New Smash Bros?

[WarioBone]

The results of the poll are goint to be presented directly to Sakurai himself. Whether or not he will acknowledge it in any way, shape, or form is anyone's guess, but I think it's at least worth watching.

Knowing Sakurai, I doubt it'll influence him much. It seems like Smash Bros. games typically have who HE wants to be playable.

[Gregzilla]

Though there were those Japanese polls/fan contributions that Sakurai paid attention to while Brawl was in development. It at least shows he somewhat cares about what the fans want. But this was Japan-only and welcomed directly by him, so I'm not sure how he will respond to an international poll conducted by a general gaming site.

[JezMM]

Majora's Mask is my favourite Zelda and Skyward Sword is my least favourite, but to be honest I'd much rather have Ghirahim than Skull Kid. He has a very unique appearence and I love that creepy fighting style.

Meanwhile... well Skull Kid is cool and a lovely character with an adorable backstory buuuut... what would his fighting style be? I mean he'd have a blowpipe from OoT I guess and um... fly in the air shaking his arms a lot at the moon?

Don't take this post too seriously because obviously they've made fighters out of non-fighting characters before with brand new moves, but... yeah, to be honest even that kind of bothers me anyway. Like how Mario and Link have such utterly generic final smashes in SSBB that they never do in the games.

(Though I can forgive Mario having a generic one because he is meant to be the all-rounder after all - though this could easily be solved by just having several characters optionally highlighted as "good for newcomers!" if they are just naturally easier to use, if they wanted to change Mario's style).

[Diogenes]

Meanwhile... well Skull Kid is cool and a lovely character with an adorable backstory buuuut... what would his fighting style be? I mean he'd have a blowpipe from OoT I guess and um... fly in the air shaking his arms a lot at the moon?

[WarioBone]

This is really the worst argument because it gives more value to a character just because they were chronologically earlier.

FUCKING THANK YOU

I really like the rest of this post, too, but I didn't want to quote the whole thing. Skull Kid has so many things to base his moveset off of, like Diogenes said: he's a scarecrow, he's magic as FUCK (which is always welcome in a game essentially about swords and punching people), he's got three whole boss fights to draw from, he's a trickster/imp-type character, he has the capability to use whips (which no one else has done so far, and probably never will because Simon will never get in), among other things.

I could see Skull Kid as a fast, heavy-hitter with extremely light weight (made of straw) and decent recovery, using Majora's Wrath's whips and magic to keep his enemies from outright beating his shit into the ground. His Final Smash is obvious (Moon Tiem), too. If there's a SSE 2, I could see him teaming up with Wario, due to their shared "I don't care who wins I just want to fuck shit up" attitude, but that's neither here nor there.

Meanwhile, we have Ghirahim. Who would use swords. Yawn.

[JezMM]

Diogenes your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

But no really you've more than sold me on Skull Kid. I imagined him as "kind of obscure guy from the one Zelda game I love but isn't as well-known as the others" and you reinvented him as "basically a character who would celebrate my favourite Zelda game in character-form".

As said I don't even like Skyward Sword much so okay. Fuck Ghirahim lol.

[Gregzilla]

Third, take stuff from MM as a whole. Maybe throw deku nuts, maybe bombchus (honestly they should be an item, now that I think about it), maybe use Deku Link's flower propellers for his Up B. There's plenty for them to use; they've worked with far less.

I'd love to see some nods to Link's many forms from MM. To me, they were partially what made MM have the most fun gameplay in the series, and I'd be thrilled if Skull Kid made some references to the likes of Deku Link, Zora Link, and Goron Link (or even Fierce Deity Link). He should probably mainly use Majora moves, but seeing the Deku flowers for a jump move or a Zora-style energy field could work very well. Also, since he's somewhat in charge of Tael the fairy, maybe he could send him out to give opponents a light smack for some A attacks.

And then there's the little things, like taunts and victory stances, which pretty much write themselves. Laughing like a crazed child, dancing like a puppet, playing an ocarina really badly, etc.

