fifteen minutes of fame have well and truly elapsed.

Can you imagine the uproar if “Falcon Punch” was more meme than reality? What kind of wild rant would Hungrybox go on if the Puffster was Designated for Assignment? I don’t want to live in that reality. I barely want to live in this one!

Also included in this section are characters with some amount of notoriety in the competitive community. Meta Knight was infamously broken in Brawl, and everyone grew up irritated at at least one Shiek player in Melee. I debated throwing both Fox and Falco into this category, too, but I opted not to since Miyamoto clearly still champions Fox from the sidelines and Falco’s crescent has waned so thoroughly since Melee that I’m not sure I even remember what it was like when he was viable. I think he used to be kind of fast? I don’t know.

Growth Potential: Before Nintendo pulled the plug on the game’s inclusion at EVO, I believe Joker was quite the rascal. I have not followed the competitive community much since then. Is that still the case? I’m not going to look it up. Regardless, I don’t think third party characters can be allowed in this category since their inclusion is always necessarily on a razor’s edge.

Knows a guy

Big ‘Player Two’ energy with these characters. Literal ‘Player Two’ energy for Diddy Kong and Ken! These folks are clearly just the ‘Plus One” for more important members of the roster. I, for one, would not invite Daisy to my wedding, but if Peach invited her? Who am I to decline Princess Toadstool? 

Roy is a great flag bearer for this group; he missed the cut in Brawl and I think everyone kind of understood why. He was a really fun counterpart to Marth in Melee, but Ike was the latest protagonist to headline a Fire Emblem game at the time and Marth was Marth. Last I heard, still is! Roy is/was disposable. And then he came back! Everyone rejoiced! Fun was had, laughs were shared…but if he was gone in the next game? I think we as a society would be able to move on. 

Growth Potential: Bandana Dee is always bandied about as a potential newcomer, and his claim to fame is knowing Kirby. He is also literally ‘Player Two’ in Forgotten Land! I could also see Octolings being added as an Echo of Inkling, I guess. More of an alternate costume type situation, really, but the heart wants what the heart wants and you gotta imagine those designers are looking for at least one easy Ctrl-C plus Ctrl-V to append to the talent pool.

Heel faction

What good are all of these babyfaces without their corresponding heels? I don’t have much to say about this bunch of miscreants. I love them, and I hope they all stick around forever! We already lost K. Rool for most of my lifetime. I only have one of those! I’d rather not spend the rest of it thinking about what could have been if Ridley hadn’t been added to Ultimate.

Growth Potential: Characters assigned to this role all have a counterpart in the ‘Quintessential Nintendian’ group, so any growth would probably need to come from those franchises. Of those series, only Pikmin, Animal Crossing, Splatoon, and Xenoblade lack a more sinister presence on the roster. Does Tom Nook count as a villain, even if his most defining characteristic is offering players an interest free loan they can pay off whenever they want if they even want to? Either way, I don’t see him joining the roster any time soon. I don’t play Xenoblade, but my guess is that somewhere in those 100 plus hours of grinding is a baddie that the weebs in your life would happily pop off for.

No, not like that!

Blatant NES pandering beneficiaries

The Nintendo Entertainment System is iconic. You know it, I know it, and you better believe Nintendo knows it. They sure won’t stop crowing about it! Yeah, yeah, we get it. You revolutionized the industry. Big whoop! Every game between Smash 64 and Ultimate saw some amount of NES creep, starting with Ice Climbers in Melee and wrapping up with Little Mac and Duck Hunt Dog on the Wii U/3DS. They’re running out of recognizable characters…

Growth Potential: …but Mach Rider is right there, as is Stanley the Ass Sprayer and Urban Champion himself. I know there is at least one person in Kyoto who is championing Urban Champion! Maybe the next game is their time to shine?

Lifetime achievement award winners

Other than the ‘Quintessential Nintendians’, this is the closest assemblage of fighters that this game has to a proverbial “Hall of Fame”. Pac-Man, Mega Man, and Simon represent the ‘Old Money’ of the aforementioned 8-bit era. Sonic and Ryu stand in for the superior 16-bit generation. Snake is there for gaming’s degenerate 32-bit lifers. Cloud, Sephiroth, and Hero have the eternal weeb demographic on lock. Everyone is here!

Growth Potential: Everyone is not here. Where is Bonk?! People are asking this. 

Seriously, there is a 100% chance this category grows with the next game. Sakurai is collecting industry icons, and he won’t be stopped! My money is on Leon S. Kennedy or Kiryu from the Yakuza series. Capcom and Sega clearly don’t mind working hand-in-hand with the Smash Bros. team. Square and Bandai-Namco are always a threat, too. We hardly need a third Final Fantasy VII representative, but who would say no to Tifa Lockhart? Not I. I would also not say no to Dig Dug, though that feels like a bit more of a longshot. 

Also, Goku???

Filler

Listen. These rosters aren’t going to make themselves, and it isn’t like Nintendo is just popping out Smash-grade characters like some kind of gaming industry Philip Rivers. You know who kind of is? The Pokemon Company and Game Freak. Love them, hate them, or ruefully indulge them, every generation of pocket monsters has at least one creature that Sora brass can look at and say “good enough”. This is also the ‘Anime Swordfighter’ category. Fire Emblem is all about its characters and the bonds you create with them by resetting the game until they don’t die. They are inevitable, like death and taxes and all of that bad stuff.

Growth Potential: Did you read what I just said? They will probably have two generations’ worth of Poked Mons to pull from plus whatever the hell Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave is. They might even put in the girl with toothpaste hair from Fire Emblem Engage! Her alt costumes could change her hair binary! How fun is that?

