Why King K. Rool wont make the cut

It may seem odd to suggest that this character wont be playable in the new Smash. He's a pretty memorable character from the Donkey Kong series and people seem to want him. So hwy wont he be in?

If you remember in my Takamaru post, I noted that most of the characters from the new game had appeared in a game within the last few years. It seems Sakurai picks characters that have appeared in a major roll within the last few years. Here are the Brawl characters and the last game they appeared in before Brawl released (again, sans third party characters)

• Meta-Knight:  Kirby and the Amazing Mirror - 2004
• Wario: WarioWare Smooth Moves - 2006
• Pit: Kid Icarus - 1987 (and the Gameboy game)
• Zero Suit Samus: Metroid Zero Mission - 2004
• Ike: Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance - 2005
• Pokemon Trainer: Pokemon Fire Red/Leaf Green - 2003
• Diddy Kong: Donkey Konga - 2005 (and in multiple Mario spinoffs)
• King Dedede: Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland 2002
• Lucas:Mother 3 - 2006
• Olimar: Pikmin 2 - 2004
• Lucario - Pokemon Diamond/Pearl - 2006
• ROB - Mario Kart DS - 2006 (and other cameos)
• Wolf: Starfox Command - 2006

With the exception of Pit, every character added to Brawl was in a major role within the six years between Brawl and Melee. The only exception to this rule is Pit who's last game was over 20 years ago.  With the exception of classic characters (those picked because they are old), the character roster includes characters who have been in recent games.  Many of these characters were in games that released within 2 years of Brawl.  I shouldn't have to mention Smash 4's roster where all the characters have been in a game recently. 

But why does Sakurai do this.  A problem for him is that a lot of people plays these games and not all of them are die hard fans with a lot of knowledge about Nintendo.  He has stated that he choices characters that make people want to play the game.  At the same time, we tries to spread out the series with characters.  Pokemon and Mario characters are the most memorable, but a game with just that would be boring.  So how do you make sure people will like the characters you added and have some recollection of who you added.  This is even harder when you're pulling characters from already lesser known series.  The best bet would be to pick characters who have appeared recently.  For instance, take Robin.  You may not know Fire Emblem, so you may not know immediately who he is.  But his game is fairly new, so it wont take long to find the information or to make the connection.  Picking characters that are not as relevant are risky as they may be fading into obscurity due to disinterest.  This is why you don't see Tingle despite Nintendo pushing him for a long time.

So how does this affect K. Rool? Well, King K Rool's last roles were the ill fated Donkey Kong Barrel Blast (2007) and and a minor role in Mario Super Sluggers (2008). So it's been over 6 years since King K Rool has been in a game. It seems that Nintendo is de-emphasizing the Kremling.  Donkey Kong County Returns and  Donkey Kong County Returns Tropical Freeze de-emphasized the bad guys you were fighting and the force changed between the two games.  Tropical Freeze focused more on the Dixie and Cranky than the fact that there was a new enemy force.  Since Donkey Kong Country Returns are the newest games in the series and were commercial success, it would make sense that the content from those games is promoted as players would better recognize the content from them.  In this case, Dixie Kong has a better bet as she is more recognizable.  In fact, she has had bigger roles being in all of the Donkey Konga games and Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze.  King K Rool, unfortunately, is a character that is becoming less important.  I suspect he'll be a boss in the Smash Run mode but not a playable character.

(Hope this one is OK. Was tired when I wrote it)

Takamaru and new characters

I know this is a bit old but I've been out of town for some time and I finally have the chance to talk about this. Anywho, it has been confirmed that Takamaru is an assist trophy in the newest Smash Brothers games. Was Takamaru a likely candidate for a new character. Somewhat, when you consider he's one of the best choices for a classic character. As Sakurai even mentioned in the Miiverse post, Takamaru was born the same year as Link, Pit and Samus. Not to mention his game has since been released in the US and Europe. But, yet, he is an assist trophy.  A classic Nintendo character who is also a samurai. Why not add him?

