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Sometimes, there is an issue in the fandom too big to just "Settle it in Smash." To briefly describe it, the fanbase has been divided on several aspects: which game is the best of the series, and whether the games should be played casually or competitively, which leads to divisions regarding the use of items and which stages to play with, creating Character Tiers, and of course who should be on the roster. Many unofficial Super Smash Bros.-themed communities and forums, such as Smashboards or /r/smashbros, generally have a large divide between casual and competitive players, with the most vocal being seen as the stereotypical fans.

    Characters 
  • Pikachu: A base-breaking Series Mascot in its home series, Pikachu is generally well-received in Smash but one particular aspect causes it to retain this status: its gameplay mechanics. In all its appearances, Pikachu has been a small, hard-to-hit, very speedy combo-oriented character who can completely invalidate some taller and/or slower characters. This got to the point that it's been one of the absolute best characters in 64, 3DS/Wii U and Ultimate at some point, and also top 10 in Melee and Brawl, with even some of its matchups against fellow top tiers approaching Curb-Stomp Battle status. Combined with the reasons for its contention in its home series and its cutesy voice and design becoming much more irritating in a heated battle,note  many are sick of Pikachu automatically making life hell for any tall and/or heavy characters that may join the roster and wish it could be fundamentally rebalanced to make things fairer for the rest of the cast. On the other hand, in every game except 64, it has few professionals relative to its position on the tier list, and due to its skill ceiling it never reached the top spot in any game after 64. This reached a head with Moveset Clone Pichu in early versions of Ultimate, which embodied and exaggerated every criticism of Pikachu: nigh-impossible to hit, extremely dominating and damaging combos, and overly skewed matchups in its favor, all topped off with its overly cutesy design, voice and presentation making it infuriating to face in intense competitive matches. Before it got Nerfed, Ultimate Pichu was one of the strongest examples of a High-Tier Scrappy in the entire series, and an exaggerated demonstration of why many players groan when facing its big brother.
  • Jigglypuff: When Jigglypuff was first included in 64, it was one of the more popular characters in the anime, but as time went on the character went out of focus, causing a drastic drop in overall popularity; despite this, Jigglypuff has a perfect attendance record in all Smash titles. One half of the fandom values the character despite how out of place it is, usually due to nostalgia and a feeling of fondness for it being one of the original 12 characters. The other half loathes it for existing for the sake of tradition, accusing it of stealing roster spots from more desired characters, whether they be newcomers or veterans. 20 years of fighting later, Ultimate finally laid the argument to rest at E3 2018, where every single veteran made their return and several highly coveted newcomers (the Inklings, Daisy, and Ridley) were introduced in one fell swoop, satisfying both ends of the spectrum at last - although debates remain on whether it should stay for the inevitable roster cuts coming to Smash games after Ultimate.
  • Princess Peach, for similar reasons to Pikachu: her gameplay mechanics, layered on top of the Base-Breaking Character status she keeps from her home series. In her case, it's her floating mechanic, which has shot her to top-tier status in Melee and even moreso Ultimate, largely because she is considered to "hog" a fairly generic gimmick that could easily be given to other levitating characters like Ganondorf and Mewtwo (as in Project M) to give them more of a fighting chance. Thus, most of the Smash resentment towards Peach comes from fans who are upset about her being the only "floater" in the cast (aside from her Moveset Clone Daisy) and benefiting greatly from it while other canonically levitating fighters are left to languish and suffer in the low tiers,note  and again like Pikachu this isn't helped by her "cutesy" design and presentation, which can make her more annoying to face in a heated battle despite being otherwise endearing. Notable is that in a 2021 Japanese popularity poll of Ultimate fighters, both Peach and Daisy placed within the bottom 5.
