On the topic of new and returning characters:

If effort is put in to make individual fighters unique and distinct from one another, I am up for any character to join the Super Smash Bros. roster. Even now, people are still bemoaning the presence of the Wii Fit Trainer, and while it was obviously not on anybody's wish list for newcomers, they have clearly given as much care and attention to this character as the rest. You watch a video of the Wii Fit Trainer in action and you will clearly see that their moveset is unlike any other character in the game.

It's the same with Greninja. I'll admit to not knowing who this Pokémon was until after the Direct finished, but while that sizzle reel of gameplay was going, I realised that I didn't care, because Greninja looks like an awesome fighter to play as - on first impression, far more interesting than Mewtwo ever was in Melee.

Hell, you could throw in the Urban Champion for all I care - if they made him into a fleshed-out, distinctive character that played well, who cares who he is or that he's from a rubbish game?

I don't know why everyone is complaining about th Wii LA adapter comment. That's the same for every single online game ever: wired is more stable than wireless. Come on.

I didn't get it either. I suppose people are concerned with how online will run wirelessly if Sakurai is going out of his way to suggest using the LAN adapter. Considering how crummy Brawl played online, it's an understandable albeit knee-jerk reaction to what is true for all online games. The LAN adapter isn't even a viable option for me because the FiOS box as well as the modem/router are in a closet and I'd have to run the Ethernet cable through three walls. No thanks, I'll take my chances with wireless.

Justin... come on. If you were really a "competitive" player you wouldn't even ask if they played timed matches.

Also, Mewtwo is not coming back. If Ridley isn't in, neither is Mewtwo.

How are these related? One isn't dependent on the other.

Mewtwo was garbage, just absolutely terrible to play as. Slow, weak, and light for a character of his size. I'm glad he's not returning. I also thought it was weird they kept Lucario, but I don't really mind. He was fun to play as in Brawl. Charizard's all right, I guess. I never really liked using him as the Trainer. Ivysaur is who I used and I thought he was awesome. But I'll give Charizard another spin. Maybe they sped him up a bit. I totally support Greninja being included. They included a representative from the latest generation of Pokémon? How shocking!


I find it strange that Sakurai has decided to cater to the tourney crowd after trolling them so hard in Brawl. As far as I'm concerned, the new online modes are For Fun and No Fun Allowed. Back in the day, I was all about competitive Smash. Neutral stages, no items, etc. But everyone I played with at university hated playing like that. The more I played like that, the more I realized I wasn't having fun. So I gave up that nonsense and now I play Smash as it was originally intended: on all stages with all items turned on to max appearance. And now I have a blast whenever I play. I guess you could say I'm hardcore about playing casually!


I don't really care that the 3DS one is coming out first. I'll be getting both versions anyway so it doesn't affect me any. I just wanna have fun, not worry about one game's sales undermining the other's. Looking forward to Smash Run with friends online! These games are looking to be even bigger love letters to Nintendo fans than Brawl was. All aboard the hype train!

Greninja Just looks to be Strider Hiryu.  Only thing missing is his mechanical companions.  Not a bad thing but an interesting choice.

Just wanted to talk about this part, but there's plenty more worth discussing so don't get me wrong!

"I understand the purpose of making many stages exclusive to each version, but I can’t help but wish that there were a way to unlock them in both copies of the game."

I think having nearly all stages exclusive to each version stinks if you wanted cross-play activities, but it would absolutely make the Wii U version much weaker of a sell to gamers. Now, if the games were releasing on the same day, sure, I could see that, but even then, I imagine there would be a considerable amount of people less willing to purchase the Wii U version, much more both versions. The exclusivity of certain stages and trophies make Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS feel like their own entities. If I'm not mistaken, didn't Masahiro Sakurai mention that he considers both new games Smash 4 and Smash 5?

I like how each version has exclusive stages. It makes it easier for me to justify buying both games.

That's why they tweak the characters.

Some of that trolling affected non-tournament players. Tripping was total bullshit. I much prefer the approach of these games. Sakurai is not so much catering to the competitive tournament crowd as he is catering to everyone. If someone doesn't care about For Glory, they can simply avoid it. That works out best for everyone.

I worry only in terms of the potential domino effect. Wii U needs the sales more because the better it performs, the better games it gets and the better off its successor will be. No, it doesn't guarantee anything. However, better sales on a weaker platform can't hurt.

