The End of a Su­per Smash­ing Era

MISHAWAKA – The last down­load­able con­tent (DLC) char­ac­ter for Su­per Smash Bros. Ul­ti­mate has been an­nounced, and with it, the end of the ros­ter for the game and the end of an era.

Ap­proach­ing the three-year mark for the re­lease of, de­bat­ably, the great­est Su­per Smash Bros. game of all time – yes, I said de­bat­ably, Melee fans, calm down – Masahiro Saku­rai and the de­vel­op­ment team at Sora Un­lim­ited have an­nounced the fi­nal char­ac­ter to join the leg­endary ros­ter. Be­fore re­veal­ing that, how­ever, I feel it is nec­es­sary to try to con­vey just how im­por­tant this en­try in the se­ries has be­come.

Smash was orig­i­nally con­ceived as a fight­ing game fea­tur­ing Nin­ten­do’s most pop­u­lar char­ac­ters, solv­ing the dilemma of every kid and their brother in the nineties who had the play­ground ar­gu­ment of, “Who’s stronger?” With a base ros­ter of a se­lect few fran­chises, Mario, Poké­mon, The Leg­end of Zelda, Metroid, Don­key Kong, Kirby, Star Fox, F-Zero and Earth­bound, and only 12 char­ac­ters, it is in­com­pre­hen­si­bly im­pres­sive that, only 22 years later, a Smash game fea­tures a ros­ter seven times that size. The orig­i­nal 12 were Nin­ten­do’s most pop­u­lar pro­tag­o­nists of the day, and what bet­ter way to gen­er­ate sales and in­ter­est in their re­spec­tive games than to put them all in one place?

Smash re­ally started stand­ing out in its sec­ond in­stall­ment, Su­per Smash Bros. Melee. While Smash 64, as it is col­lo­qui­ally re­ferred to, was a fun party game, Melee brought with it a col­lec­tion of unique me­chan­ics and more fa­mous char­ac­ters, for a to­tal ros­ter size of 26, and a hereto­fore un­matched physics en­gine (or so I am told). These im­prove­ments and ad­di­tions came along just two years af­ter the orig­i­nal but man­aged to sus­tain a fan­base that is al­most bru­tally pro­tec­tive and loyal to this day. In the Smash com­mu­nity, Melee play­ers get a bit of a stigma for be­ing out-of-touch and elit­ist for a now twenty-year-old game, but I just think it is im­pres­sive that they can find them­selves con­tent with such a small ros­ter, an­ti­quated graph­ics, and, in my po­lite opin­ion, fid­dly game. Mov­ing back to the game’s im­pact, how­ever, the new in­stall­ment was more pol­ished and ex­pan­sive, open­ing young play­ers’ and de­vel­op­ers’ eyes to what the se­ries could be.

The fol­low­ing ti­tle, Su­per Smash Bros. Brawl, was when Saku­rai and Sora Un­lim­ited went all in on the mar­ketabil­ity of the game. Dozens of items, spe­cial rule­sets, 39 playable char­ac­ters, and the all-new cin­e­matic Fi­nal Smashes branded this game as the one to play with friends. This was the first time that Nin­tendo went out­side the con­fines of its own in­tel­lec­tual prop­erty and brought in char­ac­ters like Sonic and Solid Snake. Their gam­ble paid off, as this move meant peo­ple who had never played Smash but had played Metal Gear or a Sonic ti­tle now saw the op­por­tu­nity to play as their gam­ing idols in a fun party game they could share with their friends on one of the most pop­u­lar con­soles of all time. In terms of ac­ces­si­bil­ity, Brawl was un­con­tested. De­spite it be­ing mar­keted as a purely ca­sual game, the com­pet­i­tive scene was not go­ing to let a new Smash game fall by the way­side. Even the ad­di­tions of the ag­gra­vat­ing and le­git­i­mately un­pre­dictable trip­ping me­chanic, the com­pet­i­tively il­le­gal Fi­nal Smashes, and the should-have-been-com­pet­i­tively-il­le­gal new­comer, Meta Knight, did not stop Brawl from en­joy­ing a fairly suc­cess­ful stint in the lime­light.

