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Filed under: Industry People, Masahiro Sakurai, Super Bros. Smash For 3DS, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Smash Bros. Series

Featured Comments

Featured-Comment

Is it Tuesday already? This week went by incredibly fast. Now, we are one week closer to E3!

This article looks at comments spanning May 23rd, to May 30th (Japan time). My apologies to Isaac: Venus Adept and Spiral for mixing up their names in the previous featured comments. Formatting the featured comments is quite annoying, and sometimes I make mistakes.  Lots of comments on last week’s Featured Comments! Thanks!

DekZek

(Reads Featured Comments)

O_O

I need to comment more. That, and spend more time on the comments that I make. At least I will have more time after Finals finish this week.

(Continues to pretend to study)

From: Featured Comments

Just posting this here for further incentive!

Brobot 12

I think, in due time, Fire Emblem will become successful enough to have 6 characters. People like to bring up that Fire Emblem hasn’t sold that well in either region across its history, but in both regions it was because, as Peridot Gem pointed out, Nintendo didn’t advertise the series enough.

I didn’t know Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance even existed until Brawl’s pre-release Smash Dojo update included Ike, simply because I never saw any TV commercials for it as a kid.

For years, Smash had been Fire Emblem’s primary way of advertising the series in the west, when that’s pretty ridiculous in and of itself. If people loved the original Fire Emblem that first arrived in America (I know I did), then Nintendo should have followed up with that with increased advertisements for the series for future installments, but that never really came.

At the very least, though I wasn’t too keen on either Awakening or Fates, I would very much like the series to get more exposure. They’re just some of the most engaging turn based strategy games on the market and they need more of an audience. Fates had some of the highest sales in the series so far and even if that’s due to how it’s split between 2(.5) games, the sales numbers growing only mean that detractors of the series when it comes to Smash representation will have less material to make them angry if sequels keep it up with more advertising and pre-release hype.

My two cents on the matter: if people still like to bring up the tired old “sales” argument when it comes to Smash character inclusion, and if by that argument Fire Emblem doesn’t “deserve” 6 characters, then in due time that’ll change for those people, based on how well Fates is doing–they’ll HAVE to concede its selling well enough for it not to matter anymore. I don’t even play too much Fire Emblem (again, it wasn’t advertised too much when I was a kid, but man do I wanna play Path of Radiance already), I just think the hate toward the amount of Fire Emblem characters in Smash is excessive. I’ve seen friends of mine turn to the dark side of Smash hate and Smash fanboyism simply because Corrin was included–now one of them has made it a passive aggressive thing to hate on them (it’s almost comical how he’s brought himself to literally dislike EVERY part of Corrin’s design, when he’s customizable in his game anyway so that should be the least of his issues) and it’s seriously annoying me how he hasn’t gotten over it already, ugh.

Sorry for that huge post. Just felt like letting loose some steam, hope I didn’t come off as confrontational or unpleasant to anyone.

 

From: Featured Comments

I do think you are right. Fire Emblem is one of the first Nintendo IPs to get a mobile game, and Nintendo is pushing the franchise a lot more these days. It’s as important as Animal Crossing. I’d even say it’s more important than WarioWare and the Wario Land series (unfortunately).

KL-Cobalt

Except, Mewtwo wasn’t branded as a “Melee Veteran” the same vein as how Roy is or how Lucas is branded as the “Brawl Veteran” – Mewtwo was promoted mainly as the first DLC character and billed primarily from his popularity alone.

I mean, look at plenty of the promotional material regarding the two – Roy was strictly billed as the returning Melee Veteran while Mewtwo’s name and infamy carried his own weight.

Had Mewtwo been specified as being in because he’s a Melee Vet instead of being a fan favorite, I’d agree and wonder why Wolf was left out myself. But he’s not.

As far as reasons for excluding Wolf, DK characters, and Metroid characters. Well, going the reverse order here,

I don’t see Metroid really having many playable characters or any notable ones with unique traits other than Samus, Ridley (Who had already been talked out – but Sakurai said the same kind of things about Villager and Pac-Man not working), and Dark Samus – Sylux is the closest thing – but a role in one game, a foreboding cameo in another that wasn’t fully confirmed until years later, and interest from another producer does not propel a character into playable status just like that especially given the development for Metroid games lately being sparse.

DK Characters are even harder to pinpoint – I know it would be easy to imagine taking all of K. Rool’s boss moves, slap them onto a moveset without any real change of how he utilizes them – basically a 1:1 mirror of his boss sprites and moves matched onto a new 3D model: Because I’ve seen literally hundreds of potential K. Rool fan movesets literally copy/pasting his moves from the games. I don’t think it’s something that really speaks for or makes K. Rool unique or stand out. Same with Dixie – A lighter Diddy which would be more focused on flight – doesn’t make her stand out from the crowd.