  • Zero Suit Samus: She was Brawl's dark horse for her interesting moveset, and added more variety to Samus' playstyle. As the game's most famous example of Ms. Fanservice, her beautiful looks and serious but alluring personality also won over the hearts of many fans. However, a separate, large faction despises her for being a much better character than Varia-suited Samus (which completely violates Metroid canon), attracting people uninterested in the Metroid games, and giving Samus too much of a reputation as a "sexy blonde chick" rather than a powerful warrior — a debate that spills over to the Metroid fandom. There's also the issue of her alleged oversexualization in 3DS/Wii U largely due to her Combat Stilettos; she retains them in Ultimate, but complaints around her reduced ever-so-slightly by turning her into a genuine Amazonian Beauty and toning down her Ms. Fanservice assets slightly, and by even more deliberately distancing its depiction of Samus Aran from her reviled Metroid: Other M personality - a game where complaints about Samus' sexualization (Zero Suit and all) came to a head. As with the entire Metroid franchise, she is also a case of Germans Love David Hasselhoff, with ZSS being a notably popular fighter in the West but achieving a very poor 50th place in a Japanese fighter popularity poll.
  • The for 3DS/Wii U version of Charizard: Did Charizard deserve to be its own character separate from the Pokémon Trainer? Was it popular and iconic enough to warrant that status, or was it just unfair to Bulbasaur (Ivysaur) and Squirtle fans? Did its solo moveset make it into a solid heavyweight or a dysfunctional character due to it still using a moveset designed to work on its former team? And did the Trainer's return in Ultimate fix the aforementioned problems by providing fans of all three starters with a viable and dynamic team character, or did it strip Charizard of its identity, make it more inconvenient to solo-main it, and make it seem out of place next to Greninja and Incineroar as solo characters (along with Mewtwo and Lucario still using Mega Evolution for their Final Smashes)? Worth noting is that the Pokémon Trainer achieved an abysmal 54th place in the 2021 Japanese popularity poll, despite the character slot consisting of five very popular entities (including Charizard) and the poll winner being another transforming character (Pyra/Mythra); it can be deduced that some fans simply prefer the starter Pokémon to have their own identity.
  • Lucina: As one of the most popular modern Fire Emblem characters, she was added to the game as a Moveset Clone of her ancestor Marth. Her fans enjoyed her addition as a cool-looking female swordfighter, especially those who liked her character in Fire Emblem: Awakening. Detractors lambasted her for allegedly adding to the Fire Emblem "overrepresentation" in the game, much like with Dark Pit and Kid Icarus. As of Ultimate, however, Lucina became more universally accepted due to clone characters' rebranding as "Echo Fighters" and her becoming one of the most popular characters in competitive play, with many of her complaints instead transferring to Chrom (below) in a milder form.
  • Cloud: His announcement came as a shock to everyone, and he became a very popular character to download and play for the sheer Rule of Cool factor in pitting him against Nintendo's greatest — especially his longtime unofficial rival Link. However, Cloud's addition was also found to be insulting for many, because instead of a character from one of the Final Fantasy games that were on Nintendo consoles, Smash gets a character from Final Fantasy VII, the game that marked the point where Final Fantasy became more associated with Sony than Nintendo. Others are okay with his inclusion on the basis that Cloud is essentially the face of the Final Fantasy franchise for most people, regardless of whether or not he's been on a Nintendo console before. There’s also the fact that Final Fantasy VII in general has been the subject of Hype Backlash-induced Broken Base for a long time. This died down significantly in Ultimate when Final Fantasy VII was finally announced for release on the Nintendo Switch (which some attribute outright to Cloud's inclusion in Smash), to the degree that the addition of his archenemy Sephiroth was one of the most celebrated reveals at TGA 2020.
  • Chrom: As another Fire Emblem character, this reaction was inevitable. As the face of one of the most popular games in the franchise, some feel his inclusion is welcome, while others find him to be an insulting addition. Even among Fire Emblem fans, some find his inclusion to be indicative of favoritism to the 3DS era of games. On the flip side, some find him to be a harmless addition, given that he's simply an echo fighter of Roy rather than a full-fledged newcomer, and was revealed alongside multiple fighters they prefer.
