Super Smash Bros.

Corrin consistently does that thing, for counter, up throw, down throw, up smash, and down smash.

Also Kazuya...

@agent-trunks: Thanks for the support.

Kazuya's just a skin replacement.

And as for my moveset ideas, my primary focus wasn't on limiting shapeshifting, but actually on keeping each of the Links (and other characters I'd change) as close to their current balance and the original moveset as possible, while only making changes that are minor on paper, but can actually give a character a whole new feel.

I made those ideas over a year ago, and tweak them now and then, but it only struck me on my walk this afternoon that the three harp spells I'd give Sheik's throws keep the fire/water/wind trio that Zelda.

Edited by wanderlustwarrior on Sep 18th 2021 at 11:04:43 AM

I'm already aware that Corrin & Kazuya can do that, but I'm talking about shapeshifting for all their animations.

In Corrin's case, I'm talking about drastically changing into a Dragon & not just part of their limbs.

Man, discourse about Sora finds itself even in the pages for Ultimate.

Earlier today, someone had to put a mention of Sora back into the YMMV page because it was deleted by someone who said he's owned by Disney, and thus shouldn't be mentioned on the page...even though he's regardless a requested character, which was what said section was discussing.

And just now, I had to clean up the following entry in the Meme page:

• Disney would never let Sora be in Smash ^Explanation Sora quickly became one of the most heavily requested DLC Fighters after the string of 3rd Party Characters in the first DLC Package made it clear that very little was off the table when it came to who could be DLC. Unfortunately, Disney, a company infamous for being a little TOO protective of their intellectual property, owns Kingdom Hearts and it's generally agreed upon that Disney wouldn't let Nintendo use Sora even if Sakurai promised them the deed to his house and first-born child.

I decided to sort of compromise on the latter and put in two new points in its stead:

• Smash speculators are legal experts ^Explanation When it comes to fan requests for new playable characters, Guest Fighters are far and away the hottest topic of discussion. Many fans clamor for certain characters that belong to non-Nintendo companies, but almost nobody can agree on whether said characters have a chance to be in the game due to one word: "Copyright". Would Sakurai and his team want to negotiate with the companies that own the requested characters? Would Nintendo themselves even be interested in a collaboration with said companies? Will the companies be willing to lend them their character(s)? Under what conditions would they allow it, if at all? All these questions and more tend to be brought up, which alongside "fan rules" that are broken just as often as they are created, makes third-party fighter speculation a magnet for Flame Wars and all around confusion. While this has generally been a problem for Smash game discussion since the days of Brawl, the larger number of Guest Fighters added in Ultimate made said problem get even worse. This has led to jokes that fans in the Smash speculation scene are secretly lawyers and legal experts, because they totally understand everything about what goes on behind the scenes of the game's development and playable character selection.
  • Sakurai v. The Walt Disney Company ^Explanation Sora from Kingdom Hearts is one of the most highly requested characters among the fanbase, in both Japan and the rest of the world, but discussion about his potential inclusion always leads to heated debates about his copyright ownership. Many people can't seem to agree on whether Square Enix or Disney have "true" ownership of the character, whether Sora can count as a video game character at all, and whether or not Disney would be able to be negotiated with in regards to lending Sora to Smash due to their generally tight grip on their many properties. One lingering idea is that Disney would never want Sora or any of their properties to be involved in a crossover like Smash... despite the fact that Kingdom Hearts is a crossover by nature, Sora has appeared in several Final Fantasy spin-off titles, such as World of Final Fantasy, and Disney themselves isn't shy about lending their film characters to other companies' video games, such as in Fortnite and Sea of Thieves. This isn't even mentioning how the Disney aspects of Kingdom Hearts could be reflected in Smash, if at all, because of Sakurai's singular, officially stated rule of "all characters have to either be from a video game, or be significant to gaming (such as R.O.B.)". Due to all this discourse, the concept of Smash-related discussion about Sora has become a meme in and of itself.