Brawl was quickly cast aside among com­pet­i­tive play­ers for its shiny, more-re­spon­sive lit­tle brother, Su­per Smash Broth­ers for 3DS and Wii U. Yeah, that ti­tle was a bit of a mess for every­one, so most play­ers just re­ferred to it as Smash 4. The first game to have two dis­tinct ver­sions with dif­fer­ent con­tent, bonus char­ac­ters and stages in the form of down­load­able con­tent, Smash 4 was the first Smash game I ever owned, and it was an in­stant hit and a much-an­tic­i­pated re­vival for the se­ries. Though the gap be­tween Melee and Brawl was a year longer, the six years be­tween Brawl and Smash 4 felt like they were spent mak­ing a solid, pol­ished, and fun­da­men­tally unique fight­ing game.

At this point, Sora Un­lim­ited had re­al­ized that Smash could be home to the crème of the crop of video game char­ac­ters, ev­i­denced by the 58 playable char­ac­ters in the game. But they did­n’t just add more char­ac­ters, they added some that peo­ple had thought were im­pos­si­ble. For in­stance, Cloud Strife, one of the most iconic video game char­ac­ters in his­tory, is the in­tel­lec­tual prop­erty of Square Enix, a stu­dio in­fa­mous for re­tain­ing the rights to all its IPs. Not only did Saku­rai man­age to ne­go­ti­ate a deal with Square to in­clude this ver­i­ta­ble gam­ing celebrity in a kid’s fight­ing game, but he also man­aged to se­cure iconic pieces of mu­sic and an en­tire level based on Cloud’s orig­i­nal game. Add that un­likely feat to bring­ing in char­ac­ters like Pac-Man, Mega-Man, Ryu (of Street Fighter fame) and Bay­o­netta, a de­cid­edly “ma­ture” char­ac­ter, and Smash 4 was look­ing like an im­pos­si­bly ex­ten­sive ros­ter, punch­ing well above its weight in rec­og­niz­able names.

Now, the stage is prop­erly set for Su­per Smash Bros. Ul­ti­mate to burst onto the scene in 2018. The years sep­a­rat­ing the last patch of Smash 4 and the re­lease of Ul­ti­mate were filled with si­lence on the sub­ject of a new Smash game. Then, out of nowhere in 2018, that iconic glow­ing ball blazed onto the screens of ec­sta­tic Nin­tendo fans. Up­roars around the world in the gam­ing com­mu­nity had spec­u­la­tion soar­ing high and hopes even higher: who would get in, how would the game play, are they fi­nally just mak­ing Melee 2? Be­tween March, when the an­nounce­ment was made, and De­cem­ber, when the game re­leased, peo­ple were anx­iously await­ing any shred of news con­cern­ing Ul­ti­mate. Fi­nally, af­ter that ini­tial teaser, the first of many Smash-themed Nin­tendo Di­rect pre­sen­ta­tions aired, show­ing the ros­ter. Thus, Ul­ti­mate’s tagline of “Every­one is Here” was born. Every sin­gle char­ac­ter that had made an ap­pear­ance in a Smash game was re­turn­ing for this in­stall­ment, re­gard­less of how many games they had been in: Ice Climbers, and Pichu – who had not been seen since Melee – and Wolf, Snake, and Poké­mon Trainer – leav­ing af­ter Brawl – all leapt back into the fray for the game. Not con­tent to rein­vent the wheel, over half-a-dozen brand-new char­ac­ters were be­ing added, in­clud­ing long-time asks, like King K. Rool from Don­key Kong, Ri­d­ley of Metroid in­famy, and the clas­sic Castl­e­va­nia char­ac­ters, Si­mon and Richter Bel­mont.