  • Incineroar: Fans of Decidueye/Mimikyu/Lycanroc/Tapu Koko believe it would have made a better "rep" for Generation VII, and others felt that Pokémon characters were already too excessive (much like the Fire Emblem examples above) and didn't need another. Even among fans of the character, there are many who believe that having him be the final base-roster newcomer to be revealed was underwhelming. On the other hand, its fans find it to be a fun, unique character due to its over the top heel wrestler persona, bringing a brand new archetype of fighter to the series.
  • Piranha Plant: Is it a fun, quirky addition that manages to be the type of completely unpredictable and objectively iconic inclusion the series is known for? Or is it a lame novelty that wore out its welcome shortly after its reveal and "stole" the Mario DLC spot from several of the franchise's more requested characters, like (Captain) Toad, Waluigi, Mallow and Geno? It debuting as a Low-Tier Letdown on release did not help matters in the slightest.
  • Geno: Despite never being actually playable (sort of, more on that later), few characters have been discussed this much within the Smash newcomer speculation community. Geno, since he hasn't been made playable, tends to attract discussion about both how he is and isn't represented. Fans of this character from this collaboration between Nintendo and Squaresoft (before they merged with Enix to become Square Enix) have been campaigning for years to get Nintendo, Sakurai or anyone involved in Smash to add this possessed doll to the playable roster. This is due the idea that Super Smash Bros. as a series is like a museum dedicated to video games and would love the idea of the spotlight being cast on a game (Super Mario RPG in this case) that fans deem emblematic to gaming, as well as its subsequent Spiritual Successors that also don't receive much representation. Detractors often don't see what the big deal about Geno is and feel that he's a bit too deep of a cut for a fighter for most Smash players, especially since his only major appearance was in a single game from 1996 note . Fans often cite that Sakurai has wanted Geno in the series for years, but factors such as cooperation with Square Enixnote  and apathy on Nintendo's partnote  have prevented this from happening. Geno fans often fire back that detractors dedicating their online presence to wanting other people to not be happy only further taints the already infamously toxic Smash fanbase, especially since detractors often seem to seek out Geno fans specifically to insult them and their wants, even on tweets made by Sakurai himself that happen to contain or reference Geno. Detractors retort that like with multiple other frequently-requested characters before him, it gets irritating seeing people touting Geno in their newcomer request and expectation lists so frequently, to the point of stymying conversation on other characters' chances. Geno being acknowledged in Smash 4 with a Mii Gunner costume gave his fans hope that he'd appear as a proper fighter in the next game (especially when the infamous "Grinch Leak" implicated him among several other fan requests), but he only appeared as an equippable Spirit in base Ultimate. Many of his fans held onto hope that he'd be included as DLC when his costume wasn't shown in "Mr. Sakurai Presents "Hero"", especially after Min Min proved that spirits within the base game can be "upgraded" to a fighter... but then the Geno Mii from Smash 4 was unceremoniously announced more than a year later in "Mr. Sakurai Presents "Sephiroth"", with its only major change being additional cape physics. This event caused a lot of gloating among his detractors, much to the disdain of Geno fans. Similar situations have occurred with other highly requested characters being revealed as Mii costumes or Assist Trophies. And sure enough, by the time Ultimate's DLC cycle ended, Geno was not made playable, forcing his disgruntled fanbase to wait even longer for the next Smash game (which could take between 4 to 8 years) for another chance at Geno's playability.

    General 
  • Perceived Over-representation: Multiple franchises have been hit with periodic outrage, arguing that they have too much focus on them, while smaller series languish from a lack of content. The fans of those franchises are similarly vocal in their pleasure that their series is receiving so much love, and point out how it's the right of the developers/publishers to decide what's most deserving of a push or not. People are generally understanding of this treatment being given to Mario and Pokémon, which are Nintendo's two biggest and most popular franchises with large casts, as well as Kirby given that it's Sakurai's brainchild and Kirby is one of the most popular characters in every game he's in, but other series with more than one or two characters have fallen into this on occasion.
