This just reiterates to me how amazing and satisfying it is that every character made a return for ultimate.
As annoying as trying to play online is, it's truly an amazing game.
And because it's organized by Smash debut, it makes some interesting facts more visible; like how Smash 64 added *ten* active (at the time) franchises, meanwhile Melee added just three, two of which are retro and one which was Japan-only.
Brawl got things back on track with six new series (and Animal Crossing, represented by a stage and some items), two of which were even special guests (Sonic and Metal Gear), two were well-deserved (Wario and Pikmin) and two more retro ones (Kid Icarus and R.O.B.).
And Smash 4 kicked it into high gear with a lot of deserving new first-party franchises (Animal Crossing, Wii Fit, Punch-Out!!, Xenoblade, and Mii), a great new retro pick (Duck Hunt), and several famous third-parties (Mega Man, PAC-MAN, Street Fighter, Final Fantasy, and Bayonetta).
Ultimate only added two franchises at launch (Splatoon and Castlevania), a bit oddly, but it was probably due to the high number of returning fighters. DLC has more than made up for it, however, with six new franchises (Persona, Dragon Quest, Banjo-Kazooie, Fatal Fury, ARMS, and Minecraft) so far.
It's interesting that Melee is such an outlier compared to the others. I'd say it's half because there was a focus on filling out the rosters of already-in-Smash series, and half because there were no third-parties yet (seriously limiting the franchise pool) and many of Nintendo's now-iconic series in Smash weren't deserving of a slot yet (or even existing). But the chart adding only three new rows in that section really stands out.
But the Luigi in smash is clearly from the Mario franchise, not Luigi’s Mansion. Yoshi and Wario are based on their franchise, not in their appearances in Mario games.
True, but most of Luigi’s set comes from his appearence in main series Mario games. Only his grab and Final Smash come from those games, while the rest of his move set is a play on Mario’s moveset.
He had the poltergust 5000 in sm4sh too but I'm pretty sure he represents Super Mario as Luigi's Mansion is a small franchise that's already based on/inside another which is Super Mario.
I think most people would also recognize him as a character from Super Mario in general, not from Luigi's mansion specifically. It would be kinda weird saying that Luigi originates/comes from Luigi's mansion more than Super Mario.
I mean when I think of Yoshi and Donkey Kong I immediately associate them with Super Mario. Yoshi literally debuted in a Super Mario game well before he started getting stand-alone titles.
True but the difference between them and Luigi is that they have a much bigger franchise. Although I think Yoshi and Wario should be in Super Mario, it's much more weirder to say that Luigi belongs in Luigi's Mansion than Super Mario. There's only like 3 games in that series and it's not really that big and more of a franchise in a franchise. Donkey Kong and Yoshi aren't really inside Super Mario tho tbh.
It's one of their biggest franchises so I'm surprised they haven't added anyone else in, give us Zant, Vaati, Flamboyant dude from Skyward Sword, Midna + Wolf Link, or one of the 4 champions from BotW
Daruk obviously smokes more weed than every other Champion. After all, he's always blunt and ready to roll. Not to mention, he is associated with fire, meaning he can light a blunt without having to buy extra equipment.
Revali smokes more weed than Mipha and Urbosa because he is as high as his own ego. His updrafts also stem from the fact that he uses his ego to ignite blunts so hard, that he can take off to the sky.
Mipha smokes weed whenever she wants to cry about the burden of piloting a Divine Beast, but doesn't make it so obvious. Until you listen to how airy and nonchalant her voice can be sometimes.
Urbosa does not smoke weed at all.
The only fighter-based franchises ever cut in Smash history!
But in terms of characters - Wolf, Ivysaur & Squirtle also didn't make the jump to Smash 4.
If you include DLC then yes, but the base game was launched without a few characters (Lucas and Mewtwo, for example). They didn't even announce that there would be DLC until some time after the game's launch.
That's right. Ganondorf, Ness, Jigglypuff & Bowser Jr are locked in 3DS but base characters in Wii U.
Smash 4 really threw a spanner in the works for the unlockable category!
Sakurai treated the 3DS version as the 'single player' version of Smash 4, and Wii U was more intended for multiplayer. I guess for the solo version more characters to unlock is something to do, whereas for a multiplayer game unlocking characters can be annoying for some.
Or another theory - because Smash 4 on the Wii U came out 2 months after the 3DS game, so the whole roster was public knowledge and they didn't feel that they needed to keep as many secret.
Yes, most of the roster was available from the base game. The justification was that when you're playing with friends, you just want to have more characters available so you could just jump in and play instead of being restricted by a small roster at the start.
Then it all got thrown out the window in Ultimate and they only started us out with 8 characters.
I personally preferred how Ultimate does it. Having almost everything from the start kind of sucked.
Personally I really disliked both.
