An observation on Smash Bros characters (and Nintendo games in general)

[jardantuan]

I've not been following the website as closely as I did with Brawl (the way they did daily updates last time was great, but this time has been rather underwhelming), but I'm usually kept up to date on new characters in some form or another. While talking about the characters that have been announced so far, I noticed something - the characters seem to be chosen based on recent games, as though to promote those games. I know that may seem obvious to a lot of people, but it shows a few interesting things.

First, let's look at Pokemon. Pikachu is a flagship character, so it would always make the cut - we'll ignore that. But look at the rest of the Pokemon. In Melee, we had Mewtwo and Pichu. Mewtwo in particular is interesting, because when Brawl came out he was dropped in favour of Lucario - a Pokemon that was used prominently in promotions for Diamond and Pearl, which came out not long after development started on Brawl. This means that we likely won't see Lucario in the new Smash, but it will be replaced by something from X and Y.

Then, look at The Legend of Zelda. In Melee, Young Link was the alternative to Link - Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask were the last console Zelda games before Melee. Following this, in Brawl (and Wii U/3DS) we had/have Toon Link, as a result of Wind Waker (and the HD remake). What's interesting about this is the design for Link in the new games. He was based on his Twilight Princess model in Brawl, and the Adult Link model prior to that. However, rather than taking after the Skyward Sword design for the new games, he looks more like Twilight Princess again - could this mean that the new Zelda game may adopt a similar graphical style?

There are other little things like those too. Wii Fit being so successful, the 'revival' of Pikmin and Kid Icarus, and so on.

Any other things I've missed? Any further speculation to offer?

 

[crunchyg]

The thing with rotating Pokemon characters is annoying, but the problem with Pokemon games is that there are too many of them, and individual games never reach cult status like individual Mario or Zelda games do. It's the series as a whole that drives the franchise. Besides Pikachu and the original family of Pokemon (Bulbasaur, Charmander, etc), none of the newer ones are so recognizable that they deserve a permanent spot on the Smash Bros roster. I think going with the Pokemon Trainer was a good decision for Nintendo.

As far as Zelda goes, there simply wasn't enough material for Nintendo to work with at the time Melee was made. The only 3D models of Link (and Zelda, Ganondorf, and Sheik) they had to go by were from the Ocarina of Time. It only made sense for them to start adding variety for Brawl. Replacing Child Link with Toon Link wasn't to promote Wind Waker--the game was long off the retail shelves by then--but to change up the visual style, and I think it worked out well. I wasn't a fan of Ganondorf from the Twilight Princess though.

So I wouldn't accuse Nintendo of skewing the roster to promote newer games. They included Ice Climbers after all (awesome characters, by the way) and revived many others from the ancient times.

 

[jardantuan]

The thing with rotating Pokemon characters is annoying, but the problem with Pokemon games is that there are too many of them, and individual games never reach cult status like individual Mario or Zelda games do. It's the series as a whole that drives the franchise. Besides Pikachu and the original family of Pokemon (Bulbasaur, Charmander, etc), none of the newer ones are so recognizable that they deserve a permanent spot on the Smash Bros roster. I think going with the Pokemon Trainer was a good decision for Nintendo.

As far as Zelda goes, there simply wasn't enough material for Nintendo to work with at the time Melee was made. The only 3D models of Link (and Zelda, Ganondorf, and Sheik) they had to go by were from the Ocarina of Time. It only made sense for them to start adding variety for Brawl. Replacing Child Link with Toon Link wasn't to promote Wind Waker--the game was long off the retail shelves by then--but to change up the visual style, and I think it worked out well. I wasn't a fan of Ganondorf from the Twilight Princess though.

So I wouldn't accuse Nintendo of skewing the roster to promote newer games. They included Ice Climbers after all (awesome characters, by the way) and revived many others from the ancient times.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing, far from it! I suppose that there haven't been enough Smash Bros games to make that sort of correlation, but they certainly seem to draw from recent games, coincidental or not.

Even if it's only for the sake of changing the visual styles though, as you said, isn't that still drawing inspiration from recent games? If Wind Waker hadn't been released, they'd have had no other styles to pursue, and so in a sense Wind Waker was technically responsible for Young Link being replaced. Maybe the cause-and-effect is the wrong way around, but they're still responsible for each other. Besides, if they wanted to mix up styles, why is (regular) Link modelled after his Twilight Princess look rather than the Skyward Sword look?

It's the same with stages and things like Assist Trophies too - but it makes sense that their newest games are represented in some form or another. Perhaps saying that they skew the roster is wrong, but I would imagine that there is some amount of influence based on new games. We can only wait and see, of course - but it will be interesting to see what the rest of the roster is like.