    • Fire Emblem: People were fine with the series in Melee, where it only had Marth and his Moveset Clone Roy, and Brawl, where it dropped Roy and added Mighty Glacier Ike, but 3DS/Wii U is when this became a big debate. The game began innocuously with two new fighters from Awakening, Lucina and Robin, being added to the roster, one of which was a bonus Moveset Clone character, but the DLC for the game is when the base broke. In addition to bringing back Roy from Melee as a semiclone of Marth, Corrin from Fates was also added, meaning Fire Emblem became the only series to get two DLC slots, while their playable character count tripled from two to six in a single game; since then, it's become impossible to talk about FE in Smash without arguments over how many FE characters there are versus how many there "should" be, whether Nintendo is shilling the series too hard, and so on. Chrom's and Byleth's additions in Ultimate only stoked the flames further, as Fire Emblem now had eight characters in Smash, one short of Nintendo's flagship Super Mario Bros. and two short of the massive Cash-Cow Franchise Pokémon (counting all of the Pokémon Trainer's Pokémon separately) in spite of FE not being near the same level as either in the public consciousness.
      • Representing the Latest: Within the Fire Emblem fandom, there's some infighting over how their series' representation in Smash always seems to skew towards the latest release (with Marth being the only one who didn't come out at or near the time his games released), sometimes involving how this representation taints the view of the series for non-FE fans. In particular, the fact that Awakening has three fighters in Smash is either perfectly fine because the game was a Killer App for the 3DS and introduced a large number of new people to the series, or completely unreasonable because of the blatant favoritism and the fact that there are more than 20 years of games with plenty of unique and beloved characters to pick from.
    • Perceived Under-Representation: On the flipside, there are some franchises that have generally decent representation, but are perceived as having "too little" content. Especially when they're being compared to, once again, Fire Emblem. The main issue lies with the number of fighters a series has being the main, if not the only, measure used to determine how much a series is represented. The main series that people bring up the most as being "under-represented" is The Legend of Zelda.note . This focus on the series' fighter representation over anything else can be for a multitude of reasons: Official promotional materials and Fan Art for Smash both prioritize fighters more than any form of NPC, Tournament Play prevents Assist Trophies and most stage cameos from getting a chance to be seen, Miis (and therefore Mii Costumes) are rarely used in competitive play, and there's a general desire to play as an Ensemble Dark Horse rather than a form of Link/Zelda/Ganon, or a Mii that bears a passing resemblance to them at best. However, thinking that "representation" only counts for fighters is still a trap that many fans fall into. So, despite the fact that Zelda as a franchise has a good amount of representation outside of fightersnote , the bias towards fighters leads people to think the series is under-represented.
  • Swordfighters: The idea that there are too many characters who fight with swords is a recurring point of mockery for a major chunk of the player base, deriding how it makes several characters feel similar and especially how the games insist on adding Fire Emblem sword-users when the series has a variety of weapons to choose from. The other side argues it is a needless complaint, especially when taking into account how a similar number of characters fight with their hands/feet or with guns and that in a series with multiple types of weapon, such as Fire Emblem, it's customary for the main character (i.e. the one with the best chance of being featured in a large-scale crossover like Smash) to use a sword as their weapon.
  • Professional Play: Easily the oldest conflict in the fanbase is whether or not the games should be played or treated competitively. Proponents note how the uniqueness of Smash as a game makes for a competitive experience that cannot be found elsewhere, and that the banning of certain in-game supplementaries (items, chaotic stages) are necessary for reducing cheesing/randomness, to ensure a more skill-driven game. Detractors state that the pro-scene's existence is a major insult to Sakurai's vision for the series — a fun casual game for friends to party around with — and that they are refusing to the play the game the way it was meant to be played. Accusations of elitism, Scrub-ism, and overall non-pleasantries are thrown abound, and even after Sakurai openly decided to design the games with the pro-scene in mind, it shows no signs of ever stopping.