The base ros­ter in­cluded 74 char­ac­ters. I can­not stress enough how un­be­liev­able a num­ber that is for a kids’ fight­ing game. But, never be­ing one to know how to take a break, Saku­rai laughed at the ini­tial ros­ter size, and said, well, some­thing in Japan­ese that I will not at­tempt to repli­cate, but to the ef­fect of, “You ain’t seen noth­ing yet.” He im­me­di­ately added char­ac­ter num­ber 75, Pi­ranha Plant, and he later an­nounced a DLC Fight­ers Pass, a col­lec­tion of five fight­ers with their own stages and mu­sic li­braries that would be in­tro­duced over the up­com­ing year. The first char­ac­ter sent the en­tire fan­dom into shock: Joker, from Per­sona 5. Now, if that name does not mean much, imag­ine try­ing to steal the Mona Lisa if it were locked in­side Fort Knox at the cen­ter of Mt. Vesu­vius in space. Masahiro Saku­rai did that while live-stream­ing the whole thing and high-fiv­ing the head of se­cu­rity on the way out. That is how mind-bog­gling Jok­er’s ad­di­tion was. If ATLUS, the com­pany that owned Jok­er’s game – com­pa­ra­ble to Square Enix, ex­cept way worse – had shared one of their most highly-pro­tected IPs, noth­ing on Earth could stop Saku­rai from adding whomever he wanted. 

The Fight­ers Pass added all five char­ac­ters be­fore Feb. 2020, with the no­table in­clu­sion of Banjo and Ka­zooie, a re­veal that had many grown adults sob­bing for joy. Yet again, Saku­rai showed the world that he did not know the mean­ing of the word rest, even once it was trans­lated into his lan­guage, by an­nounc­ing a sec­ond Fight­ers Pass, with six char­ac­ters this time. The high­lights of Fight­ers Pass 2 are Steve from Minecraft – yes, you read that right – Sephi­roth, the an­tag­o­nist from the same game as Cloud Strife, and the newest and fi­nal char­ac­ter in Su­per Smash Broth­ers Ul­ti­mate, Sora, from King­dom Hearts. By the time all is said and done, Ul­ti­mate would have 85 char­ac­ters in the game, with rep­re­sen­ta­tion from over 450 dif­fer­ent games. Whether that was their ini­tial goal back in the nineties or not, Masahiro Saku­rai and Sora Un­lim­ited started a se­ries that would go on to be­come the ver­i­ta­ble gam­ing Hall of Fame. That, in my opin­ion, is what makes Smash so spe­cial. It is so much more than just an in­sanely fun and ac­ces­si­ble fight­ing game, which is a feat to achieve. More im­por­tantly, Su­per Smash Broth­ers, specif­i­cally Ul­ti­mate, is a love let­ter to video games, nos­tal­gia and fans. The de­vel­op­ers did not make a game with 85 char­ac­ters just for the fun of it, not least be­cause that would in­volve four years of work with barely any­thing ap­proach­ing the de­f­i­n­i­tion of “fun” in a 30-mile ra­dius. They made a fight­ing game rep­re­sent­ing the char­ac­ters, sto­ries, achieve­ments, and mem­o­ries of over 450 games, games that im­pacted the lives of mil­lions of peo­ple around the world. They took those mem­o­ries that shaped peo­ple and con­densed them into the char­ac­ters they loved so much and put them on dis­play for the world to see, and that is the best kind of gift I have ever been given as a player. I gen­uinely feel ter­ri­ble for those who, de­spite their love for the game, still do not have their icons among that list, but I also urge those play­ers to see the op­por­tu­nity pre­sented be­fore them: the op­por­tu­nity to make new mem­o­ries with char­ac­ters they might have never seen be­fore or sto­ries they might not have been in­ter­ested in be­fore, and, in­stead of ac­cus­ing the game’s cre­ators of tak­ing that chance from them, to ap­pre­ci­ate the game and the kind peo­ple be­hind it for giv­ing play­ers that chance.