The Zelda phantom move makes me think there's going to be a Toon Zelda character, cuz as you say it makes like zero sense for "realistic" Zelda to have that ability. The proportions of the phantom don't jibe at all with the Twilight Princess smash baseline. And lets face it: we're going to be getting some new clones. If Dixie makes it in, she'll be a clone. Chrom will be a clone. I could see Greninja getting a Takamura clone. I think we're coming close to the end of newcomers with unique movesets.

Also, I would be much more interested in trying the stranger matchmaking if you could play with stock, or have battlefield variations in For Glory. I don't even know why exactly, but timed matches kill the game for me.

Sakurai said that there were going to be less characters than in Brawl. Brawl had 35 characters. So we only have room for at the most six more characters. With Captain Falcon, Ness, and Jigglypuff taking up the original slots, that means we only have three slots left for other returning characters or newcomers. That means I highly doubt there will be clones like Dixie this time.

He never said that.  This is Sakurai's exact quote.

He says a change in direction may be what's needed, but the key word is may, which means maybe.  He never outright says the game will have less characters then Brawl did.  He says they may have reached the size limit, but then again, he said the same thing about Melee when he was interviewed about Brawl back in 2006.  He said Melee's roster of 26 characters was such a large undertaking that made his team work really so he couldn't guarantee that Brawl would have a roster that much larger.  And yet Brawl ended up having 39 total characters in the end which is 13 more then Melee had total, with 17 of those 39 characters newcomers.

Plus even if he was originally thinking about making the roster size the same as Brawl, this quote is from early July 2012, when the game was only in development for a few months.  At the time he could have been thinking a larger roster would have been harder to do because of his experience with Game Arts for Brawl, but Namco's staff who have experience working on fighting games with large roster might have changed his mind by showing they'd have an easier time doing it then his previous team could.

Goddammit, Luigi Dude. Well, I'm going to post this anyway.

Not explicitly. That was mostly how people read into it. If you're referring to the quote I think you're referring to, he talks about limitations on 3DS and how that may lead to cutting some characters.

The implication is that some characters may have to be cut. That isn't really news; we've seen cuts before. There was also this earlier quote:

That part seems most important, but the media seemed to latch into the part about characters. My understand (which may or may not be right) was Sakurai didn't think adding characters was enough, that they needed new idea to keep the series fresh. Smash Run is a good example of this kind of thinking. Then, there's this one:

I think the verdict is still out on what all of this means. Sakurai also said:

Based on the current list of newcomers, this hasn't happened yet. In fact, Wii Fit Trainer, Rosalina, and Greninja are all fairly new. That's almost the exact opposite of what Sakurai said he was planning.

Ridley better be playable.

If cutting characters like Squirtle and Ivysaur is necessary to keep Charizard in, I'm okay with that. They could probably cut out Falco too. It baffles me as to why they didn't cut Toon Link though.

Ugh so many selfish and absolutely bad opinions thrown around here! No one understands me but Shy Guy, Luigi Dude, Killer Man Jaro and Adrok. Oh and Adrok you're blocked off my friends list, I'm not dealing with that modem behind 3 walls BS. ;)

Well I shouldn't say selfish or bad but gadzooks, do any of you Lucario haters ever think that maybe, just maybe some people really enjoy Lucario? Aside Pikachu he is like the mascot Pokemon and had a full on move set in Brawl, why would anyone just want that uniqueness and verity gone? No one in here plays every Nintendo franchise so why the heck are people pissed at Lucario? He replaced Mewtwo right? Wrong! The intention was that Mewtwo was to be playable, chances are if Sega was a little quicker with allowing Sonic many many things would have been added in his place.

I don't use Lucario and chances are I never will, but I never run around hating on characters. They have their fans too and there are plenty of characters to go around to keep things lively.

Now what the devil does it matter that this TP Zelda uses the phantom? I sware when a new idea is dropped on us people quickly forget everything that has ever preceded it. Characters draw from so many of their games and other characters with their games it doesn't have to be perfectly logical in Smash. Why can Mario and Luigi shoot fire balls without their fire suit and use a cape at the same time? Captain Falcon never had fire bird powers before Smash, why now? Lucas and Ness use every mother fletching power from every OTHER character in the Mother series but their own, why? How come squirtles water gun doesn't do damage? Why does Jigglypuff's Rest do damage at all? Also in which Zelda do we witness Zelda using Din's fire?