    • Advanced Techniques: A core part of the division between the aforementioned groups is whether or not certain exploits/glitches — usually dubbed "Advanced Techniques" — should be used. (Whether any given technique even counts as a glitch has also been subject to debate.) Those in favor argue that they add new levels of depth to gameplay that can't be offered elsewhere. Those against argue that since most ATs aren't part of the game, they shouldn't be used at all, as they weren't part of the game's design philosophy, and thus throw the balance out of whack. The addition of complexity has its own subset — is the extra mechanical skill good for showcasing talent, or bad for increasing the skill ceiling to an unwittingly high level that most can't hope to achieve?
    • Banning Meta Knight: In the Brawl competitive scene, Meta Knight outclassed every character in the game, causing an over-centralized meta-game involving playing Meta Knight and trying to beat him. One party wanted him banned out of fear that he was making the game too stale and that viewership/entrants would die out due to his overt presence, as well as annoyance over how dominant he was. The other party, consisting of the people who played him/liked him, were against it, as he was ultimately in a boat to the similarly powerful Melee Fox, where despite being so dominant, he could still be fun to watch/play, and removing a player's main from the game would gimp too many people. The test of time reveals that the former group had the right ideanote , but only after the conflict became so vicious that the Brawl competitive scene died from the fire.
  • Fighting Game Characters: Whether or not Smash should include characters from other fighting games, an argument that has been around at least since the inclusion of Ryu from Street Fighter as DLC in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, and would continue on with Ultimate including Ken from Street Fighter at launch and Terry from Fatal Fury, Min Min from Nintendo's own ARMS, and Kazuya from Tekken as DLC. Detractors state that fighting game characters are inherently more boring than characters from other games, as translating their gameplay into a Smash moveset would supposedly involve simply lifting their moveset from their original games wholesale, and that a big part of the appeal of Smash is seeing non-fighting game characters and their movements from the original games being translated creatively into a Smash moveset. That's to say nothing of all of the above characters except Min Min retaining their traditional command inputs to perform objectively better versions of their special moves, which a lot of detractors believe doesn't mesh well with the Smash engine. Proponents argue that translating fighting game characters to Smash would still be interesting on some level, as it involves taking a moveset from one fighting game and translating it to another that plays completely differently (not unlike when Street Fighter X Tekken took characters from Tekken, a 3D fighting game, and translated them into a 2D style of gameplay, or how two of the guests from Tekken 7 - funnily enough, both again from Street Fighter and Fatal Fury - replicated their 2D gameplay in a 3D plane). They also point out that with Smash having evolved into a celebration of video games in general, excluding characters from popular and influential fighting games that have made their own mark on history, such as Scorpion or Sub-Zero from Mortal Kombat, simply because of the genre of their home series would seem very arbitrary.
  • Third-Party Characters: While third-party characters have been around since Brawl (and were nearly included in Melee), the fanbase has become increasingly divided over how many third-party characters are too many. Some believe that since the series started out as a celebration of just Nintendo, it should have stayed that way and the multitude of third-party characters the games often bring in detracts from this, while others follow a similar train of thought and see the addition of third-party characters as coming at the expense of first/second-party characters who would make for an excellent addition to the games. Conversely, other fans (including people at Nintendo itself, notably) tend to see Smash nowadays as a celebration of video games as a whole (that just happens to be made by Nintendo exclusively for their current console) and that being in Smash is the highest honor that any video game character can get, so thus, there being a bevy of third-party characters is no big deal. Even some people who don't care for them acknowledge that their inclusion gets people who don't care about/aren't fans of Nintendo's franchises to buy Smash just to try out the third-party character they like. The debate got especially heated during Ultimate's life-cycle due to not only all of the previous third-party characters returning, but adding three more in the base roster and eight more via the Fighters Passes on top of that, for a total of 18; to put that into perspective, over 1/5th of the current Smash roster has now hailed from third-partiesnote .