I added them because of the fact that Sora is such a hot button topic of speculation is constantly joked about (at least from what I've seen, like on Twitter) and has become a meme in and of itself, precisely because of the whole copyright ownership debacle that no one can agree on and no one besides the companies themselves know the truth about.

God, what a mess.

Yeah, Sora has been requested regardless of who holds the copyrigths (I myself used to want him in Smash as well, but ultimately outlived that wish). For what it's worth, though, I've actually seen many people finally give up on seeing him in the game, especially after the reveal of Sephiroth (and yes, it's mostly due to people thinking that he "took away" Sora's chances to further represent "Square" in Smash, even though Sora is owned by Disney while Sephiroth IS owned by Square).

Edited by MyFinalEdits on Sep 17th 2021 at 1:29:46 PM

Sora will be in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale 2 Electric Boogaloo because The mouse is coming for Sony.

Honestly don't expect much changes for the base 12.

Sakurai dislikes changing movesets significantly because he doesn’t want to alienate people who like those movesets.

Even though I still think Ganondorf should have a new moveset and give his “Falcondorf” moves to Black Shadow.

Nah I disagree on the grounds that making Black Shadow "slow Falcon" is an antithesis to his character.

Why?

I'll admit then I don't know everything about, F-Zero let alone Black Shadow, but I only saw one thing about Black Shadow that he could have as a special & all it did was ensared Falcon.

If Black Shadow did have Ganondorf moveset, it would've meant there at least one more F-Zero rep. I'm also pretty sure Black Shadow would've been well-received if Ganondorf's meme are to go any by.

Edited by agent-trunks on Sep 18th 2021 at 8:06:20 AM

If we're going off car stats, Black Shadow's shtick is that he's FASTER than Captain Falcon. Falcon's car is balanced across the board, while Black Shadow's car has humongous max speed and boost power but low traction.

Then I’d say make Black Shadow faster, but having weaker attacks.

Wouldn't exactly be the 1st time a character was being inaccurate to the source material.

Black Shadow's shtick is that it can brutalize any other car with sheer power. Not "lol runs faster than Falcon".

Go play an F-Zero if you think the Black Bull's selling point is its speed. It accelerates like crap, and is the heaviest car in the roster; if you want to go fast you pick Mighty Gazelle or somebody like that, a frail car that has slighty lower top speed, but accelerates so fast that can actually USE that top speed.

Black Shadow drives by crunching other cars.

Edited by Eriorguez on Sep 18th 2021 at 5:41:54 PM

I admittedly don’t play as Black Shadow in F-Zero games, so I wouldn’t really know what hit car does.

All I know is that he’d make more sense to be an echo of Falcon than Ganondorf is.

Now that we're on F-Zero, I can repost these thoughts.

As he's a racer, I'd change his dash game so that he's not penalized for his speed, but can take better advantage of it. I'd also add references to his F-Zero racing craft's good grip and handling)

• Dash functionality:
  • Decrease dash turn around animation length.
  • Add intangibility to Dash Attack, making it better for cross ups on shield.
• Neutral+B "Falcon Punch": Rework it as a hold/tap move:
  • "Hold" keeps its startup time and power at what the move currently is at.
  • Tap for a near-instant, but weaker, version, doing about half the damage and knockback.

A special case relating to two characters, Captain Falcon and Ganondorf. Because of Ganondorf's sword use, his changes already made, and the further changes I'd make above, Ganondorf is increasingly distinct from Captain Falcon. So, I'd add Black Shadow as another F-Zero character, based on what Ganondorf originally was to Falcon, with the following changes (mostly to reflect Reference Black Shadow's F-Zero racing craft gameplay.

