- Look Mrs. Pac-Man is in legal hell right now, I don't know what else to tell you. Licensing is complicated and just because you can get likeness of a character in one context, does not necessarily entitle you to their likeness in another. They may have full rights to all Pac-Land content but not Mrs. Pac-Man herself for example to use liberally as they see fit. This has been a known thing for a while, and has recently been shown to be an escalated problem.
- And they're not particularly talked about or popular in any circles. No secondary Punch-Out! character is.
- Kid Icarus is the fucking 33rd best selling NES game, so I'm not going to race to call it iconic, let alone the villain who then promptly didn't appear for 20 years.
- But King K. Rool was more popular by a wide margin, thus he was better business. If Elma was more popular than Rex/Pyra, I'd say she was better business. It's nothing against her, it's in the hands of the fans to decide who they want more. And they want Rex/Pyra. If Nintendo's going to add another Xenoblade character, they'd be foolish to not add the easy win.
- It's a little weak, but we're now 12 unique third party newcomers and not one has doubled up yet. They clearly add third parties in with a goal in mind and I see no indication they're going to change that behavior any time soon given the success of the Smash Bros X "Brand New Series" moniker that generates so many positives for them. Yeah, it's the weakest one (a fact I admitted as I said Chun-Li would likely be the one to break this tradition), but I'll always argue there's more benefit to more new third party series cause there kind of is.
- Square Enix doesn't prioritize any version of the Heroine in any of their marketing regardless of who's more popular, and my point was that games with a defined physical protagonist have largely moved away from having gender options. I think it's completely relevant to treat character creators differently from those defined options, and Square Enix clearly didn't have any suggestions for the Heroine in this process.
- She has some following... Not as much as others and brings very little practical benefit to the table beyond as a female rep. I'm fine with Krystal, but it's exceedingly clear Nintendo has little interest in her and her support has largely fallen heavily since her Brawl heyday. That's something you would consider in choosing characters.
- Ashley's entire existence in WarioWare is in this hour-long video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhNzxELIIjs. It isn't much to go off of like you seem to be implying.
- I mean, Bayonetta got the award for destroying the meta and had become a hated character in the Ultimate lead-up to the point where assholes boo'd her being back in some cases. It just wasn't going to be good PR to add another really, and it's just niche with nowhere for addition in Ultimate's plans (again, none of base could be removed, DLC focused on other stuff).
- Others have already said the issues with this.
- There's absolutely no reason to include Midna as an Echo fighter and a unique one. A unique one is the only way that really makes sense, and again, there's no room for her in the roster as is.
Like, there are reasons these characters got lower priority status than others going into Ultimate and will likely retain lower priority status moving forward. Most of their best merits are in adding diversity, which Sakurai and Nintendo clearly don't value as much as people in this thread and a great deal of fans are opposed to
specifically in the context of Smash since they want their favorites in. There was basically no way to cut any of the base roster to sub in any of these characters, so that's how choices like Ashley and Elma get sidelined for base and DLC is heavily focused on third parties, and Sakurai's comments heavily imply that we will expect this to continue (especially since we've had one single Nintendo newcomer in 8 planned DLC fighters so far and they've been wildly successful it seems from Nintnedo's internal financial reports...Piranha Plant was clearly meant for base). Now, I acknowledge I could be wrong about this, but I just don't have any information to lead me to other conclusions as of now. If we were talking a more traditional Smash with more room for first party additions, I think you would have more of a point in some of your counters, but I think Ultimate's a rather special beast.
I mean, part of speculation is ruling out options to predict what makes sense as an inclusion. Speculations can be wrong without a doubt, but its intrinsic to committing to speculation and different from just general discussion. I also think that we're at the point where we have Nintendo's internal IR reports, incredibly detailed knowledge about Sakurai's process from a good 20 years of interviews including incredible transparency nowadays, and 20 years of Smash history, particularly with regards to Smash 4 and Ultimate being so closely developed after one another, that we can more seriously speculate based on real factors. Especially since Nintendo is the one picking future DLC and not Sakurai himself.
1. Can you provide the source that demonstrates that Ms. Pac-Man would be allowed in the capacity she is in but nothing else? If so this is just your speculation on what the legal dispute means.
