We've got more new information regarding the Smash Bros Brawl lineup, reportedly from game director Sakurai himself from a Japanese radio program. If LiveWii is to be believed, the Sakurai will be adding Ridley, Bowser Jr., and a Wind Waker era Link. Who gets dropped? Ice Climbers, Game & Watch, and Young Link.As most / all the online reports seem to come from the linked French-language site, we are trying to corroborate the news and/or find the original Japanese radio program. Until we get more concrete confirmation, take this as a rumor.
[Thanks, martin and cringer8]
(Page 1) Reader Comments
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As for the other two removed characters - bad idea. There's too much duplication in other places (Mario/Luigi/Dr. Mario, Pikachu/Pichu, Falcon/Ganondorf) that should be dealt with before taking out unique characters.
I won plenty of battles with Ice Climbers. Double points for humiliation.
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As for Bowser Jr, why? I hate Bowser Jr. Bring back the old school Koopa Kids! Ludwig Van, Iggy, those guys. They have way more personality than Bowser Jr.
Ridley will be interesting. Frankly, they can drop Ice Climbers if Pichu gets to stay. As many humiliation points as Ice Climbers get you, it's nothing compared to besting someone with Pichu.
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It can't be time either. There's no pressure of time like a launch title. They have until early 2007.
Here's my solution. Alternate costumes. Make all the Link clones one icon. But allow the player to switch from Link, Young Link, and Windwaker Link as if it were only changing colors. But, let them have their own properties.
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just plain MORE characters!
yeah!
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"News is abound about Nintendo's next hit [literally: bomb].
This time, it's new names, instead of new pictures [literally: faces], that were revealed to an interview given by Masashiro Sakurai on the radio program in Tokyo, "The Gaming Show."
He confirmed that the following characters will appear in the new opus of Smash Bros."
Bowser Jr.
Ridley, Samus' famous enemy
Link, Wind Waker version
And certain characters will disappear:
Ice Climbers
Mr. Game and Watch
Young Link
Young Link won't really disappear since he'll simply be replaced by the Cel-shaded version and his name will still be the same.
Fans of Falco will be in heaven, since he also confirmed that characters that were otherwise simply "clones" will stay but will be reworked to give them a real set of moves.
According to him, the lack of interest of fans of Game & Watch and Ice Climbers was evident and he decided to replace them with Pit from Kid Icarus.
Pit should be the only one representing the "old school" and the classics.
He finally confirmed that the total number of characters should be near forty, leaving room for about fifteen new characters as well as one or two third party characters."
Then it goes on to list the newcomers that were confirmed beforehand.
I don't know if this will help anyone anywheres...but oh well.
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Instead of bringing back the old Koopa Kids, how about either A or B (preferrably B, but A is still cool)...
A.) Make Bowser's special involve the Koopa Kids
B.) Make a Koopa Kid item (like a pokeball?), that once you use it, a random Koopa Kid comes out and does something Koopa Kidd-ey. For example, Ludwig could use some profound scientific machine to mess up your opponents.
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I was thinking the same thing.
like samus,
change colors = swith to zero suit samus, or like Dark Samus, or Varia Suit Samus
the possibilities are endless.
they can still add more characters if they wanted too.
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Isn't Bowser?
But they should keep Young Link, instead of swapping him for another Link. I'm O.K. with the Ice Climbers leaving. I'd be happier if they got rid of Ness though.
Does anyone think that Luigi will make a comeback?
(crosses fingers hopefully until they bleed)
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That's when I've been hoping for for a long time. Mario, Dr. Mario, Paper Mario, NES Mario, all on one icon.
NES Link, Wind Waker Link, OoT Link, and TP Link, all on one icon.
If anyone has played Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 2/Naruto: Clash of Ninja 2, note how Mizuki and Iruka share the same icon.
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Thanks! Hopefully this is true. While it'd a shame to see the Ice Climbers and Game & Watch go, I think I might favor it as opposed to seeing ALL of the clones go, especially Pichu.