Dan Hibiki memorial for fun pranksters

Sakurai is a well-known proprietor of the fighting genre, and what is Smash but a fighting game (Don’t @ me. No, really. I don’t have socials. It won’t do you any good)? Once most fighters were established, they added some kind of silly character for players to fun around with. My brother used to brag about beating randos in the arcade with Dan Hibiki, Street Fighter’s pink-clad karate “master”. I personally enjoyed Gon, a little dinosaur who I believe is from some other media enterprise but for me is just “that little guy who shows up in Tekken 3”. He farts and has little boxing gloves! What a clown.

In Super Smash Bros., these toons are generally competent. They’re just weird! I’m a big fan of Piranha Plant. Diving off of a platform and then stretching out your neck to knock out an opponent is a really good way to alienate your pals. 

Growth Potential: The response to ol’ P.P. was odd. I don’t think the audience got it. I think they still don’t get it! This is a tough one to project. Would they consider adding the horse from Everybody 1-2 Switch? I don’t think they are very proud of that one. Perhaps the Chorus Men from Rhythm Heaven – long fabled to be on the proverbial Smash Bros. bubble – would function in a goofy manner. 

Marketing agenda items

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale was the first time I realized that these platform fighters could be seen as more of a venue for marketing than as an opportunity to put together a top-tier roster of familiar faces. Metal Gear Solid? Fantastic series that is primarily associated with PlayStation. Let’s give Raiden a ring. Dante from DMC? You meant Dante from dMc, right?

No? Oh. Well, here is Fat Princess! I believe Nintendo pulls this card, too. I don’t think anyone was legitimately begging for an Arms character and I won’t be convinced otherwise. This is just the big wigs at corporate putting their thumb on the scale to make their motion-controlled boxing novelty feel as legitimate as *real* video games like Ice Climber and Gyromite. The Miis are quite literally a marketing tool. You can deck them out in all kinds of apparel from characters who weren’t cool enough to make the main roster. You can’t play as Geno, no, but you can play as a hollowed out, soulless version of him with a blaster and a low poly count.

Growth Potential: Who is Nintendo trying to push these days? Pauline? I think Pauline has more than earned her spot, so I wouldn’t chalk that one up to an unnatural push from the sales team. I suppose they could throw a bone to Drag X Drive, though I’m not sure Nintendo even remembers they published that game. I do! It was okay. It’s not as bad as you think it is!

Nepo babies

You may know him as a creative genius who worked on the Kirby series, or you might know him as the guy who makes two hour videos explaining how to play a racing game that only uses two buttons. Or you might be one of those people who knows him as the Kid Icarus Uprising guy. If you aren’t one of those people, he would like you to consider being one of those people. Have a Dark Pit. 

Did you know that he also likes to play video games made by other people? Well, he does! And the fruits of that passion are Kazuya (?) and Terry (!). Okay?

Growth Potential: …Bandana Waddle Dee?

Annoying fans demanded us

There is a great anecdote from the book ‘The Console Wars’ by Blake Harris, the mostly accurate retelling of Sega and Nintendo’s heated competition in the early 1990’s, about Shigeru Miyamoto going to see the Super Mario Bros. movie. He went with a peer from Nintendo of America who had the unenviable task of asking the Mario creator how he felt about seeing his baby boy butchered on the big screen. As the story goes, Miyamoto just kind of smiled and nodded and didn’t say anything. One can only imagine what was going on inside of that coveted dome of his. 

“Have they considered making a movie with less story? Why aren’t there more Toads? Do we really need two Mario RPG serieses?”

I can’t speak for Masahiro, obviously. I only know that he has two televisions and some very well-kept house plants and that he doesn’t even need another person to play Overcooked with. However, I can imagine how he feels and I have to believe that he feels like some of the fans his games have accumulated talk too much. With Smash Bros. for Wii U/3DS, he put out a poll for fans to share who they wanted to appear in the game as downloadable content.

The results were never completely released but eventually it was confirmed that Sora was the number one choice of Smash fans around the world. Always the pragmatist, Sakurai ignored this outcome and invented the lie that Bayonetta won. See! He has to create narratives to distract us annoying peasants from filling his inbox with inane requests. Little does he know that I have a macro that spams every inbox at Bandai-Namco HQ with images of Booster from Super Mario RPG.

Growth Potential: I weep for a society that has to endure the fallout of a new Super Smash Bros. release without Waluigi.

Dated references

Potpourri, if you will. They can’t all be generational bangers. Sometimes you just need some topical additives to pad that character count. Toon Link made a lot of sense for Brawl. They were using that design any time they needed to make Link remotely cute! Young Link was perfect for Melee, too, since Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask were still fresh on everyone’s minds.

These days, well, I like them! I’m happy to have them! But, you know, they aren’t really seen much outside of these quarters. I suppose there is a rumored Ocarina of Time remake that could make Young Link relevant again? Toon Link will just have to sit on his adorable little paws and wait for that Four Swords Adventure on NSO shadow drop that is coming aaaaany day now. Zero Suit Samus is an even more wildly off-the-cuff reference to keep hogging a spot in the series. ZSS appears in one game! At the end! For an hour! It’s super cool, sure, but it is brief! 

Growth Potential: I mean, yeah, they are probably going to add someone like Poppy Kong from Donkey Kong Bananza who will undoubtedly never show her face again. What would you do? The game has north of 80 characters. Eternal ones don’t just grow on trees, you know!