Super Smash Bros.

I don't see why people are so dismissive of Shrek. Sure, right, 'Shrek is a film character and thus cannot get in'. But that's not actually true: Shrek actually debuted in a book.

Now that I've completely and utterly dismantled the core argument against Shrek, we have to look and accept that Shrek has a far larger history in gaming than he ever did in film. Not only does each and every film have a counterpart, sometimes multiple, in the video game world, but he has a long and varied history of other genre games too. Shrek has no less than four appearances in kart racing games, to the point that and I and no doubt others often refer to the Mario Kart games as 'Shreklikes'. And he's got several (three) party games, so really you could, I'm not saying you should but you definitely could, also refer to every Mario Party game as a 'Shreklike'.

What's that? Shrek has another 12 games independent of any of those! And I'm discounting all the educational games, as well as any others published under the Shrek 2 label. I mean, the evidence speaks for itself there. In fact, one of those, the critically renowned Shrek SuperSlam, is a fighting game, meaning that for Shrek and several others — let's not ignore Donkey, Fiona and Puss as possible fighters — already have direct inspiration to take from. Frankly, I'd be surprised if he wasn't announced by this time next week.

But the core argument against him is that he's not a character that debuted in a videogame. Every single other character in Smash were videogame characters first, even if their franchises branched out to other media later.

Edited by danime91 on Oct 11th 2018 at 9:39:29 AM

This might be a very philosophical argument, but I think at their core books are really primitive video games where you beat the illiterate. In fact, I googled 'competitive reading' just now and turns out I got results. Didn't read them, too busy rushing through this book right now.

I'll have you know that books have words and are read like comics, and comics are manga, and manga are anime. Therefore Shrek is anime, and thus will never make it in Smash.

Q.E.D.

Edited by Elbruno on Oct 11th 2018 at 1:49:35 PM

You, my good sir, have firmly won me over to the "Shrek should be in Smash" camp. My number 1 pick is now officially Shrek.

Edited by Chris on Oct 11th 2018 at 9:44:32 AM

As much as I don't mind the prospect of nongame characters showing up, Shrek is not a character I'd probably get excitedfor.

On a related note: I feel like the fanbase will get extremely salty if a character like Goku or Daffy Duck shows up, considering the flack that Smash fangames can get because of having anime characters in them.

The only non-game character I'm willing to accept right now is The Mouse.

Wario was in Super Mario Land 2 (as a boss), Wario Land, and I believe he was playable in Super Mario 64 DS.

Also, I would actually love if Tony Hawk got in.

The problem with Waluigi is that he's literally never appeared in a game that's not a "bring everyone together" game. The parties, the karts, the sports, he's never had a game where he could establish his own character, which is the issue. Wario had Wario Land and the WarioWare games, and he was an antagonist to Mario. Even if they just had Waluigi show up in WarioWare it would be enough, but it hasn't happened.

Same issue with not being a videogame character.

Edited by danime91 on Oct 11th 2018 at 10:59:10 AM

Wait, are you suggesting that Waluigi doesn't have enough established personality? Waluigi is a prime candidate for "Most personality in the entire Mario Universe" at this point.

Being real here, yeah, Waluigi is arguably a C-list Mario character. But by this point, all the A- and B-listers are already playable in Smash, so...

The only time Daisy was in a mainline Mario game she was black and white Peach. She's as much of a "bring everyone over" character as Waluigi is.

Plus Waluigi has a lot of established personality under his belt. Like said, he's one of the most full of personality Mario characters.

Edited by Elbruno on Oct 11th 2018 at 3:04:24 PM

I honestly probably wouldn't complain about Popeye getting into Smash just because he at least has significant history with Nintendo, being indirectly responsible for Mario's conception and, of course, his own Nintendo-made arcade game. Maaaaaybe not Mickey either just because of Kingdom Hearts. I personally draw the line at any other non-video game characters though.

With Daisy's inclusion, there's not really any Mario characters left to add more important than Waluigi, unless you count Kamek as a Mario character and not a Yoshi character.

Regarding third party characters, I feel like we're already somewhat oversaturated with them. It was fine in Brawl and Smash 4's base roster, but the latter's DLC really oversaturated things. With Simon and Richter we now have nine third-party characters in a game that's supposed to be a celebration of Nintendo, and of them only Mega Man and Simon really have a strong enough history on Nintendo consoles to be considered "honorary Nintendo characters". I won't mind if the Ken Echo rumors turn out to be true but I don't really want any further third-party folk beyond that, unique or Echo. There's still a ton of Nintendo characters untapped that I'd rather see.

Daisy has actually been playable in a mainline Mario platformer. And Waluigi needs to get in line behind (Captain) Toad and Toadette.

It would be weird having Toad be a playable character considering he's in Peach and Daisy's movesets.

To be honest we're nearing the point where hypesplosion Nintendo characters not yet in Smash are becoming fewer. Makes sense to tap into other companies characers for a full blown celebration of video games with Nintendo as the host, which I think is way cooler than celebration of Nintendo and no one else.

We get very little Mario Golf / Tennis / Party content in Smash aside from a couple of remixes of the music in Brawl and a few trophies of Mario Party original characters. Waluigi would be a fun way to utilize those parts of Mario's spin-off career, while also showcasing his wild personality, which is why I've always wanted him.

So yeah, the requests for Waluigi only recently became a meme, they had legitimate basis originally.

Captain Toad is a separate entity from the Toad in Peach and Daisy's movesets. His segments in 3D World are fun, as is his standalone game, and they're slowly becoming a series mainstay. Plus, we could get Toadette as an alternate costume or echo out of him.

Huh, and here I always thought Captain Toad was kind of the "main" Toad just going on a fun little romp during his vacation or something. Kind of hard to tell, what with them all looking the same and having the same name.

I'm of the opinion that, the larger a game's roster is, the more third-party characters can be allowed in. If this game were still around 40-50 characters, I could understand the potential complaints about having 1/10th of those being from third-parties. However, we've already gone well past that point, and I think just one more before launch would be alright (and also not unexpected, considering Smash 4 also revealed two third parties before launch).

I mean, technically we already got two third parties for this game and we're at roughly 1/8 of the known roster being 3rd party, but I'm not counting or anything.

I would definitely go for Crash Bandicoot, to complete the Nintendo/Sega/Sony mascot trifecta. Then we can add Master Chief DLC and the game is forever perfect.

Master Chief's moveset would feel a lot like Snake's, with a bunch of different weapons for each smash move. Snake echo or no?

Captain Toad isn't a main Toad.

He's a red Toad.

Main Toads have a blue vest and red spots.

I thought Master Chief seemed more like a Samus echo than anything else.

As I said, "for the most part". Two of those are borderline spin-offs anyway (the rest of the Wario Land series certainly is) and the other is a remake. Not exactly what I'd call a lot of mainstream Mario presence. Of course, the irony is that Wario became as iconic as he is because of his spin-offs and how much of a name he made for himself in them.

Waluigi is exactly one game behind Daisy in terms of mainstream presence, and that's only if you consider Mario Land mainstream in the first place. He's been such a constant presence in Mario Kart, Mario Party, and Mario Sports games that it's pretty hard to ignore him at this point. Obviously, those games aren't as important to the series as the "saving the princess" ones, but I'd say they've been around long enough that they shouldn't just be disregarded as irrelevant either.

I'd personally like to see Rayman join the fray. How he controls in Origins and Legends really does seem as though it would fit in well with the Smash Bros formula, and Nintendo and Ubisoft seem fairly chummy these days.