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Still, Nana and Popo were juggletastic. Not only that, but they had a really unique fighting style. They need to be kept. While I'm not as fond of him, I'm hoping Mr. Game & Watch also sticks around.
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- Sonic
- Bonk
- Toad
- Daisy (they're short on female characters)
- Waluigi
- Birdo (because she's in friggin' everything lately)
I'm sure there could be more, but that seems a good place to start.
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Some other characters I was thinking are possible are Diddy Kong(come on peanut gun!), Ganon (different from Ganondorf; hopefully a big fat pig with a trident), Samurai Goroh or Black Bull from F-Zero, and Ash Ketchum (a move for him would be like charmander pops out quickly shooting a fireball or something).
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Why not? They got Snake.
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Getting rid of g&w and the ice climbers was probably the result of examining how people play the game and which characters were used the most. Not alot of people used g&w seriously, and even though there are some ice climbers proponents out there, they weren't that popular either. Thems just the facts, get over it. If we're gonna start to get a larger roster, at some point they have to separate the wheat from the chaff.
If "A person" post #11 did his french translation correctly, I think that the news of Falco not being a Fox clone is HUGE. I've always prefered Falco's strength to Fox's speed, and I'm intruiged as to what they could add as a new moveset.
Swapping Cel-Link in for Young Link is a good idea, I feel. Even if he has all the same moves as Young Link, it brings more variety to the game. As for Young Bowser and Ridley, why not? Again, I feel that variety is key. Of course Ridley will be play balanced and sized accordingly. Young Bowser is cool, but it also makes me think that there could be a young Mario and Luigi in there somewhere. I suppose it doesn't HAVE to be that way, but I don't feel it's an illogical guess. Perhaps an Iceclimbers-esque buddy system?
And in general, imagine some of your first responses to characters you found out were going to be in Melee. "Falco, really? What could he add?" Now my friends and I play him all the time. Who knows how these characters are going to play out. I'm not going to be beholden to my "favorite" characters to play in Melee if I find someone better in Brawl, just like I changed my tastes from the original when I transitioned to Melee. Smash is just a great game, and I'm willing to trust their design decisions because ultimately the combat system makes it addicting. I'll buy it no matter what, the use of established franchises is just tasty frosting on a tasty tasty cake.
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ElChibo, do you have any sources for that, or is this something that you're pulling from thin air? I could see all sorts of problems a playable Ditto would have (like how you determine which opponent you imitate, whether you'd have any moves at all when in plain Ditto form, and how a match of only Dittos would play). About the best you could do is have it function like Mokujin in Tekken 3, and even then you could just have a second Ditto behind it to imitate the first if Ice Climbers came up on the random spin.
My sincerest hope is they ditch the duplicates (or in the case of really cool characters like Ganondorf, give them radically different movesets) and pack in as many original ideas as possible. The suggestion that they'd take out two original ideas and throw in two more potential dupes is ludicrous, whether or not it's true.
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...Jan... Medi, I've been pitching the clothes change = different character idea for a while now, and it's hard to get people to listen to it.
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Ok well maybe not but still it would be interesting to have both the brother of light and the brother of dark in the game together.
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And seriously, not much beats the bell animation when you win a match and mockingly tell your friends "ding-a-ling, dudes, you can't stop it!" I agree that the more characters the merrier, and really don't see (short of licensing issues) why any characters would be dropped.
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I'm not complaining, but what's the star for? i don't remember meeting any requirements for a star. Eh....now i'm not being grateful, anyway thanks.
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I would agree that less popular characters should get weeded out, except for the fact that there's no real need. between the expanded field and the duplicates that can be edited or deleted, nothing unique should be on the chopping block.
Luigi is not that different from Mario. He has a couple of different moves, but not enough to make him play "totally differently". Dr. Mario is more of a departure, and even he isn't that much different.