To all these questions and more, who cares?! These characters are a culmination of their own history however varied it is or lack there of. I mean what moves should Zelda have that's she's actually done in TP? 1 move where she drops her sword and gives up?

So far everything is wonderful except that major possibility that Ridley is only a boss hazard.

Cater, I understand you! :D RIDLEY IS IN.

You mean "on". As in "on  the cutting room floor where he belongs".

You have to remember that this is Smash, Cater, the game where every person who plays knows what is really best for the franchise and any alteration, from newcomers, to movesets, to appearances is an atrocity. Also, it's the party game that a chunk of people desperately wants to be a competitive fighter instead of just being fun.

The best thing about the 3DS version coming out early is we should know the entire roster pretty soon.  Brawl had some of its roster leaked by a random Gamefaqs poster in October 2007, 3 months before its first release in January 2008 in Japan.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v287/luigidude/CMKo43W_zpsd8eab636.jpg

Since the 3DS version is scheduled for Summer which to Nintendo is usually a July or August release, we could end up getting more leaks.  Hell, we might already have a real one again.

http://gematsu.com/2014/04/rumor-shulk-palutena-set-super-smash-bros

This is apparently from the same source that predicted Mega Man, Villager, Wii Fit Trainer, Little Mac, Mii, and Pac-Man before E3 last year.  Being the only person to predict Wii Fit Trainer I find it hard not to believe them.  Of course they could have had information for the E3 one and this new leak might be the same person just trolling us so who knows.

Before anyone complains about the lack of a certain character, if this person is the real deal, they never predicted Rosalina so there could still be other new characters that the leaker hasn't revealed.  So time will tell and we should know in probably less then 3 months now.

waita  second Pac-Man is going to be in Smash for Wii U? I did not know that, mega man I knew and was unimpressed but Pac-Man is awesome this changes my excitement for level from barely at all to very interesting.

Yeah you're right. Play testers along with localizers certainly already have access to the game so the real leaks may have very well been released. Or at the very least they will be coming very very soon. I still don't count that original Wii Fit Trainer rumor as fake, that was just too good a guess. I will say though, I know the Wii Fit leaker person posted his "speculation" on Neogaf and hasn't posted a single thing since. I have yet see proof that the same the person is the one who told us the new leak with the Chorus men.

I think the Chorus Men are a little weak for a choice, I would have imagined that little monkey as someone playable from the Rhythm series.

As long as Dixie makes with the super unlikely chance of Ridley and Sukapon i'd be set.

In the article I link to Gematsu says this new information came from the same source that gave them the other information before E3.  They say they didn't cover that as news when they were first tipped off because they thought it was probably fake like a lot of fake Smash Bros list usually go around.  This is probably why the source posted on Neo Gaf since no one would cover the list they provided.

Well now that this source is considered more trustworthy after getting Wii Fit Trainer right before last E3, they're posted this new list.  This is probably why the same person hasn't posted on Neo Gaf since they don't need to this time because Gematsu covered it this time.

Unless Gematsu is lying about the source of this new list, it's the same person who did the E3 reveal.

RE: Phantom move, I personally wasn't bitching about it, I just thought it was potentially a Toon Zelda clue given the disjoint. Obviously Zelda doesn't really have an organic moveset, nor do a number of characters, but given the fact the phantom is exclusively from a Celda game I found it curious.

I'm not sold on that new leak. I was always a bit dubious about Pac Man, but mainly because I think he'd be a pretty lame character unless given a radical Game and Watch type treatment. Mii is essentially a shoe-in at this point, and Chrom makes sense as the Marth clone swap-in. Palutena also makes sense as a Kid Icarus expansion character now that there's a new game in the series. In retrospect a new XY Pokemon makes sense. I am quite skeptical of Shulk, though, given that Xenoblade is a narrative one off and those characters aren't going to pop up again, even if X is as much of a spiritual sequel as it seems to be. And the Rhythm character sounds pretty long-shot, there's no history or sales phenomenon there like with Rob, Game and Watch, or Wii Fit Trainer.

I guess we'll find out soon enough!