  • The Better Adventure Mode: Some prefer the Subspace Emissary because it felt more like an adventure, with beautifully designed cutscenes with lots of action and humor, and having platforming and exploration to break up the fights, in addition to having co-op, while others criticized it for its generic locales and enemies at the expense of references to games the characters were from. Others prefer World of Light because while there weren't as many cutscenes, they felt it was unimportant and the sheer amount of content and bevy of references to hundreds of games from Nintendo's back catalog and other companies' libraries made up for it but was criticized by many for going on too long, being very shallow and repetitive, and having no actual platforming levels. There's also Melee's adventure mode, which was the shortest of them all as an alternative to Classic Mode, but was praised for its structure, great tributes to the characters' franchises (despite there being only around half of them), and hidden secret battles.
  • Spirits Becoming Playable Characters: After Ultimate's launch, there was infighting over whether characters who appear in the game as spirits could be DLC fighters or not. One camp said that being a spirit in the base game meant a character could be DLC, and one camp said that being a spirit disqualified the character.note  Nothing in Fighters Pass Volume 1 proved either side to be correct: the first four members of the first Fighters Pass (Joker, Hero, Banjo & Kazooie, and Terry) are from series that are entirely new to Smash, and Byleth is from a game that was released after Ultimate that had no spirits before they joined. As an aside, Piranha Plant was always planned to be DLC during the base game's development, so the base game's list of spirits reflects this. As of Byleth's introduction, there's also the fact that old spirits can be renamed, as Zelda's Dimitri and Hilda had the name of their origin series added to differentiate them from the same-named characters from Three Houses, and as of the Cuphead spirit event, there's the fact that Spirit Battles can be changed depending on whether or not you own the DLC.note  These debates can get heated as the sides argue that certain popular character requests who are all in the base game as spirits, like Geno, Bandana Waddle Dee, and Raymannote , can or can't be implemented as DLC fighters in the future. It took until June 22, 2020 to settle the debate once and for all; Min Min from ARMS was the first character in Fighters Pass, Volume 2, and she was already a spirit when this happened. The reveal of Min Min thus proved that characters who are spirits within the base game are eligible to become full-fledged fightersnote .
    • While there is proof that base game spirits can become fighters, there is still a debate on whether or not spirits introduced in events deconfirm, particularly in terms of Pokémon Sword and Shield. Did the event from around its launch mean it won't get a fighter? Is Pokémon too much of a Cash-Cow Franchise to let it deconfirm? Did the event's lack of mons that became Breakout Characters after the game's launch mean one of them is being saved for a challenger pack? It should be pointed out that the characters that were chosen for the eventnote  would probably have been saved for the DLC spirit board that every DLC character comes with, otherwise the event wouldn't have been introduced. This is seen with Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which had no such event upon its release and was then saved to be introduced alongside Byleth's DLC challenger pack.
  • Spring Man Not Getting Chosen: After months of debating who the ARMS rep would be when it was announced that Ultimate would get one on March 26, 2020, it was revealed on June 22, 2020 that it would be Min Min, rather than the Series Mascot Spring Man. Masahiro Sakurai explained that this was due to ARMS producer Kosuke Yabuki requesting her to join the battle and believing that all of its characters could be seen as the protagonist, and did not mention Spring Man's Assist Trophy (or, for that matter, Ribbon Girl's Mii Costume) as reasons against choosing him. This is mentioned in arguments in favor of promoting Assist Trophies or Mii Costumes, but the fact neither Spring Man nor Ribbon Girl were Promoted to Playable with this challenger pack makes it seem to others like Assist Trophies and Mii Costumes still need to wait for sequels to get promoted. Some have also felt that the push to get Spring Man in as the next playable fighter was merely just to prove a point that Assist Trophies can be promoted to being playable in the same game as their debut and not out of any real love of the character himself, and that it still wouldn't be smooth sailing for other characters with non-playable representation, as some of them come from franchises that haven't had new games for years, while others come from games that have too much content already in Smash for a challenger pack.