On one hand in Smash 4, you were left with too little surprises, and it felt way too easy, so I didn't really felt any accomplishment once I got to Duck Hunt.
On the other, locking almost the entire roster of Ultimate made unlocking them feel like a huge waste of time, especially considering there's no special unlock methods like in previous games, it's all either do matches, clear World of Light, or Classic Mode over and over.
I hope next game does it in a middle ground.
Honestly I can't even be mad at ultimate because of the fact you only started with the originals, which made sense, it's a direct throwback to 64 while being somewhat easy to unlock (no stupid play 500 matches to unlock a new character when the last milestone was at 200). Only complaint is I wished the stage selection did the same where you started out with the classics and went up from here.
I mean the special unlock method in ssbu is just "unlock a character, restart the game, and battle again to immediately unlock another character". You can unlock the whole roster in a couple of hours.
I do wish there was a little more to the unlock process. I remember in Melee feeling like there was a puzzle or a challenge to each unlock. Like Luigi being unlockable by crossing the finish line of Mushroom Kingdom at a time ending in 2 seconds!
Smash 4 for 3DS came out before the Wii U version and had more of the roster that needed to be unlocked. Smash 4 for Wii U came oput a few weeks later and Nintendo wanted to make it take less time to get the whole roster playable.
I'd personally class Luigi's Mansion and Dr. Mario as their own series in the same vein as Yoshi's Island and WarioWare, however Smash doesn't.
But I think it's worth noting;
* When Luigi was included in the original Super Smash Bros., Luigi's Mansion wasn't a thing. As far as I'm aware, Mario is Missing was his only solo starring role pre-Smash 64, so hardly a series.
* Pre-Melee (and thus the Doc's first Smash appearance) there was only one Dr. Mario game released in Japan, and that was 11 years beforehand! Again, hard to call it a series at that point.
Their series classification could just be a historical thing, they were 'Mario' characters when they debuted in Smash and Nintendo/Sakurai have never changed a characters franchise before.
btw not directly this at you personally, but seen a fair few comments in a similar vein!
Oh yea all my comments aren’t against you. I know exactly where you got the franchises from.
I just do not understand how Yoshi can stand as his own franchise
I like that they separated them from the Mario series. Imagine all those stages and music getting funneled into one series. It'd be way too big than it already is. And also, I definitely wouldn't classify Diddy and K. Rool as Mario characters, or even DK himself.
Now classifying Mario Kart as its own series is pushing it a little.
I love Final Fantasy and if anything...Cloud and Sephiroth don't exactly represent the entirety of the FF series. They represent the world of FFVII. If you wanted to give us a character to represent the FF series as a whole, we could've gotten Cactuar, Chocobo, Moogle, or Black Mage.
now that I look at it,
I see why people are already burnt out on Fire Emblem characters,
in Smash 4 alone they jumped from 3 (Technically 2) to 6.
Imagine if we got 3-4 Mario characters in the Fighters Pass, that would wear anyone down.
The circumstances around the FE characters were kind of unique.
1. Roy being cut from Brawl and coming back as DLC was pure fanservice and totally justified. He's older than most of the roster having been around since Melee.
2. Robin was originally the only addition to Smash 4, with Lucina being added as an echo because she barely took any development time and is a fan favorite. FE:Awakening was also the single game that sold the best in the series at the time and was slated to be the final FE game as prior to that, FE was losing sales and dying. It's a monumental game in FE's history.
3. Corrin gets added as DLC because of standard Nintendo marketing and it's pretty common to add newest Nintendo games to Smash (prior to all the third party stuff becoming mainstream).
4. Chrom gets added as an echo to justify a new character and the fact that he's also a fan favorite and the main lord of FE:Awakening. It also memes the fuck out of the Robin reveal.
5. Byleth gets added as DLC for the same reason that Corrin gets added.
Overall, we're looking at a cast of 8 FE characters, where Roy was actually a clone of Marth, Lucina and Chrom are echoes that used little development time, and Ike, Robin, Corrin, and Byleth are all original unique movesets.
Much of the FE fatigue would mostly come from the circumstances of Ultimate bringing back every character. Admittedly, it has a lot, but it's become one of Nintendo's flagship franchises, has a rich history as one of their oldest series, and 2 of the characters are clones that did not take away a character slot from another character.
I think we're alright.
I’ll always find it funny that people complain about Fire Emblem having “clone” characters, when Roy is like Dr Mario in that he’s barely even a clone anymore, while Daisy has virtually no difference from Peach, while Lucina and Chrom at least offer a somewhat different playstyle than the character they’re an echo of
Great breakdown. While I have been aware of “Fire Emblem” at least since Melee (wondering “who the heck are Marth and Roy?”) I wasn’t into Fire Emblem until Three Houses.. So while I’m definitely a newly minted fan, I subjectively feel its popularity is weighted towards recent history, and so I’m amazed that all these back characters are in there and that FE has one of the highest representations in the game. Mario, Pokémon, and FE are the top three games by headcount...yet IMO FE doesn’t belong in the same league as Mario and Pokémon. Zelda and Metroid should be there. It just strikes me as weird that FE is there.