Also, I'm with JezMM in that I just don't like Skyward Sword that much. It had its moments, but I didn't find much of it to be as enjoyable as pretty much any of the other Zelda games. Ghirahim has personality, but he really isn't very unique. I never felt like what he was saying held that much weight. "Oh, yep, you're gonna kill me slowly and painfully, mm-hmm. Can we skip this speech and get to the part where I kick your ass and you run away?"

[#EndyGate]

They could also take a few things from the other versions of Skull Kid, like shooting poison darts out of a flute like the one in Ocarina of Time, or sending out puppets to attack enemies like the one in Twilight Princess. Maybe they could throw in a bit of a hexing attack that temporarily traps enemies in the body of a child (or something like that), which renders them unable to fight temporarily (similar to Yoshi's eggs, except they are able to move around) Though I'd also love a few references to MM, like I mentioned before, they could possibly have Skull Kid use the boss remains for little transformations of his own for special moves. Or even have an attack where he "steals" an item from each character based on their attacks, like the Screw Attack from Samus, Fire Flower from Mario & Luigi, Koopa Shell from Squirtle, and so on

[Conando]

Then he'd just be half Kirby.

[WarioBone]

Then he'd just be half Kirby.

Clearly Skull Kid would be a Kirby clone. Can't have Smash Bros. without nonsensical clones!

[Gregzilla]

That reminds me.

You know you want.

[JezMM]

Sudden idea: Replace Multi-Man Brawl with Multi-Mii Brawl.

The generic enemies are now randomly selected Miis from your plaza, friends list, previous online encounters and (on 3DS) streetpass.

Rarely, Nintendo Miis such as Iwata, Shigeru, Sakurai, Nikki, the Wii Sports Miis, etc will appear.

On Cruel Brawl, all the Miis are Reggie.

[Winston]

On Cruel Brawl, all the Miis are Reggie.

and when you lose, they taunt and say "My body was ready."

[Solly]

Sudden idea: Replace Multi-Man Brawl with Multi-Mii Brawl.

The generic enemies are now randomly selected Miis from your plaza, friends list, previous online encounters and (on 3DS) streetpass.

Rarely, Nintendo Miis such as Iwata, Shigeru, Sakurai, Nikki, the Wii Sports Miis, etc will appear.

On Cruel Brawl, all the Miis are Reggie.

That definitely sounds more fun, but I was almost certain Nintendo had some policy against real violence against Miis. Or was I thinking of Microsoft with their Avatars? I might be mistaken. Maybe it was both.

Either way, I could see some people not liking the idea of caricatures of themselves getting the everloving hell beaten out of them. I'd be all for it, though.

I guess one other problem is that it would limit the characters they could copy. The Fighting Polygon Team/Alloysfrom Brawl were all copies of existing characters minus their special moves. Copying Miis would mean they'd probably all be the same, because lazy.

Personally? I like the idea.

My Mii would fight dirty.

[Gregzilla]

I'd like to see Miis make some kind of appearance. One idea I thought of was to use them as an assist trophy. Your profile's Mii would whistle to call all the Miis from your plaza to come stampeding across the stage.

[Marcello]

I was honestly expecting the Mii's to take over the Polygon and Wireframe stuff in Brawl already. Maybe this time.

That definitely sounds more fun, but I was almost certain Nintendo had some policy against real violence against Miis. Or was I thinking of Microsoft with their Avatars? I might be mistaken. Maybe it was both.

Well, there's Wii Sports Boxing..

[Solly]

Well, there's Wii Sports Boxing..

Not really the same thing. Smash Bros is a lot more violent than sparring with Boxing Gloves on. Granted, it's still ficitonal and cartoonish, and it's not at all bloody, but it's incredibly over the top.

[JezMM]

That's true, it's hard to say whether they'd want to do this unless they deliberately added extra cartooney effects for that mode or something as visual flair.