  • Rex Not Being Playable: Despite being a Base-Breaking Character in his home game, he was highly requested during the pre-release phase of Ultimate and was commonly speculated as a duo fighter with the Aegis, only for his chances to have been seemingly nipped in the bud with the announcement of his Mii Costume as a purchase bonus for the first Fighters Pass, much to the dismay of many of his supporters. Min Min's announcement roughly 2 years later would then revive hope for his inclusion due to both of their home games being unable to get fighters in the base game due to time constraints, only for Pyra and Mythra to be the playable representatives of the game instead of him about another year laternote . Even after the March presentation revealed he was initially planned and was only dropped due to hardware limitations, along with his wide presence for a "support character", fans within both the Smash and Xenoblade fandoms have been split on whether this was the right choice. Those content with Pyra and Mythra state that their inclusion is justified given their popularity, and they offer a more unique experience with them being semiclones of each other and their ability to swap. Those who wanted a playable Rex feel how only the Aegis being playable sides with his detractors, panders to those solely attracted to them for their looks, and worsens existing Fandom Enraging Misconceptions for the Aegis and their home game (as surface-level arguments about their designs and if they're all there is to the game were reignited following the reveal). Another camp who wanted both him and the Aegis playable also lament how the Driver and Blade system could not be translated to Smash, with some also saying the reveal cheated them with how the trailer's buildup was framed looked like they were indeed going to be a duo fighter as previously speculated. The ambiguity of Smash's future after Ultimate certainly doesn't help this, meaning it's uncertain if Rex will even get a chance to become playable in a future installment much like Chrom before him, let alone if the Aegis (or even Shulk) will also return. Then there's the possibility of a Xenoblade Chronicles 3 rep and if it could stand against his chances due to theoretical resource reasons.
  • Safe Speculation: Is sticking to a small pool of characters like Crash Bandicoot, Ryu Hayabusa, and a Pokémon from Pokémon Sword and Shield that seem to have a ton of points in their favor the right way to speculate, or has Ultimate 's DLC given us too many Unexpected Characters for these to truly be safe bets? This has especially become a heated topic of discussion during Fighters Pass 2, as it started with a character from ARMS, a first-party considered to be extremely unlikely because it was almost three years oldnote , and then later added Sephiroth, who despite his popularity and ability to fix Final Fantasy VII's lack of music and spirits, was not commonly brought up as a potential newcomer. The Smash fanbase sticking to the same character choices can leave them blind to other options that in hindsight were more obvious, leading to situations where Steve, from the best-selling game ever, was seen as a "meme pick" and not taken seriously as an option, while Geno and Isaac—both characters from RPGs that only had modest sales upon release, haven't appeared in a new game in a long time, and are virtually unknown outside of the Smash community—were seen as "obvious choices" because they've been mentioned so much by other fans. There's also the argument against disregarding what are dubbed "fan rules", because there needs to be some process of elimination if the goal is to make an accurate prediction on which character will appear in Smash as a fighter. However, there comes a point where these rules are basically an individual's personal biases to justify characters they want or don't want, especially with the latter (see some of the other entries in this page such as swordfighters, JRPG characters, etc). At times, such speculation raises questions as to whether some characters constantly mentioned are out of real love for the character or series.For example...  Another thing to point out is that a lot of the characters that are brought up constantly are ones that fans have been asking for since Super Smash Bros Brawl, which is a Gambler's Fallacy (my character choice didn't make it into this game, surely they'll appear in the DLC or the next game right?).