And then there’s Wolf – Well, he nearly made it in Brawl for one – half his moves are taken from other characters and his model is seemingly unfinished at times. And really, that’s it. I don’t think Sakurai needed Star Fox Zero to advertise Wolf, he just didn’t make it in because reasons – maybe of the two, Lucas was easier to add into the game as plenty of his functions are already in via Ness. I don’t know.

From: The Truth Isn’t That Simple — Sakurai Discusses Fan Misconceptions [Vol. 505]

 

I largely agree with the points you made in this post. I’ve pointed out the fact that Mewtwo was never advertised as a Melee veteran in anything. Heck, even when they introduced Lucas in the April Fools Direct, they didn’t mention the fact that Mewtwo was a returning character. For Lucas and Roy, Sakurai also up played their veteran status in his Famitsu Column. With Mewtwo, it’s always been ‘for the players‘. I remember I got a lot of hate for saying that Wolf wouldn’t be coming back. NeoGaf even had a mini thread on my tweets about it. Anyway…back to your comment. I think K. Rool is a character that will come eventually. The outcry for the character is too high among hardcore Smashers in both Japan and the West. DLC might not have made sense since the character hasn’t appeared in a new title…in awhile. We actually have an article about what characters the SG Team thinks will appear in the next Smash, so keep an eye out for that.

Ar and Peridot Gem

“Nintendo of America even tried to remove Marth and Roy in the American Melee version”
Hm, I’m a little confused, is there a source for this? I read long time ago that, from what I remember, the team behind Smash were the ones who considered Marth and Roy as JP exclusives but the NA team liked them and didn’t cut them, but I’m not sure, what’s the full story?

—————————————————-

I remember reading up somewhere that the team picked out japanese exclusives but Nintendo of America didn’t like that and tried to remove them in the american version.

Wait nevermind! I found this quote straight from this wiki: http://supersmashbros.wikia.com/wiki/Marth “Nintendo of America feared that these characters would not have appeal to American gamers and thus would have to be removed, but there was enough stateside approval of Marth and Roy that they were kept. Marth and Roy were introduced along with the Fire Emblem franchise through the U.S. release of Melee, and the result was immensely positive, causing Fire Emblem games from installment seven onwards to be released internationally.”

From: Featured Comments

…The original source for this is actually a response Sakurai gives on the Melee website. Before Melee’s release (and after) Sakurai actually answered questions/ statements from fans. There’s hundreds and hundreds of pages that are still untranslated. I skimmed through most of these when compiling the original Definitive Unused Fighter List. I feel like I need to go back and read through them again as I understand a lot more about the game. It’s a pain to search through every single page manually…so I actually manually copied all the pages into several Word Documents so I could search for quotes.

Marth and Roy’s oversea’s trouble is briefly mentioned on Marth’s page.

…It’s mentioned somewhere else on the site, but alas my archives have failed me (I was typing this as I was searching for it…d’oh!). When I find the quote, I’ll post it.

Nintendrone

Source Gaming presents Sakurai talking about an impressively tall black man and his cup of milky coffee.

From: Melee Music Developer Roundtable: Monkey Rap

Hey, someone has to present it! It’s straight from the source!

I’ve heard some weird comments/ compliments in my time in Japan. I once got complimented on my laundry hanging skills. The tragic part was that it wasn’t even me, it was my girlfriend. I’ve also had multiple people tell me not to tan because they like my forehead/ cheek skin.

GoldGeno

Honestly I think only showing Zelda at E3 is pretty safe. It means they can dedicate all the time they need to hyping up the biggest game on the Wii U, that’ll also coincidentally be the game to bridge the gap between this generation and the next. Nintendo shows off all their stuff in Directs these days; I’d imagine they want to avoid a repeat of Wii U’s middling reveal by waiting until more NX software is ready to be revealed alongside the NX.

From:Nintendo’s Zelda Gamble…Is it Worth the Risk?

Yeah, they really need to sell Zelda, as that’s the main game people have been waiting for. I think it’s to also have complete control over their announcement of the NX. If the NX is really a third pillar and not a replacement of Wii U, they need to ensure they explain it in a way that everyone can understand.

 

Anyway, that’s it for this week! Let us know in the comments below if we missed an excellent comment!

PushDustIn

2 comments
  1. Since you are noting stuff like Marth or Roy facing removal I want you to add one of my other favourites to the list of lucky inclusions.

    http://smashboards.com/threads/bowser-jr-was-almost-cut-from-smash-4.385005/

    haruhisailormars on May 31 |
  2. Is this what it feels like to be famous?

    GoldGeno on June 2 |