I was surprised by the lack of Miis in Brawl so I do think this would be one of the best ways to include them (outside of a non-interactable role in a Mii-themed stage).

It solves three things:

1. Miis in the game.

2. Gives an excuse for a generic moveset by not having them playable - there's plenty of Wii Series and other games to draw inspiration from for movesets, but just because Miis in general play sports a lot, it doesn't mean my JezMM Mii would. He's me!

3. For those who are desperate enough, hacking would allow playable Miis like it did for playable Wireframes and Alloys in the previous games. Therefore playable Reggie.

[Diogenes]

I dunno, I think Wii Boxing comes off as more violent than Smash. In Smash you just fly off and explode like a cartoon, in boxing you ragdoll to the ground when you get knocked out...

[Kuzu]

I wonder if Miis would have a combination of all of their games?

[Mangoaxe5]

Captain Syrup would make a good character for the next Smash Bros game. And they should change Wario's moveset so it's more based off of the Wario Land series instead of the Wario Ware series.

[Solly]

I dunno, I think Wii Boxing comes off as more violent than Smash. In Smash you just fly off and explode like a cartoon, in boxing you ragdoll to the ground when you get knocked out...

In Smash Bros you can get clubbed with a baseball bat, set on fire, blown up, drop-kicked downward onto a pit of spikes, etc. Not to mention the explosion and fire effects are all quite realistic.

On top of that, characters make grunts and yells of pain, which gives every bit of violence more weight than Wii Boxing's "bop-bop, you fell over." This is actually something the ESRB considers when rating games.

So I'd say Smash Bros is the more violent game, regardless of its cartoonish nature. But that's just me.

Again though, I'm totally down with Miis in the next game. Even if it means people would just make terrible Miis of celebrities they don't like so they could beat them up.

Captain Syrup would make a good character for the next Smash Bros game. And they should change Wario's moveset so it's more based off of the Wario Land series instead of the Wario Ware series.

Agreed. I was pretty disappointed with Wario not having the charge attack as his side-special or Dash attack. It's still his side-smash attack, but it feels weird.

Something about the way he animates in general is actually pretty strange. It's guess that's the point but it didn't feel Wario enough.

[Kamicciolo]

Mii's have also been included in a number of the Mario sports games too (so blue shells and bob-ombs ahoy), which kinda shows that Nintendo aren't exactly fussed about sticking them into that sort of environment. Really it mainly comes down to making up a moveset for them, and whether they want to have any customization/character building features for them (since most games with Mii's generally have something in that area, even if it is limited in use and stuff).

I get the feeling the whole customization side mighta been the main reason why they were left out of Brawl in the first place, since they wouldn't have had the time to make anything worthwhile for them in the time they had.

And about Wario, personally I didn't mind his Shoulder Bash being his Side Smash instead of his Side Special, since I feel the Bike works better in that regard, but I do agree he should have had some more influence from the Wario Land side overall, so hopefully they fix that for the next game. Also I think they animated him they way they did in Brawl to kinda capture that sporadic and wacky nature of the WarioWare side (though recently I kinda started thinking that his weird walking and running animations might have some sort of reference to the way his sprites looked when he walked in Wario Land 2 & 3).

[Nintendoga]

Sakuuraih says game system is complete

Having had three very successful entries in the franchise, the Project Sora boss feels the series has found its target audience, meaning introducing gimmicks would hinder rather than help the brand.

"The game system itself is complete, so we don’t want to make it 3D or introduce complicated controls just for the sake of it," he said. "However, I am thinking of ways we can introduce a slightly different, fun experience all the while keeping the usual frantic game play."

"I think Snake and Sonic joining were fantastic. It made many fans happy, and it broadened the Smash Bros arena," he said. "However, introducing more non-Nintendo characters willy-nilly will lose the focus of the game, so I also recognise the need to narrow it down."

[Carbo]

I guess we're but a number of months away from a Brawl-ish teaser trailer.