Totally fair, and I'm certainly not trying to tell POC how they should feel about this.
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89 Characters & Not a Single Black Character: The Anti-Blackness of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- Thread starter Neoxon
- Start date
I'm not stopping you from doing that. I don't think Sakurai was in a board meeting and said "lol fuck Black people btw", I think Black characters were considered at various points but decided against in favour of those that weren't. Whether the guiding hand behind that was subconscious and ingrained or not doesn't change that they decided against including any Black characters despite selecting a roster of 89 characters across all of gaming.
On the one hand I have to admit that final roster is the stuff of dreams with how many characters they were able to get from third party franchises. But when you have so many characters but such a poor selection when it comes to representation it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Right its wether its malicious racism or ignorant racism , its still racism.
I need to remind people again that this wasn't just for the DLC for Ultimate, but for Smash 64, Melee, Brawl, 4, 4 DLC, Ultimate, and Ultimate DLC. That's over 20 years of character choices to make.
They added a Piranha Plant as a "bonus" character but some posters in here act like they can't add one Black character if they wanted.
At this rate you will get Devil's Third guy before any black character
What are your thoughts on Eddy Gordo and/or Christie Monteiro from Tekken?
Min Min is a cool character and a POC
The issue is that they should have added both. No reason to pick one. When you have multiple variants of the same characters, but no spot for a black character...
Surely some of you defending can see the issue?
The issue is that they should have added both. No reason to pick one. When you have multiple variants of the same characters, but no spot for a black character...
Surely some of you defending can see the issue?
It is amazing how the biggest roster not named Mugen can avoid this kind of representation. Like we have a Piranha plant (my fav) for fucks sake.
This. White people in the audience, when people talk about the system being structurally racist, this is the racism that's being talked about. Literally white being the "default".
There is a good chance that they are not racist. My question is what have they done to warrant receiving benefit of the doubt? Why should I believe that they couldn't add any black characters. They could have easily left Cloud out and put in Barrett (I have my own issues with him, but still it would have gone a long way.) And they still could have put Sepiroth in the game as a second FFVII rep.
And then you got a bunch of fans jumping all the way out the window to defend this when they could have stayed quiet when this comes up.
Nintendo needs to do better with this. They aren't French Bread or any of the other Japanese indies. Other Japanese fighting game devs have games with less characters and they can still manage to realize that black characters (and black fans) exist. They have no excuse.
You don't understand! Sakurai's hands were tied! He could only include the most popular characters!
They going to let the guy from scalebound in before a negro
When you got black characters being portrayed as thieves and apes, no black characters in the roster, Sakurai posting weird shit on Twitter that is insensitive to the black struggle...
At what point are we allowed to question it?
At what point are we allowed to question it?
Inkling is a species within the Splatoon universe, with the Smash fighter representing the player character, hence why they not only appear in different colors but also have different skin tones and clothing. Inkling is comparable to Villager while Marina would be more like Isabelle if she made it into Smash.
This. Twintelle and Marina should have both been in, Min-Min is a good pick too. Plenty of boring choices they could have avoided in lieu of better representation, we don't need to argue they should take an Asian woman out of the game.
User Banned (1 Month): Tone policing in a thread regarding Black representation, account in junior phase.
How about actually replying to those posts and having a proper discussion as opposed to making sarcastic drive-bys that don't contribute to the thread and just foster toxicity?
Yep this is grade A structural racism where there are machinations in place that allows for shit like this to occur or be encouraged because it turns a blind eye to these things. VS say you actually talk about diversity daily no different than safety etc. make it a pillar of the system.
No one here is can say the people choosing these characters are being maliciously racist but the intent here is clearly to ignore having a lineup that is diverse Beyond just selecting a game character, esp when they are picking absolutely obscure shit.
Twintelle and Min Min should have made an appearance. Byleth is a complete and utter waste of a space.
You see, there is no one to popular enough to pick!
*Proceeds to dig through layers of characters to find some one not black to add to the game*
The Inkling with the yellow Hi-Vis is Agent 3, the main character of Splatoon 1's story mode. The rest are random as far as I remember.
Fuck Nintendo, and fuck anyone defending this shit or trying to make Nintendo look innocent or naive. It's been a shit company for years for many of the reasons people on this forum hate other companies for, yet still love Nintendo somehow. How can a company put out a game like this and not think about representation? It's insane actually. And also insane since it would have been very easy to avoid the situation they created.
Anyone arguing that the roster's diversity was outside of Nintendo/Sakurai's control is actually not contributing anything to the thread other than giving the benefit of the doubt to people who haven't earned it
What about taking this seriously
Twintelle really needed to be in.
Min-Min is still better than what Sakurai's second choice was (Ninjara, really? Of all the ARMS characters, Ninjara? At least Spring-Man's boring ass is on the cover (getting his shit punched in), but Ninjara?), but Twintelle REALLY needed to get in.
Min-Min is still better than what Sakurai's second choice was (Ninjara, really? Of all the ARMS characters, Ninjara? At least Spring-Man's boring ass is on the cover (getting his shit punched in), but Ninjara?), but Twintelle REALLY needed to get in.
Note that I do not suggest or agree with the idea that it is sufficient to add Black characters only as low hanging fruits. I use the following examples only to illustrate the extent to which Nintendo does not care about having Black characters in the game. With that in mind:
Some things Nintendo/Sakurai deemed more important than a Black character (just in terms of Ultimate):
Some things Nintendo/Sakurai deemed more important than a Black character (just in terms of Ultimate):
- Chrom, the 3rd Awakening character, the 4th Marth-like fighter, the 5th pure sword fighter from Fire Emblem, and the 7th Fire Emblem character.
- Piranha Plant
- Two Belmonts who are echoes of each other
- Byleth, the 8th Fire Emblem character
- Doc Louis (Little Mac echo)
- Marina (Inkling echo)
- Twintelle (instead of Min-Min)
Anthony Higgs (Samus echo)
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This reminds that they stopped it with echoes after the initial roster after making a big deal about them. It sucks, echoes were really easy opportunities to get a lot more characters in.
They included Incineroar lol so any notion of them having to include only the most popular characters goes out the window.
5th post in 2.5 years
OP
OP
Ninjara is #2 in Japan & Sakurai loves ninjas. Even then, the fact that the overall #2 most popular ARMS character (Twintelle) wasn't even considered is damning.
so these troll accounts getting tiresome. Y'all fuckers don't even have the spine to come in and spew whatever bullshit you want. It's nearly sad how cowardly you are.
Yeah not having more echos is dumb. Higgs would've been a really bad pick considering Other M's shittiness. But Marina as an inkling echo would've been cool
This is very blatant and a shame. So many opportunities.
The Nintendo defense force is so fervent about making sure no ill words are spoke about Nintendo instead of supporting positive change. Par for the course.
The Nintendo defense force is so fervent about making sure no ill words are spoke about Nintendo instead of supporting positive change. Par for the course.