  • JRPG fans vs Platformer fans: Starting after Pyra & Mythra's addition, these two groups got into Flame Wars (and associated memes with the Swordguy McJRPG and Scrimblo Bimblo posts) over whether the final two DLC fighters should be from their favored genres, as well as claims from the platformer crowd that the sudden influx of JRPG characters For reference  takes away from chances for other popular platformer characters to be showcased in the game. JRPG fans often point out that Smash and a vast majority of the companies involved in its production and licenses are Japanese, and that platformer fans shouldn't write off the chances of a JRPG character, considering how big the genre is in the country where Smash is centered and the genre has been getting awareness that's been steadily growing bigger since 2017. Another point that is brought up is that the base game already had quite a few characters from platformers.note  Platformer fans often point out that nearly every JRPG represented in Smash revolves around Animesque protagonist humans, humanoids, or Humans by Any Other Name wielding a sword (tying into the "anime swordfighter" debates) when there are dozens of JRPGs that go outside of that mold, and that "Scrimblo Bimblo" is a false equivalency since most platformer characters are designed to be diverse in appearance and behavior. Meanwhile, other people who don't have a horse on either side think that both JRPG and platformer fans have no room to fight over who "deserves" new content, as they both already have solid representation, when there are several other genres, such as rhythm games, racing games, puzzle games, beat 'em ups, shoot 'em ups, and first-person and third-person shooters, that have little-to-nothing in Smash and could use the representation much more than those two. Both sides would later take an L when the second last choice turned out to be Kazuya Mishima from the Tekken series, a Fighting Game character. Later still, both sides would actually win out with the same final character: Sora from Kingdom Hearts who happens to have elements of what both sides would want.
  • Western-created content vs. Japanese-created content: Some Western Smash fans feel that the game features too much content from Japanese creators, and feel that if the game is really meant to be a celebration of video games, it should represent the Western industry as well. These fans often lament that characters like Rayman, Master Chief, and Doomguy haven't been playable in Smash Bros. despite their overwhelming popularity in Western circles, simply because their series (and in the case of of first-person shooters, the whole genre) aren't as popular in Japan.note  Other Smash fans will point out that a game made in Japan, by a Japanese company, is going to have a lot of content from Japanese-made series, partially due to these series being more "familiar" to a Japanese audience (and by extension, Nintendo of Japan themselves), but also because there's no language barrier or distancenote  to overcome to ask the companies for permission.
  • Mii Costumes: While the Miis started out as Ensemble Darkhorses in Ultimate due to much-appreciated buffs, better customization options, and outfits of popular characters like Sans and Cuphead making Mii Gunner a Breakout Character, the costumes started to become contentious when highly-requested characters like Geno, Travis Touchdown, Dante, Shantae, or Doomguy/the Doom Slayer became Mii Costumes. Some fans appreciate that the developers were trying to make the characters as playable as possible with limited DLC character slots that were already chosen by Nintendo and approved by Sakurai, but the intense speculation and existing Broken Base on who might get in, or who "deserves" to get in, combined with the Fighter's Passes being finished, meant that many saw these Mii Costumes as "deconfirmations" that don't always suit the character the costume is mimicking, thanks to the Miis' vanilla moves and cartoony proportions. The limited playerbase of Mii characters, as well as the Swordfighter and Gunner having bad reputations as "spammy zoners" in the community, don't help matters as despite the costumes, most still see the Miis as only Miis in the end, and believe their requested character deserves better.
  • The possibility of an "Ultimate Deluxe": Due to Ultimate being very well-recieved, many speculated that the next Nintendo console would come with an Updated Re-release of said game, rather than an entirely new installment. Those who want an Ultimate Deluxe and/or believe it to be realistic fear that a more traditional Smash sequel would have to cut out a lot of Ultimate's content, much of which was based around bringing back veterans and reused lots of assets from Smash 4 just to make it happen. On the other hand, there are fans who think such a port is highly impractical based on comments Sakurai made regarding the development of the base gamenote , which are issues that would potentially be worse when Ultimate ended with a roster with over 80 characters. Ultimate also almost tripling the amount of third-party characters the series has, which would seriously increase the licensing costs for an Updated Re-release. And regardless of likelihood, a faction of fans just aren't interested in an Ultimate Deluxe for these very reasons, viewing the idea as It's the Same, Now It Sucks!. These fans argue that people can always come back to Ultimate if they want, and prefer a greater emphasis on more new content over the same set of veterans and only a few newcomers.

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