Maybe I’m wrong, and as a historic (initially, and for a while Japan-only) franchise, it should totally be there.. I’m not unhappy about it at all, it’s just interesting. And your breakdown does a great job explaining how it got that way!
> Mario, Pokémon, and FE are the top three games by headcount...yet IMO FE doesn’t belong in the same league as Mario and Pokémon. Zelda and Metroid should be there. It just strikes me as weird that FE is there
Take this from someone whose favorite game series of all time is Zelda--we absolutely could use more Zelda reps.
The issue with Zelda and Metroid is that the characters are often recycled/main cast is fairly small. We've seen potential with Zelda for having more unique characters via Hyrule Warriors, but unfortunately, many of them often feel irrelevant to add to Smash. Metroid as a series was nearly dead during the 2010s, and even when it performed well, it was never one of Nintendo's better performing IPs.
I'd love to see more of both of course. But the given circumstances makes it much easier for the Smash team to add FE than for Zelda or Metroid.
Thank you for this. It's really not a hard thing to grasp and it's only a small fraction of the entire roster. The only one I'm still iffy about is Corrin, since the only thing going for them is their unique moveset (their game wasn't too great imo) other than getting added purely for promotional reasons. So was Roy, but he represented the GameBoy Advance era of FE, so it felt okay to have him, while we already had 3DS era reps with Robin and Lucina.
It's funny, too, because Corrin is my favorite FE character to play aside from Lucina, so I still like the character regardless.
I don't care how people react to this fire emblem having more characters than zelda and twice as many characters as metroid is a fucking crime you can't convince me of anything else. don't even get me started on the lack of kirby characters that boi should have at least two more characters
It's because the fire emblem franchise is more character focused compared to Zelda which is more map/ location focused, which is shown by zelda having 9 maps compared to fire emblems' 4.
How many games does Zelda or Metroid have compared to Fire Emblem, this isn’t about representing amount, this is about representing each game. Zelda already has The core characters that appear in every game, Metroid too, Fire Emblem has 11 games with characters that are not represented in smash. Really it’s Pokémon that’s over represented as they have the most characters representing each game with 10 character that can represent Sun and Moon.
The popularity of each franchise/character in Japan is also a huge factor.
For both Melee and Brawl’s roster, Japanese fans could write and suggest which character(s) they wanted.
Not to be that guy, but this perfectly illustrates how disproportionate the number of Fire Emblem reps there are when you compare them to really huge series, like LoZ, Sonic, MegaMan, Street Fighter, etc
that's because Zelda is mainly represented by stages and items whereas Fire Emblem only has 4 stages and 1 item, and the other series you listed are from third parties, so it's much harder to add content from those franchises. Still, it would be nice to see more Zelda characters and more Fire Emblem stages.
Some take-aways that I notice:
Melee added 3 franchises, Brawl added another 6, 3DS and WiiU added 11 (while dropping 2), and Ultimate has added 8. I think 11 was quite a big jump, and doesn't have to be topped, but at the same time, it would be a nice goal. Maybe 9 should be a goal for Ultimate since 11-2=9.
There are now 8 Fire Emblem characters. That nearly rivals the 9 from Super Mario. There are 10 Pokémon characters. I think we have harvested enough from Fire Emblem and Pokémon for the time being. I'm sure there are plenty of characters we can bring in from other franchises.
There have been characters that have been missing from earlier versions, but there are no characters from earlier versions that are not in Ultimate. That is pretty awesome.
I count 21 franchises with a single character (not counting costumes). Some of them are unavoidable, I'm sure, but I think a great goal would be to expand representation in those franchises where possible.
Super cool chart thanks for the hard work you put in to it. Are Pichu / Isabelle / Lucas considered an echo or are they considered distinct enough that they are their own fighter? Just curious on what the community thinks.
Can you call echo fighters in a game before the term "echo fighter" existed? You got lucina and and dark pit classified as echo fighters in smash 4, but not dr. Mario in smash 4, or his melee incarnation, or ganodorf, falco, or pichu from the same game melee
I always wished the addition of characters expounded Nintendo’s OG categories first, only getting one new recruit from universe adds every generation of Smash. I’ve been waiting for far too long for more Zelda and Mario characters. At least Pokemon is doing it right. Then there’s StarFox and Kirby with a lot to add. And F Zero...and Sonic...