What I have considered for a while is that the game is pulling characters that are newer or who have at least been appearing in the newest games. To compare, let's look at the current line-up of new characters and compare them to Brawl's starting characters. Bold are characters after the inception of the newest Smash game. Note: for this comparison, I'm ignoring third party characters.

Brawl

• Meta-Knight: 1993
• Wario: 1992 (Wario Ware: 2002)
• Pit: 1987
• Zero Suit Samus: 2004
• Ike: 2005
• Pokemon Trainer: 1996
• Diddy Kong: 1994
• King Dedede: 1992
• Lucas: 2006
• Olimar: 2001

Smash Wii U

• Villager: 2001
• Wii Fit Trainer: 2007
• Rosalina and Luma: 2006
• Little Mac: 1984
• Greninja: 2013
• Palutena: 1987
• Mii Fighter: 2006
• Robin: 2013
• Lucina: 2013

In Brawl, 4 out of the 10 starting characters were new. In Smash 4, 6 of the 9 characters shown so far (sans the third party ones), are from a recent game. Also, it should be noted that Villager, Little Mac, and Palutena all have had a recent game (Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Punch Out!! [Wii] and Kid Icarus: Uprising).  With the exception of Pit, Brawl followed the same convention.  Wario was also based on Warioware, the newest games in the series.

Overall, it seems Smash 4 is focusing on the new rather than the old. The difference may be due to the fact that Brawl was trying to capture characters that weren't in Melee. Many of the characters who weren't new were also requested back when Melee was coming out. Now, with many of the characters added in Smash, adding the newest characters makes sense. Also, Amiibos may also play into this. With Nintendo promoting these toys, they would rather have characters people would be more familiar with rather than having forgotten characters.

Is there a chance we'll get a classic character. Perhaps. But Takamaru was the best show at getting one with his cameos and his history as a character.  We'll have to wait and see what happens. Based on this though, I would reason that the characters added this time would have appeared in recent games. 

Is the final roster 51 characters?

NOTE: This post contains information regarding a potential leak. There is no official information, but if you want to avoid these entirely, I suggest you stop here.

There has been a lot of talk about the roster for the new Super Smash Brothers only having 47 characters. However, based on some evidence, that notion doesn't fly. In fact, in this post I'm going to prove that the roster will have 51 characters.

Before we begin, I need to talk about the Gamatsu leak.  It has been highly contested, but given the information revealed at E3, it appears likely.  I wont go much in depth on why this leak is likely true, but I'll give a quick overview. Before E3, Sal from Gamatsu, who had supposedly been getting information about the game, stated there were 6 more characters in the game: Pac-Man, Palutena, Shulk, Choir Boys (from Rhythm Heaven), Chrom and Mii Fighter. It should be noted that he specifically said "Mii Fighter" before it was revealed. This gives credence to this rumor so we can say with some confidence that Shulk, Chior Boys and Chrom will be in. I should also note that it was never implied that this is the entire roster.

With that out of the way, we can discuss why the roster will have 51 characters

The 3DS version does not fit a 47 character roster

On GameFAQs a user by the name of XXX stated that a roster of 47 does not fit the 3DS's screen. Here is what he said

The 3DS's top screen has a resolution of 400x240 (or 800x240 with 3D, but that's irrelevant).
The 3DS roster appears to take up all of the screen, so we can calculate the sizes of the slots in the demo roster:
400 / 6 = 66.67
240 / 4 = 60
This means every slot is 66x60 and that there's a 2 pixel wide strip of empty space on each side.
Supposedly, a 8x6 roster would fit perfectly with the same slot proportions:
400 / 8 = 50
240 / 6 = 40
So slots of 50x40 and no empty space.
But are these really the same proportions? Let's check:
66 / 60 = 1.1
50 / 40 = 1.25
Oh, that doesn't quite match up. Let's try 9x6 instead:
400 / 9 = 44.44
240 / 6 = 40
So slots of 44x40 and once again a 2 pixel wide strip of empty space on each side.
44 / 40 = 1.1
And yup! They have the same proportions as the demo roster's slots!
In fact, you could know this without even calculating it like this.
If the proportions don't change, the column/row ratio should always stay the same:
6 / 4 = 1.5
9 / 6 = 1.5
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/633202-super-smash-bros-for-wii-u/69445404

