Tendo City

I'm going to keep this here for future stuffs.

Latest video:

[video=youtube_share;N9ytrX0wweA]http://youtu.be/N9ytrX0wweA[/video]

Good to see Captain Falcon returns, as well as a smattering of new Fire Emblem characters, who aren't necessarily clones! "Robin" is in there, and if you were one who picked "female" Robin, fear not! She's in there too, they just picked the male version for the video...

Anyway, still good stuff, and the varied costume options are nice too! (I confirmed via the smash tourney video that female Villager is selectable skin, so all's well there).

Hideo recently went on-record saying he hopes Sakurai puts Snake in this version too, but well, there's no telling at this point. I'm also still waiting for the Ice Climbers, Game & Watch (the "Mr" was never necessary), Ness/Lucas, Wario, Metaknight, Jigglypuff, and ROB. Those all at least count as the "unique" characters I'd like to see (ones that aren't clones), but there's just so MANY that it seems very likely that many of them got the boot this time around. A shame, but since one of my friends is a diehard Ness player (Lucas this time around), I'm hoping that fellow gets in. I'd say Ness and Jiggly are the most likely, as up until now the "original cast" have always made the cut in the games.

Other than that, there's brand new characters they have to pick from as well. There's Tempo from Gamefreak's own "HarmoKnight" game (surprisingly fun little rhythm "runner" style platformer). There's also Dillon the cowboy armadillo who never says a word and wears a permanent scowl from his own series of weird action/tower defense games (pretty enjoyable too). There's also whoever these characters are from the upcoming Splatoon. In other words, there's plenty to pick from from Nintendo's newer IPs that could finish out this roster.

As for third party, I still hold out some hopes for Simon Belmont to complete a "Captain N team" for us. That'd be sweeeet. (I also would love to see King Graham in there, but let's face facts, that's about as long a long shot as one can hope for, the sort that Japan in general isn't even slightly aware of. Still, I think he'd work great as a character with a wide assortment of unique items.)

Yeah, that announcement was great! It's fantastic to FINALLY see a Fire Emblem character who isn't yet another hero swordfighter. Yeah, Robin does have a sword too, but also magic, and I've wanted a FE mage character in SSB ever since I started playing FE games. Also it's great to see a few more female characters (or options, for Robin); there was this rumor that the only characters remaining to be announced were Shulk, the Chorus Men, andf Chrom, but this reveal thoroughly debunks that -- it's Robin and Lucina, instead of Chrom. Well, he does appear in Lucina's final smash apparently, but that's it. Lucina's just a Marth clone of course, though, and I've never really played as Marth or Roy much so I doubt I'd like her either, but sure, she's nice to have... even if it really should have been Lyn. Lyn of course can't just be a clone though, so that'd require a lot more work... ah well.

Anyway, three nice inclusions in the cast. Yes, it's great to see Captain Falcon back again. I wonder if Nintendo will ever remember that he comes from a series of really good games, too? Probably not; they seem to have completely given up on all racing games that aren't kart racers. The SSB WiiU/3DS character roster's pretty good, and I wonder how many characters there will be total; they haven't announced Ganondorf yet, I hope he returns. As for third-party characters, apparently Rayman is in as a trophy. He'd have made a nice character, but after the Rayman Legends thing Nintendo probably wasn't exactly putting him on the list... we'll see if there are any more. Simon Belmont might be a nice choice too, but I don't know, Konami and Nintendo probably aren't as close as they once were, what with Konami making many fewer games than they used to and almost nothing for Nintendo recently apart from some 3DS stuff... and Simon would need a new design, too. I doubt it would happen (even though it'd be a fine choice, really), but hopefully they could come up with a good 3d model for him based on his classic designs...