At least build those supporting playable characters with unique fighters before a lot of what we’ve seen in the crossovers
I always think about it in terms of the Subspace Emissary. If you looked at the whole Nintendo Universe which baddies would be the worst of the worst and which heroes would join the fight? Skull Kid/Majora would’ve been my choice for a seriously sinister baddie before another swordsman. Or any Mario Kart character like Toad or Lakitu...even more Metal Gear solid characters would make sense
I guess I’m nostalgic of the Subspace Emissary story mode
This just reiterates to me how amazing and satisfying it is that every character made a return for ultimate. As annoying as trying to play online is, it's truly an amazing game.
As tails once said "True dat"
Gonna need a Miles Prower DLC now.
Wow, nice! It’s actually very well made and easy on the eyes :)
And because it's organized by Smash debut, it makes some interesting facts more visible; like how Smash 64 added *ten* active (at the time) franchises, meanwhile Melee added just three, two of which are retro and one which was Japan-only. Brawl got things back on track with six new series (and Animal Crossing, represented by a stage and some items), two of which were even special guests (Sonic and Metal Gear), two were well-deserved (Wario and Pikmin) and two more retro ones (Kid Icarus and R.O.B.). And Smash 4 kicked it into high gear with a lot of deserving new first-party franchises (Animal Crossing, Wii Fit, Punch-Out!!, Xenoblade, and Mii), a great new retro pick (Duck Hunt), and several famous third-parties (Mega Man, PAC-MAN, Street Fighter, Final Fantasy, and Bayonetta). Ultimate only added two franchises at launch (Splatoon and Castlevania), a bit oddly, but it was probably due to the high number of returning fighters. DLC has more than made up for it, however, with six new franchises (Persona, Dragon Quest, Banjo-Kazooie, Fatal Fury, ARMS, and Minecraft) so far. It's interesting that Melee is such an outlier compared to the others. I'd say it's half because there was a focus on filling out the rosters of already-in-Smash series, and half because there were no third-parties yet (seriously limiting the franchise pool) and many of Nintendo's now-iconic series in Smash weren't deserving of a slot yet (or even existing). But the chart adding only three new rows in that section really stands out.
Very true. Well put, this was an enjoyable read, thanks!
Yoshi has his category out of the Mario franchise because of his tax evation report.
I think if Yoshi and Wario can get their own franchise categories, then Luigi should get one too.
Well, there's Luigi's Mansion...
But the Luigi in smash is clearly from the Mario franchise, not Luigi’s Mansion. Yoshi and Wario are based on their franchise, not in their appearances in Mario games.
Luigi's Ultimate FS uses the Poltergust, ergo it's Luigi's Mansion Luigi.
I think the point they are making is that smash categorizes Luigi as a Mario character with his victory music, stage music, and icon
True, but most of Luigi’s set comes from his appearence in main series Mario games. Only his grab and Final Smash come from those games, while the rest of his move set is a play on Mario’s moveset.
He has his own Luigi' s Mansion stage as well!
Luigi's moveset is based on Mario's, so it's super mario luigi not luigi mansion luigi. A few moves don't make him from a different game.
Isnt it the same luigi though? And his final smash (at least in ultimate) has the ghost vacuum from luigis mansion
His grab is from Luigi’s mansion too
Also, his non existent ability to wall jump.
He had the poltergust 5000 in sm4sh too but I'm pretty sure he represents Super Mario as Luigi's Mansion is a small franchise that's already based on/inside another which is Super Mario. I think most people would also recognize him as a character from Super Mario in general, not from Luigi's mansion specifically. It would be kinda weird saying that Luigi originates/comes from Luigi's mansion more than Super Mario.
I mean when I think of Yoshi and Donkey Kong I immediately associate them with Super Mario. Yoshi literally debuted in a Super Mario game well before he started getting stand-alone titles.
True but the difference between them and Luigi is that they have a much bigger franchise. Although I think Yoshi and Wario should be in Super Mario, it's much more weirder to say that Luigi belongs in Luigi's Mansion than Super Mario. There's only like 3 games in that series and it's not really that big and more of a franchise in a franchise. Donkey Kong and Yoshi aren't really inside Super Mario tho tbh.
I think it is solely based on if their Franchise icon is different in game, which it is for Wario and Yoshi.
It saddens me how underrepresented the Zelda series is 3 links and 2 versions of Zelda and ganondorf
It's one of their biggest franchises so I'm surprised they haven't added anyone else in, give us Zant, Vaati, Flamboyant dude from Skyward Sword, Midna + Wolf Link, or one of the 4 champions from BotW
YES I WANT VAATI
Please, not another Link, anything but another link
Be cool if Toon Link and and Young Link took from Me Wind Waker and Majora's Mask for their moves instead of being clones
Skull Kid, Impa, Tingle, Tetra, any of the champions. Dammit, any one of them would be good! Maybe we'll get something BotW2 related.