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/633202-super-smash-bros-for-wii-u/69445404

Here is the simple explanation. Based on the resolution of the 3DS top screen and the roster size, 47 would not fit the roster and keep the same proportions.  However, a 51 character roster (9x6) would fit perfectly. In fact, when compared, it still has the 2 pixels on the side.  You can also test this mathematically. 6/4 = 1.5 In order for the proportion to stay the same, it has to equal 1.5,  8/6=1.33333 but 9/6=1.5.  So we can see that in order for the current proportions to be set, the roster has to be 51 (9x6) and not 47 (8x6).  However, XXX pointed out that one game will have to change proportions.  The Wii U version does not hold 51 characters (13x4) based on it's current proportions.

The Wii U Version will change proportions

One thing many people don't know is that there was a difference in proportions from the demo version of Brawl and the official release.  Here is an image showing the difference provided by TheAnvil

Link if it helps you all see better: http://i.imgur.com/LN1wNEc.png

The left is the final roster (sans Wolf) and the top right is the roster for the demo. One thing you can notice is the demo boxes are much more rectangular and the final roster is more square.  Here are somethings you can see in the boxes on the demo that you can't see in the final release

• Demo you can see Marios hand but only two fingers in the final release
• You can see all of Fox's Blaster in the demo but not in the final release
• You can see Diddy Kong's elbow in the demo but not the final release
• Pit's right wing is more visable
• Lot's of white space on Pikachu and Yoshi
• You can see half of Meta-Knight's hand in the demo but only a third in the final release
• You can see most of Sonic's spikes on the demo version
• You can see a bit more of Bowser's left arm in the demo. You can also see more white space.

Based on what TheAnvil noticed, in order to resize the demo box to the final release, you'd have to shrink the picture horizontally 75% and vertically 64%.  This tells us that the demo and the final release were not proportionate.  Take a look again at the picture I posted in the top.  That is the roster for the newest demo.  You'll notice that it is similar to the Brawl demo in that the boxes are more rectangular. Estimates of a 47 character roster (12x4) are based on these boxes. However, they will likely be resized based on the information in Brawl and the 3DS.

So based on this information, the roster is more than likely not going to have more than 47 characters. How many is up in the air as the Wii U can hold about 52 while the 3DS holds 54. We'll have to wait for release to see what the final number is, but it could very well be just over 50 characters.

UPDATE: This is an older post and the Gamatsu leak is been proven to be false with the introduction of Robin. I have left the information in since it is still relevant to the topic at hand.

Smashchu's Roster Prediction

One of the best tings about speculation is characters. So far, I've strayed away from the  topic on this blog, but now I'll delve into it and give you my thoughts on the characters.  Now, it is fair to say that guessing characters is easier now that we've seen three of them. Still, we can have some fun and analysis what we have seen and likely where it is going.

Trends So Far

One of the things I've noticed is that the characters added so far are mostly recent one and reflect their most recent iteration.  Characters like Wii Fit Trainer, Greninja and Rosalina didn't exist when Brawl was being made. Little Mac and Villager had games coming out between Brawl and now and are specifically based on those games.  Villager's look is based on the boxart of Animal Crossing: Wild World. Mega Man has been he only exception to this as his look and design are based on older games, not newer ones.  This seems to be the biggest trend with new characters in Super Smash Bros for Wii U (SSBU)

It's also important to  note that the characters have all been importaint in their respective series. For instance, Rosalina was in both the Mario Galaxy games and appeared in Mario Kart Wii and 8 as well as Super Mario 3D World.  The characters added are, also, generally well liked.  It's no mystery that Little Mac was one of the most popular characters in the US. Greninja was also a very popular Pokemon (from what I've heard, a lot of people use him online).  These are general trends with the characters.