• Adopts the majority of Smash 4 Ganondorf's attributes, and basic/tilt/smash/aerial/throw moves.
• Attribute changes:
  • Slowest initial dash in the game.
  • Over the course of each stock, his fall, walk, and run speed slowly increase until he's close to Captain Falcon. This could be represented by a speedometer or other such indicator by his stock display.
• Moveset changes:
• Up Tilt: Black Fire, a spin on the spot with vertical knockback. Compare Ganondorf's Up Taunt for an animation. This would replace the Volcano Kick, which Ganondorf would keep.
  • Neutral B: Ganondorf's Warlock Punch.
  • Up+B Captain Falcon's "Explosive Falcon Strike" Custom.
  • Side+B Captain Falcon's "Heavy Raptor Boost" Custom.
  • Down+B Captain Falcon's "Lightning Falcon Kick" Custom.

As of right now, Captain Falcon and Ganondorf aren't seen as competitively viable compared to other characters. I don't see my changes for any of these three characters making a huge difference there, though I could be wrong. I kind of expect that despite Black Shadow having the potential to be both fast and powerful, his recovery moves being worse would also be a detriment. Still, I figured I'd come up with something that works for keeping them faithful, while the Smash team would have more knowledge on balancing characters than I would.

Edited by wanderlustwarrior on Sep 18th 2021 at 11:33:29 AM

The "doesn't want to alienate people who liked their moveset" excuse falls apart when people long been complaining about Sonic and Zelda's movesets.

Also Sakurai was like "I have the rights for Kid Icarus, so I get to choose his moves!" with Smash 4.

It's actually very common of an archtype for a racing character to have poor acceleration but the top speed. Black Bull is faster than the Blue Falcon, it just takes a while. It's a heavyweight thing.

But yeah, Black Shadow wouldn't be a slow character in Smash if they're going to make him a clone of Falcon specifically. Now if they wanted to make him based upon Ganondorf(which actually fits better, since he has a much closer build, especially for an Echo, and does magic. Albeit, that'd also mean he wouldn't be very fast, but Echoes are much less varied in options. Basing it mostly upon Ganondorf from Brawl and 4 could make for an interesting way to have both Ganondorf playstyles. He'd just, you know, be faster than 4's version).

No it doesn't. It's still the same philosophy and he has never changed it nor given a character a massive overhaul that completely changes the way they play. They've gotten buffs at best instead. Zelda has been at her best in Ultimate compared to previous games, but she still plays the same way. Tweaks have happened and sometimes moves being gone can change strategies where the fanbase might consider it that way, but for Sakurai, everybody still has the same core gameplay abilities(Link still has the same core specials, despite this. The closest is a few special changes, but that's either cause one cannot exist or they still are fairly similar animations to a previous one).

Edited by Irene on Sep 18th 2021 at 3:06:41 AM

Some people complained about a moveset = Other people aren't totally fine with the moveset

"Sakurai dislikes changing movesets significantly because he doesn’t want to alienate people who like those movesets.

Even though I still think Ganondorf should have a new moveset and give his “Falcondorf” moves to Black Shadow."

You and everyone besides Sakari.

I love Falcondorf personally. If I want a true sword Ganondorf, give me Toon Ganondorf. If I want one focused on projectiles, give me Pig Ganon. Ganondorf only mildly uses projectiles to begin with, and didn't even start using weapons either(that was actually Pig Ganon who started the trend, and just like Ganondorf, switches it up).

Enough people prefer the same movesets that that's the people Sakurai caters to. It's also a more common fanbase because the casual crowd is way bigger. We're the minor hardcore crowd in comparison.

That's just not obvious enough...

I also like Falcondorf (he's a secondary for me at least) and quite frankly, despite being derived from Captain Falcon's, Dorf's current moveset honestly suits him. Maybe not perfectly (wouldn't mind them changing Wizard's Foot into that Psycho Crusher-like move Phantom Ganon does in Oo T), but certainly much better than what the detractors suggest.

And I, personally, would hate slapping the moveset onto Black Shadow, mainly because I like the playstyle and I'd much rather it be attached to a character that I actually like!

...And like others mentioned, if Black Shadow was in Smash, he should be even faster and heavier than Falcon but an even worse recovery if you actually want to be true to playstyle in F-Zero.

You can like a character because of their play style as well, just sayin'...