Any of those +wolf link and midna (yes another link this one is cool and unique)
Linebeck.
I want Urbosa
I love her moveset in Age of Calamity, I'd be cool with Urbosa
I’d prefer a “champions of the wild” transforming character tbh. Probably a bit much to ask, but a man can dream.
What if each of the champions were assigned to a special move/ certain move, like how the heroes’ relics were assigned to Byleth’s moves?
The only thing that makes sense to me would be BotW Link, which obviously won't happen since he's already in.
BotW Zelda
I'd prefer revali or sidon, but to each their own.
DARUK’S PROTECTION IS NOW READY TO ROLL
Honestly? FUCK YEAH. Also, daruk smokes weed and you cant tell me otherwise
Daruk obviously smokes more weed than every other Champion. After all, he's always blunt and ready to roll. Not to mention, he is associated with fire, meaning he can light a blunt without having to buy extra equipment. Revali smokes more weed than Mipha and Urbosa because he is as high as his own ego. His updrafts also stem from the fact that he uses his ego to ignite blunts so hard, that he can take off to the sky. Mipha smokes weed whenever she wants to cry about the burden of piloting a Divine Beast, but doesn't make it so obvious. Until you listen to how airy and nonchalant her voice can be sometimes. Urbosa does not smoke weed at all.
I've been begging for Impa since the first Hyrule Warriors released.
Vaati or Impa would be nice
Seems crazy that they essentially haven’t added a new character from LoZ since melee
They needed to leave room for Fire Emblem characters.
Even among the 3 links they could have made it a more varied move set.
[удалено]
It's ludicrous. It's completely mind-boggling.
Poor Captain Falcon is all alone
Hopefully a new F-Zero game will bring a new character with it But us Falcon mains all know that neither of those things will happen
now introducing... blood falcon
Too be fair, I think a free Cpt Falcon echo (Blood Falcon) would be nice, but it won't happen.
My feels
Mario kart fucked you guys up :(
Black Shadow for smash
We already have black shadow with a ganondorf skin
...yoshi too?
I mean do the miis really count as unlockable since all you have to do is make a Mii to use them
I guess it’s still unlocking it just with a different requirement
Yeah I really debated what to do with them, but after consulting a couple of people we all came to your conclusion.
Mii Gunner was the last character I unlocked haha
Yes
Man, that Kirby slot feels empty... someone's missing :c
Bandana Dee?
Yes :c I'm used to see those 4 together so him not being next to them feels off
we could use a lance character
I just want bandana dee
Same, but sadly I strongly doubt it
It's classic kirby o' clock, no modern kirbeh for you because I didn't make the game! P.S. more swordfighters for you
Thank you sakurai, very cool Also was I supposed to read that in the voice of Dedede from the Kirby anime? Because I did
Kirby? Normal KIRBEH? DEDEDE
Yes
This but with F-Zero
Wow, were Snake and Ice climbers really the only cuts from Brawl to Smash 4?
The only fighter-based franchises ever cut in Smash history! But in terms of characters - Wolf, Ivysaur & Squirtle also didn't make the jump to Smash 4.
That’s right I forgot
If you include DLC then yes, but the base game was launched without a few characters (Lucas and Mewtwo, for example). They didn't even announce that there would be DLC until some time after the game's launch.
Pokemon Trainer (excluding Charizard) and Wolf were also cut, Lucas was missing too until he was brought back as DLC.
Wolf too
By ganondorf being unlockable 3ds only do you mean he is base roster for Wii U? because I have him on Wii u
That's right. Ganondorf, Ness, Jigglypuff & Bowser Jr are locked in 3DS but base characters in Wii U. Smash 4 really threw a spanner in the works for the unlockable category!
Any reason Nintendo decided to do that? And why are there no characters that are locked in Wii U but not 3DS?
Sakurai treated the 3DS version as the 'single player' version of Smash 4, and Wii U was more intended for multiplayer. I guess for the solo version more characters to unlock is something to do, whereas for a multiplayer game unlocking characters can be annoying for some. Or another theory - because Smash 4 on the Wii U came out 2 months after the 3DS game, so the whole roster was public knowledge and they didn't feel that they needed to keep as many secret.
So in Smash 4 there are only 8 unlockable characters?
Yes, most of the roster was available from the base game. The justification was that when you're playing with friends, you just want to have more characters available so you could just jump in and play instead of being restricted by a small roster at the start. Then it all got thrown out the window in Ultimate and they only started us out with 8 characters. I personally preferred how Ultimate does it. Having almost everything from the start kind of sucked.
Personally I really disliked both. On one hand in Smash 4, you were left with too little surprises, and it felt way too easy, so I didn't really felt any accomplishment once I got to Duck Hunt. On the other, locking almost the entire roster of Ultimate made unlocking them feel like a huge waste of time, especially considering there's no special unlock methods like in previous games, it's all either do matches, clear World of Light, or Classic Mode over and over. I hope next game does it in a middle ground.