Characters

Before continuing, I should know that most of the characters I list below are popular characters.  Unless it matters, I wont mention their popularity.  I've learned that it matters, but it is not an end all be all.

Chrom

Chrom is the start of the latest Fire Emblem game, Fire Emblem Awakening.  It was originally going to be the last game in the series.  However, it has sold over a million copies and has gone on to be the best selling Fire Emblem game in the series to date.  The game sold over 240,000 units in Japan in it's first week.  The series sold 1.2 million and brought in over 30 million in revenue.  This is better than many games out there and, of course, all of the Fire Emblem games.  As a result,  Fire Emblem Awakening is one of the most recognizable games in the series and people are aware of Chrom.  It's likely why his name comes up often with also being the most recent character in the series.  Given this, Chrom makes a lot of sense.

Palutena

So if you've been paying attention to SSBU so far, you'll notice there is a lot of content from Kid Icarus: Uprising.  We have three items already from that game (Ore Club, X-Bomb, as well as a Turret).  Not to mention that Pit has some attacks from that game and his final smash is now the Three Sacred Treasures. As any die-hard fan will know, the Three Sacred Treasures were his special moves from Super Smash Brothers Brawl.  Also, they would know that Palutena was originally part of Pit's final smash.  But now is, of course, not.  Out of any of the returning characters, Pit has gotten the largest overhaul and it's all for adding content from Kid Icarus: Uprising.  So a character is defiantly not out of the question.  Out of any of the characters in that game, Palutena makes the most sense.  She is the next most importation character to Pit and she appears in almost every chapter in the game.  Furthermore, the games are actually named after her in Japan.  In Japan, the games are known as Light Mythology: Palutena's Mirror.  Also, she, along with Pit, received a redesign for Brawl and was also one of the few NPCs in the Subspace Emissary.  

Dixie Kong

Dixie Kong has been an important characters in the Donkey Kong Country games for quite some time.  She has appeared in numerous games since the SNES games and has even made cameo appearances in Mario spin-off games.  Also, she continues to appear in newer games as well, even after the transition from Rare.  She appeared in Donkey Konga, Donkey Kong Barrel Blast, and Donkey Kong: King of Swing.  Additionally, she appeared just recently in Donkey County Country Return: Tropical Freeze which, as I mentioned before as a trend with new characters.  It's also interesting to note that Dixie was specifically discussed during the E3 Developer Direct.  Also, Dixie Kong was originally planned for Brawl.  Seeing as elements like Kirby's Hammer Flip and Zero Suit Samus's gun changing have return despite being cut in Brawl, it is possible for Dixie to return as well.

Ridley

Ridley is probably the most important character in the series besides Samus herself.  He is typically the instigator in the game especially in Super Metroid, Metroid Prime, and Other M.  While Other M is a problem in of itself, it should be noted that the his appearance was very important in the scheme of the story.  But it's also important to note how popular he is.  After Brawl came out, Sakurai was asked in an interview with Nintendo power on why he wasn't in the game.  So far, this is the only time Sakurai has been asked about why a character wasn't included.  Ridley is perhaps the most requested character in the US.  Nintendo knows fans want Ridley.  With the issues from the Direct, Ridley will get his own blog post soon. 

Shulk

Shulk is an odd character when you consider that not many people know him in the western hemisphere.  But it's no lie that the Japanese love their JRPG.  Xenoblade was not a huge release, and this tends to be used as a mark against the character, but this ignores the demand for this title.  The title was sold in the US as a limited release in Gamestop and had no advertising.  The game had no trouble of selling out.  Currently, the game is selling for $80 on Amazon for a new copy.  Despite the limited release, there is a lot of demand for ther game.  Let's not also forget Project Rainfall and the campaign to try and get this game in the US.  Japanese games also love the title and, in a poll in Famitsu, rating the game the 6th best Nintendo game of all time.  Shulk is a very popular character in Japan despite not being well known here.  And of course, there is the image of Shulk's weapon, the Monado, on Sakurai's Twitter. 