Anyone who thinks Ness should go either doesn't understand how to use him or has been abused by someone who does. He has a high learning curve, but is devastating in the right hands.
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Nobody ever suspects death by the floating pink puffball.
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Speaking of fly, I'd bet my p*n*s that game mode is in there. Yeah, I'm confident.
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Megaman would be great, too. But I think strategically, they need to put Sonic, Tails, and possibly Knuckles in the game. Do you know how many people will want to play the game just to have the ultimate video game grudge match between Mario and Sonic? or their cronies? It would be smart.
Other good third-party characters would be Strider, a character from Final Fantasy 1 (I'd suggest the red mage, more flexibility with a move set), Zero from Mega Man X, or Ryu Habashi from Ninja Gaiden (yes, it was a successful Nintendo game before Microsoft knew what video games were).
Other good first-party characters could be the main boss from Donkey Kong Country (don't know his name), Toad, Star Wolf (maybe other members of his team), and another powerful, cool pokemon instead of gay Jigglypuss and Bitchu (in the Pokemon world, those other 3 wouldn't hold a canlde to MewTwo, right? why are they in his league in this game?)
Oh, one more thing, I read in another site about that interview (that is probably just a rumor anyway), he also said the character count would approach 40, which has me psyched because I live in a PS2, XBox friendly area. Don't know many people to play Smash with, so the fun pretty much left for me when I unlocked everything and could consistently beat the level 9 AI in multiplayer. More things to unlock equals longer interesting gameplay in my opinion. If Melee had been online, I think I'd still be playing regularly to this day, instead of dusting it off every month or 2 when I get the craving to f**k up some of the characters I used to hate.
Oh ya, Simon Belmont, can't believe I forgot about him. He'd be a good character, too
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i call them on their bluff.
as for ridley, i think he could very well make a nice appearance
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Kirby is tiny in his games, yet he's not much shorter than Mario in smash.
What I'm saying is, is that they'll adjust Ridley's size for the game. That, or they'll base him off the original 8-bit Metroid Ridley (which would be awesome in it's self).
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It should be noted that Smash Bros. isn't made to scale. Kirby, for example, is only eight inches tall. However, in Smash Bros., he's nearly as tall as Mario!
So, don't worry about Ridley's size.
However, I don't like that they're removing any characters. I can understand replacing Young Link with a cel-shaded Link (it isn't specified as TWW Link, so I'm hoping for TMC Link!), but the loss of Mr. Game & Watch and Ice Climbers is unacceptable.
Sakurai stated because there wasn't much fan support for them.
Well, speak up! Let him know you don't want them removed!
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You're probably right about Ness. I just said they should take him out because
1) In popularity, most people don't like him.
2) He has a high learning curve. No character in this kind of game should be so hard to learn control over. For example. If I didn't know how to play as Ness, and i tried him out, but i was destroyed simply because i can't control him, isn't good in this game.
This game should have little to no learning curves, so that when you play, you aren't completely destroyed like in my example above. That way you can still have fun even if you lose a few lives.
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But I would try playing some Luigi vs Mario games if I were you. I agree they are vastly different.
Luigi is all about the air game (which is ironic, since he is so slow and awkward in the air), has the torpedo, his trip-jump is much weaker but has a chance to scream someone, his smash is awful, his mid-air smash brutal, and his dash attack ridiculous.
I don't play Luigi as a rule, but one of my smash bretheren does constantly, and it is quite a different feeling altogether.
Personally, I don't mind who they add in/take out, as long as they continue to apply top notch balancing (Marth notwithstanding) and just keep it FUN!
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Ness could maybe possibly be gone or even given new moves/easy controls, if I remember correctly the director of the game said the game would be moderate.
also I would hate to play a game and get owned right away by someone who knew the game and all of the special moves, it works for some games but not a game that can be played by anyone.
thats all i want out of Brawl, easy learning curve and no cloned characters.
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That's just some of my thoughts on things they could do.
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