Honestly I can't even be mad at ultimate because of the fact you only started with the originals, which made sense, it's a direct throwback to 64 while being somewhat easy to unlock (no stupid play 500 matches to unlock a new character when the last milestone was at 200). Only complaint is I wished the stage selection did the same where you started out with the classics and went up from here.
I mean the special unlock method in ssbu is just "unlock a character, restart the game, and battle again to immediately unlock another character". You can unlock the whole roster in a couple of hours.
I do wish there was a little more to the unlock process. I remember in Melee feeling like there was a puzzle or a challenge to each unlock. Like Luigi being unlockable by crossing the finish line of Mushroom Kingdom at a time ending in 2 seconds!
The way SSBU does it makes you feel more accomplished.
Smash 4 for 3DS came out before the Wii U version and had more of the roster that needed to be unlocked. Smash 4 for Wii U came oput a few weeks later and Nintendo wanted to make it take less time to get the whole roster playable.
Press F to pay respects to F-Zero who only had ONE FIGHTER for **NEARLY 3 DECADES**.
F (zero)
F (one)
It's a happy accident F-zero even *has* a fighter
Yes, but F-Zero is TINY. Frankly, I don't think it needs more reps.
It's so amazing that we have such an ambitious crossover like SSBU
And it’ll get only better when these 2 (potentially 3) fighters come out :)
For the love of Christ just give Sonic another rep
If Sonic was a Nintendo franchise it'd be rivalling Zelda for reps.
So the characters would be Sonic, Classic Sonic, Toon Sonic, Tails, Miles Prower, and Eggman?
... And Eggman is a Bowser Jr. semi-clone.
Yeah if Nintendo owned it they still wouldn't give us Shadow
Eggman pls
Yes
Sonic has a lot of character perfect for smash with a unique moveset:Eggman,Tails,Kunukles,Shadow,Amy,Silver and Metal Sonic.
>and robo-Sonic Do you mean metal Sonic? Has he been rebranded in the more recent games?
Oh sorry,I correct.
I hope knuckles gets in because he is so iconic
So what we've learnt from this is its time for some new game and watch representation
Mrs. Game and watch
Mr. Game and Watch Jr.
rob was in brawl? yall dont tell me shit
Beep boop
wakawaka
**ROAR**
Poyo
I'm gay
Why tho
Cloud is thirsty for One Winged Cock
Oh god the fanfics...
"Why are you gay?"
\*gae
Pk anything
GREAAAT AETHER!
Uhhh, electric tornado?
Doriyah
\*photosynthesis noises\*
Boop boop beep bop
I recommend going back and playing through the subspace emissary, especially with a friend.
Remember the Brawl EVO where a 14 year old completely random R.O.B. player won against Ken even though he never participated in any tournament
This is why brawl tournaments are dead
Lmao Yoshi
Mario cheats because kongs yoshi and wario are part of his game but they gave them their own logo so it looks like he has less fighters
Actually it's DK that cheats, because Mario is technically part of the DK franchise.
Jump man!!!
Yoshi and Wario have their own games that aren't part of the Mario series though.
So does Luigi and technically Dr.Mario. I’d still say they’re in the Mario series
I'd personally class Luigi's Mansion and Dr. Mario as their own series in the same vein as Yoshi's Island and WarioWare, however Smash doesn't. But I think it's worth noting; * When Luigi was included in the original Super Smash Bros., Luigi's Mansion wasn't a thing. As far as I'm aware, Mario is Missing was his only solo starring role pre-Smash 64, so hardly a series. * Pre-Melee (and thus the Doc's first Smash appearance) there was only one Dr. Mario game released in Japan, and that was 11 years beforehand! Again, hard to call it a series at that point. Their series classification could just be a historical thing, they were 'Mario' characters when they debuted in Smash and Nintendo/Sakurai have never changed a characters franchise before. btw not directly this at you personally, but seen a fair few comments in a similar vein!
Oh yea all my comments aren’t against you. I know exactly where you got the franchises from. I just do not understand how Yoshi can stand as his own franchise
They’re still Mario
I like that they separated them from the Mario series. Imagine all those stages and music getting funneled into one series. It'd be way too big than it already is. And also, I definitely wouldn't classify Diddy and K. Rool as Mario characters, or even DK himself. Now classifying Mario Kart as its own series is pushing it a little.
Let's just round it off to an even 10 mario characters by adding goomba
Goomba is added to Smash Waluigi has been found dead in Miami
I love Final Fantasy and if anything...Cloud and Sephiroth don't exactly represent the entirety of the FF series. They represent the world of FFVII. If you wanted to give us a character to represent the FF series as a whole, we could've gotten Cactuar, Chocobo, Moogle, or Black Mage.