Marshal (Rhythm Heaven character)

The discussion about this character is less about him and more about the series, Rhythm Heaven.  The first game in the series came out in 2006 on the Game Boy Advance which was during Brawl's development.  The series really blew up on the DS when it was released in Japan as Rhythm Tengoku Gold.  According to VG Chartz, the game has sold over 3 million copies.  As of January 11, 2009, the game has sold 1.5 million in Japan alone.  The games are more popular in Japan as the music director is Tsunku who is both a vocalist and producer for many large name Japanese bands.  The series has become a Nintendo staple with three games in the series since its inception.  Marshal makes sense as he is the host of the most recent title, Rhythm Heaven Fever and, much like Villager, could use the minigames in his attack.  However, other characters could also fit, like series mainstay, Karate Joe.  

A Difference in the Flow of Information

If there is one thing that is true about Smash fans: if something isn't shown, it's not in the game.  The trend among fans is to expect the worse.  Like any game, there is content behind the scene you don't know about, and it wont be shown until release.  But that doesn't matter to fans.  If it's not shown, it's just not there.

But between Brawl and the Super Smash Brothers for Wii U and 3DS (SSBU) there has been a stark contrast in how information flows.  With the Super Smash Brothers DOJO (DOJO), the official site for Super Smash Brothers Brawl, content was given out every weekday.  Essentially, any day, there could be the reveal of a stage or a character.  With SSBU, content is given via the "Pic of the Day." These are pictures which may or may not show anything of significance. With Brawl, the idea was to slowly reveal content about the game.  With a few exception, fans had a general idea of what the game would have.  With SSBU, information is giving sparingly and its hard to say what we do and do not know.  With Brawl, the DOJO was the final word for everything and there is very little that wasn't on the DOJO.  The DOJO was meant to be a resource for information even after the game released.  When it came to large events, Brawl didn't much of a presence since the information was constantly coming from the DOJO.  SSBU is more about keeping things close to it's chest.  Information is rarely given out.  Information on veteran characters has been reserved for specific events or game releases and new characters only appear in directs.  Most of the information comes out of specific showings (such as the Smash Brothers Direct).

With the DOJO, information was given at a constant rate.  But the Pic of the Day does not.  Let's compare the amount of information with both games.  The 3DS version is expected to come out in August (the last summer month).  By this time, we knew most of the characters in Brawl except Olimar and Sheik.  We knew most of the stages and items as well.  For SSBU, we only know 6 characters and 4 starting veterans are MIA (Wario, Ice Climbers, Meta-Knight and Lucas).  "But could there be anymore characters? Is that all there is?"  While it's possible we know almost all of the new characters, consider there is a lot of known content we haven't seen.  For both the 3DS and Wii U version, we have not seen a Donkey Kong, Yoshi, Kirby or Star Fox stage.  We, naturally haven't seen a stage for series without a character (Mother, F-Zero, Ice Climbers and Wario). The 3DS version, which comes out this Summer, does not have a Metroid, Wii Fit, Pikmin, Sonic or Megaman stage on top of the ones mentioned previously.  This is a lot of content we just haven't seen.  Moreover, we have heard music in the direct for Kirby, Yoshi, Starfox and Donkey Kong.  Yet no stage.  It seems interesting that they haven't shown these off.  Furthermore, there hasn't been much talk about modes for the Wii U version.  Meanwhile,  the 3DS version has Smash Run.  Given this, it's very possible there is a lot of content we don't know.