2. If Sakurai prioritized the most highly discussed characters only, the roster would be a lot different.
3. I mean, you can make the argument just as well to say that Pit is a bad choice for Smash. He's just a niche character from a couple middling successes.
4. Is King K. Rool more popular overall? Or just in the Smash scene?
5. It's very weak, because it's the same argument people have made for years to criticize certain suggestions for years. For people like me who enjoy seeing stranger characters or characters who push boundaries of what people can expect for Smash, it makes discussion tedious and pointless when people are saying "Smash doesn't [X]" without explaining the [Y] of the matter. Smash doesn't feature transforming characters in 64, all Smash characters in 64 came out relatively recently, all Smash characters in Melee were Nintendo, all Smash characters in Brawl lacked gender options, all third-party companies in 4 had only one character, all third-party characters in 4's DLC were one per series, etc. So when you're admitting that the reason for Chun-Li being unlikely is weak, it just seems like you're scraping the bottom of the barrel to make it seem like there are fewer options than there are.
6. You need to be consistent. If Square Enix regarding Nine and Ten equally to the other Heroes is not an important factor, how they market DQ protagonists is not either. And I'm in agreement that they don't market the character well, but that sounds like a sexism issue, so it's not a great argument. If Sakurai pushed for Heroine, even a bit, that'd be a thing, but he doesn't seem to have.
7. Some following should be adequate. Like, Krystal doesn't need to be the most likely or best choice, she just needs to be a possible choice, and she is.
8. The amount of time a character is in a game in cutscenes is irrelevant to the substance of the cutscenes. She brews potions, she casts spells, she transforms people and objects, she can summon objects, she can grow and shrink things, she has a flying broom, she can summon familiars (she literally has a devil as a companion), she can grow giant carnivorous plants, she has a magic wand that can transform into different objects such as a parasol, shoot lightning, use mandrake roots, and has a wand. This, I might add, is from the video you posted. I don't know how you think Ashley has no moveset potential when the various cutscenes across the games show TONS of stuff. I mean, Ice Climbers made an entire moveset out of literally one move, so I don't know exactly why you'd think Ashley would pose any trouble.
9. I think you overestimate how much Sakurai cares about the fanbase. If he cared that much, K. Rool and Ridley would have been in years ago. Also, the game sold very well on both Wii U and Switch and has a new entry on the horizon, it's more than eligible for a second rep.
10. Not adequate reasons.
11. What you said is entirely personal opinion, and in a discussion that IIRC is about reasons why they are unlikely, it's not really useful. The reason why we could or should have two Midnas? Because it'd be cool. Zelda's a great character, and having a variant on Zelda would be great, especially one like Midna. It'd also be interesting and unexpected, and be, I think, a better Echo choice than anything else for Zelda (the next best would be Hilda, but I feel she would just be Daisy levels of Echo).
It becomes a problem when the "Debunking" revolves around speculating reasons why a character can or cannot be in. And honestly, what changed between Smash U to give us "definitive knowledge" of how Sakurai operates? What you describe as incredibly detailed knowledge is just your best guess as to Sakurai's motives. That Sakurai has not said that a third-party franchise cannot or should not have two unique characters means that the argument has no more basis than the notion in Smash 4 that third-party companies are only allowed one character each.
Hey BigBlue are you sincere in wanting more POCs in Smash or are you arguing just for the sake of it? Or worse concern trolling? For every point made, you seem to only counter with "well, why not?" It's admirable, but we all know that Nintendo has very slim pickings when it comes to POC representation, and even the ones they have aren't stars or antagonists of their respective franchises, something the franchise has been very specific on this far.
As most people posted, this franchise is a celebration of gaming's past and present, which unfortunately represents the state it's in. It's slowly getting better, but it's not going to go any faster until we get more people of color in the industry and we support the ones that are.
Smash isn't made by a machine, despite what Sakurai's aging may suggest. Sakurai has the ability to seek out POC characters, it's just not something he is interested in doing. It doesn't invalidate the notion of Smash being a celebration of gaming's past or present, because the list of characters who appear in Smash is not also the list of the most significant characters in gaming, even in terms of franchises. Like, Lyn for instance is one of the most popular characters in Fire Emblem, more popular than she was in her debut game. Why is she absent?