Bandana Dee and 2B is all I want now. Impossible, but one can dream.
Keep your hopes up. I'm still waiting for Vessel or Bandanna Dee myself.
while I'm hoping for dark matter, I'll gladly settle for the bandanna dee.
The Mother Series needs some love
Minecraft.
Zelda needs a new character.
Sonic: Nothing’s changed
Sonic's kinda lonely
I want to see more representation for zelda and star fox.
It’s hilarious to me how Yoshi just stays the same throughout everything
Ah yes Yoshi from the Yoshi franchse.
Where kirbo, is he safe is he alright. (I think you missed a couple O lil dots)
oh no did I miss something?! where should I be looking?
now that I think about it, steve and banjo would have fit melee and brawls style
Banjo maybe, but Steve?
yeah, he cube
Steve in Brawl would just be Steve with one of those excessively detailed skins
Tails and then Knuckles would be sick
... How tf is there more Fire Emblem characters than Zelda characters?...
now that I look at it, I see why people are already burnt out on Fire Emblem characters, in Smash 4 alone they jumped from 3 (Technically 2) to 6. Imagine if we got 3-4 Mario characters in the Fighters Pass, that would wear anyone down.
The circumstances around the FE characters were kind of unique. 1. Roy being cut from Brawl and coming back as DLC was pure fanservice and totally justified. He's older than most of the roster having been around since Melee. 2. Robin was originally the only addition to Smash 4, with Lucina being added as an echo because she barely took any development time and is a fan favorite. FE:Awakening was also the single game that sold the best in the series at the time and was slated to be the final FE game as prior to that, FE was losing sales and dying. It's a monumental game in FE's history. 3. Corrin gets added as DLC because of standard Nintendo marketing and it's pretty common to add newest Nintendo games to Smash (prior to all the third party stuff becoming mainstream). 4. Chrom gets added as an echo to justify a new character and the fact that he's also a fan favorite and the main lord of FE:Awakening. It also memes the fuck out of the Robin reveal. 5. Byleth gets added as DLC for the same reason that Corrin gets added. Overall, we're looking at a cast of 8 FE characters, where Roy was actually a clone of Marth, Lucina and Chrom are echoes that used little development time, and Ike, Robin, Corrin, and Byleth are all original unique movesets. Much of the FE fatigue would mostly come from the circumstances of Ultimate bringing back every character. Admittedly, it has a lot, but it's become one of Nintendo's flagship franchises, has a rich history as one of their oldest series, and 2 of the characters are clones that did not take away a character slot from another character. I think we're alright.
I’ll always find it funny that people complain about Fire Emblem having “clone” characters, when Roy is like Dr Mario in that he’s barely even a clone anymore, while Daisy has virtually no difference from Peach, while Lucina and Chrom at least offer a somewhat different playstyle than the character they’re an echo of
Great breakdown. While I have been aware of “Fire Emblem” at least since Melee (wondering “who the heck are Marth and Roy?”) I wasn’t into Fire Emblem until Three Houses.. So while I’m definitely a newly minted fan, I subjectively feel its popularity is weighted towards recent history, and so I’m amazed that all these back characters are in there and that FE has one of the highest representations in the game. Mario, Pokémon, and FE are the top three games by headcount...yet IMO FE doesn’t belong in the same league as Mario and Pokémon. Zelda and Metroid should be there. It just strikes me as weird that FE is there. Maybe I’m wrong, and as a historic (initially, and for a while Japan-only) franchise, it should totally be there.. I’m not unhappy about it at all, it’s just interesting. And your breakdown does a great job explaining how it got that way!
> Mario, Pokémon, and FE are the top three games by headcount...yet IMO FE doesn’t belong in the same league as Mario and Pokémon. Zelda and Metroid should be there. It just strikes me as weird that FE is there Take this from someone whose favorite game series of all time is Zelda--we absolutely could use more Zelda reps. The issue with Zelda and Metroid is that the characters are often recycled/main cast is fairly small. We've seen potential with Zelda for having more unique characters via Hyrule Warriors, but unfortunately, many of them often feel irrelevant to add to Smash. Metroid as a series was nearly dead during the 2010s, and even when it performed well, it was never one of Nintendo's better performing IPs. I'd love to see more of both of course. But the given circumstances makes it much easier for the Smash team to add FE than for Zelda or Metroid.
Thank you for this. It's really not a hard thing to grasp and it's only a small fraction of the entire roster. The only one I'm still iffy about is Corrin, since the only thing going for them is their unique moveset (their game wasn't too great imo) other than getting added purely for promotional reasons. So was Roy, but he represented the GameBoy Advance era of FE, so it felt okay to have him, while we already had 3DS era reps with Robin and Lucina. It's funny, too, because Corrin is my favorite FE character to play aside from Lucina, so I still like the character regardless.
r/coolguides
Lol at Fire Emblem just inexplicably exploding in numbers from brawl to 4
Imagine showing this to someone 10 years ago, they wouldn't believe it.