As I mentioned before, fans assume the worse.  If it's not explicitly revealed, it's not in the game at all.  With how the Pic of the Day works, fans will just assume there isn't much in the game.  They'll think that that veterans were cut and the new characters are very few.  But the Pic of the Day is just different.  For whatever reason, Nintendo and Sakurai don't want to create small continuous stream of content.  They want to show a lot of content in small burst.  E3 2014 may have a lot of information that has simply been held off.  So we'll just have to wait and see.

Why Ike Didn't Surprise Me

When Ike was shown, a lot of people were surprised.  They thought that for sure that Ike was cut. GameXplain was also surprised as they thought that Ike was clearly not returning.  It's clear a lot of people, when discussing Smash, come up with faulty assumptions and don't do their homework.  It was clear not a lot of characters would be cut when Sonic and Toon Link were shown.  Out of the Brawl cast, these two were some of the easiest to do away with.  Toon Link is, to a lot of people, just a small Link.  He doesn't have a unique moveset like many of the characters do (though he does play differently than Link).  Sonic is a guest characters.. Normally, it's not easy to add in guest character with all the legal work and expenses.  It's rare for special guest characters to return in the sequel.  Not to mention we already have Megaman.  But Sonic is back too.  So with these two characters, and even other cut favorite Lucario, in the game, it's clear that many, if not all, the characters from Brawl were returning.  And why not Ike.  Fire Emblem characters are always well liked and Ike was a fan favorite (you see that guy all the time online).

This assumption that there will be cuts stems from the misconceptions people had with the transition to Brawl's roster.  It was assumed that some characters were cut for newer versions.  Roy was clearly cut for Ike.  Mewtwo was clearly cut for Lucario.  However, for those who know a bit about Brawl, you'd know that within the game's files there are files for Dr. Mario, Roy and Mewtwo.  Yes, it was intended for these characters to return early on in development.  Mewtwo even had files for effects and sounds suggesting the decision to remove him was made later on.  You can learn more about the cut elements from Brawl here.  Also, Brawl was not a simple endevor.  Nintendo made a new office in Tokyo and hired a smaller studio, Game Arts, to assist.  The staff for Brawl was built up over time.  Not to mention that Brawl included the Subspace Emissary which took up a lot of disc space (and likely resources).  On the other hand, Namco Bandia has their own office fully staffed with (likely) very competent employees including the Tekken team.  It should also be noted that Tekken Tag Tournament 2 included 60 characters. So it shouldn't be hard to bring back the 35 Brawl characters.

In closing, there are a lot of silly assumptions regarding Smash, and cuts are chief among them.  After seeing Toon Link, Sonic, and Lucario, you'd think people wouldn't have been surprised with Ike's inclusion.

My new blog

Hello readers.

The name is Smashchu.  For those who don't know me, I'm a poster over on Smashboard and I enjoy talking about the new Smash. Essentially, I lot of what I talked about was the realm of needless speculation. However, in recent times, Smashboards has become over moderated. Now, even sneezing will get you a warning.  The general gist of the place is you say anything that someone doesn't remotely like, no matter how asinine, you'll get a warning.

I had put a lot of effort and research into some of my post and I enjoyed making things a lot of people liked to read. Of course, I would invest a lot of time into these post and really try to come in with logic and a well supported conclusion.  But the end result was that people would make incoherent responses and, if I called them out on said response, that a warning.  I wanted to keep making content but I wanted some control. I wanted to get away from the thin skinned Smashboard.

So here I am now.  My goal is to bring quality content that people will enjoy.  At the end of the day, this site is for me, but I hope you all will enjoy what I have to say.  For those who know me from Smashboards, most of my larger post will be here.  I also accept responses to my blog post. Just remember that A)I may post what you have to say on this site and B)I wont walk on egg shells.  Of course, I wont give out your e-mail address.  So please come with a good question or response.  I'll gladly read it and may put it up here.
You can contact me at Smashchu2@gmail.com

Hope you all enjoy!!