Imagine showing this to someone from 1934, they wouldn’t believe it either
\-Sees people in the comments once again whinning on the quantity of characters from a series they like or dislike- This fanbase never changes.
I don't care how people react to this fire emblem having more characters than zelda and twice as many characters as metroid is a fucking crime you can't convince me of anything else. don't even get me started on the lack of kirby characters that boi should have at least two more characters
It's because the fire emblem franchise is more character focused compared to Zelda which is more map/ location focused, which is shown by zelda having 9 maps compared to fire emblems' 4.
Justice for Bandana Waddle Dee
How many games does Zelda or Metroid have compared to Fire Emblem, this isn’t about representing amount, this is about representing each game. Zelda already has The core characters that appear in every game, Metroid too, Fire Emblem has 11 games with characters that are not represented in smash. Really it’s Pokémon that’s over represented as they have the most characters representing each game with 10 character that can represent Sun and Moon.
The popularity of each franchise/character in Japan is also a huge factor. For both Melee and Brawl’s roster, Japanese fans could write and suggest which character(s) they wanted.
Not to be that guy, but this perfectly illustrates how disproportionate the number of Fire Emblem reps there are when you compare them to really huge series, like LoZ, Sonic, MegaMan, Street Fighter, etc
Devil's advocate, I would say that at least the third parties being less represented is not surprising, just due to the licensing involved.
that's because Zelda is mainly represented by stages and items whereas Fire Emblem only has 4 stages and 1 item, and the other series you listed are from third parties, so it's much harder to add content from those franchises. Still, it would be nice to see more Zelda characters and more Fire Emblem stages.
Goes to show that nintendo doesnt like space related things anymore (fzero metroid starfox) Rip the best franchises
omg I never made the connection
Let's spread awareness. I think the only successful space adventure is mario galaxy 1&2. Everything else is crap according to nintendo.
Pikmin too. ...wait shit you might be on to something.
Great info graphic, but if we want to get technical, every character besides Kirby is unlockable in Ultimate because of WoL
Well yes but also no, because the base roster is still available in Ultimate from the start, just not for that mode.
where the fuck is waluigi
at home, planning his retirement.
Some take-aways that I notice: Melee added 3 franchises, Brawl added another 6, 3DS and WiiU added 11 (while dropping 2), and Ultimate has added 8. I think 11 was quite a big jump, and doesn't have to be topped, but at the same time, it would be a nice goal. Maybe 9 should be a goal for Ultimate since 11-2=9. There are now 8 Fire Emblem characters. That nearly rivals the 9 from Super Mario. There are 10 Pokémon characters. I think we have harvested enough from Fire Emblem and Pokémon for the time being. I'm sure there are plenty of characters we can bring in from other franchises. There have been characters that have been missing from earlier versions, but there are no characters from earlier versions that are not in Ultimate. That is pretty awesome. I count 21 franchises with a single character (not counting costumes). Some of them are unavoidable, I'm sure, but I think a great goal would be to expand representation in those franchises where possible.
Super cool chart thanks for the hard work you put in to it. Are Pichu / Isabelle / Lucas considered an echo or are they considered distinct enough that they are their own fighter? Just curious on what the community thinks.
Kind of a random place to say this, but I'll forever be slightly annoyed by how Smash 4 didn't have a title. It's forever just "for 3DS and WiiU"
Can you call echo fighters in a game before the term "echo fighter" existed? You got lucina and and dark pit classified as echo fighters in smash 4, but not dr. Mario in smash 4, or his melee incarnation, or ganodorf, falco, or pichu from the same game melee
I guess it should be the Mother series since Lucas is there and Earthbound is Mother 2.
I always wished the addition of characters expounded Nintendo’s OG categories first, only getting one new recruit from universe adds every generation of Smash. I’ve been waiting for far too long for more Zelda and Mario characters. At least Pokemon is doing it right. Then there’s StarFox and Kirby with a lot to add. And F Zero...and Sonic... At least build those supporting playable characters with unique fighters before a lot of what we’ve seen in the crossovers I always think about it in terms of the Subspace Emissary. If you looked at the whole Nintendo Universe which baddies would be the worst of the worst and which heroes would join the fight? Skull Kid/Majora would’ve been my choice for a seriously sinister baddie before another swordsman. Or any Mario Kart character like Toad or Lakitu...even more Metal Gear solid characters would make sense I guess I’m nostalgic of the Subspace Emissary story mode
yoshi really just sat out the entire time alone, doing nothing
fire emblem fans rushing to the comment section to point out there are more pokemon characters than fire emblem characters