On the note of racing games though, and yes I know this is another topic and probably should be its own thread (oh well...), Nintendo abandoning all non-kart racers, as they seem to have done in the past few years, is one of the saddest things about this generation. Ever since the SNES Nintendo has always published some of the best racing games around, but now, this gen... Mario Kart only. Last gen it was just Mario Kart and three Excite games (Truck, Bots, World Rally), along with the one Art Style line racing game on the Wii that wasn't that great, and as fun as those Excite games were, and they were a lot of fun, they weren't quite on the level of F-Zero GX, Wave Race Blue Storm, or 1080 Avalanche on the Gamecube (though I would put any of them above Kirby's Air Ride... but that game always has disappointed me of course). It would be very sad if Nintendo gave up on the racing game genre outside of Mario Kart and maybe a rumored Diddy Kong Racing revival; that's the same basic thing of course, still a kart racer. Yeah, kart racers are a lot of fun, but so were all the other kinds of racing games Nintendo made! I know Mario Kart is a huge seller now, but more variety is good, just because that game is huge doesn't mean you should abandon the rest of the genre. I hope this changes.

Simon Belmont had a 3D model made for him in the Wii Castlevania fighting game. That's an obvious start, though to be sure he wouldn't like quite like he did on the NES game cover.

Simon was also a playable character in the 3DS Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Mirror of Fate: Nested Subtitles game.

You are right about F-Zero, you should just go ahead and make a thread for it. I mean, I know you want to see more of those racing games, so do I, but well, you seem to bring it up in every thread.

As for Snake, it isn't exactly the same Snake (Naked instead of Solid) but remember that Metal Gear Solid 3 had an updated release on 3DS. It is a shame that Ground Zeroes/Phantom Pain won't see a Wii U release (both are getting back-ported to 360 and PS3, but they ignored a Wii U version), but point is, it's an option. True though, there's no telling if Nintendo wants to make the same deal with Konami again (and perhaps expand it with Belmont).

Oh right, the Wii Castlevania fighting game. That games' art design is so eye-scarringly horrible, I was hoping that any SSB character would use absolutely nothing from those designs... the game is actually okay, but the art design is terrible!

I didn't know Simon was playable in the 3DS game, though. Interesting. What does he look like there?

As for Snake, I don't think one 3DS port several years ago could possibly outweigh that the last (Ground Zeroes) and next (Phantom Pain) MGS games aren't on Nintendo systems. No way should Snake be in the game if his games aren't going to be released on Nintendo platforms.

But as for Konami in general, I think it says a lot about how much smaller Konami is now, relatively, than they used to be when you consider that Konami had very little to show at E3 this year, for the first time in a long time. Outside of Kojima Productions, Konami isn't nearly the company it used to be...

That isn't really Nintendo's consideration. I mean, Twin Snakes (itself a remake of a former Playstation 1 exclusive adding gameplay features from a Playstation 2 exclusive, rather than an original title) was the only Nintendo console Metal Gear game in... well since the NES days, and of those two, one was disowned entirely by Kojima, and the other was a shoddy port. Even when Brawl came along, there were no pending announcements of any Metal Gear games coming to Wii or DS (not even Virtual Console ports of the MSX2 games). Heck, Snake Eater's 3DS release is closer to the release of the new Smash Bros. than Twin Snakes was to the release of Brawl, by about 2 years. I think that renders your whole argument moot, because if Nintendo didn't care about the lack of any future Metal Gear games when they put Snake in Brawl then, I don't think they'd care now. I don't think they need a game series to be currently on Nintendo systems, just for there to be SOME history with that franchise on a Nintendo system in SOME shape or form at some point in time.

As for Simon Belmont's design, well, here's his Lords of Shadow design: http://castlevania.wikia.com/wiki/Simon_...of_Shadow)

Keep this in mind though, this is technically a different character. Lords of Shadow is considered a new rebooted Castlevania series in it's own timeline.

As to the original Simon Belmont, not sure what you mean about the character designs in the fighting game, but Simon's character design has been like this since the "Chronicles" remake of the first game: http://castlevania.wikia.com/wiki/Simon_Belmont


In both cases, he comes across as a sort of "wildman" with weird red hair. If they wanted to go with a more "retro" look, like they did with Megaman, this is what we're looking at:


So, those are basically your options. I'm not sure what you mean when you say they would "have to come up with a whole new model". They have had to do that with EVERY new character! They didn't reuse assets from other game engines or something, they're all brand new, from Megaman to Pacman.

The Lords of Shadow design is okay, but if that is a reboot, I don't know if they'd use it... maybe. That could work perhaps.

As for Judgment, though...


Castlevania Judgment Simon may not be the worst of the Judgment redesigns, but it's certainly bad! I mean, I do prefer the US Castlevania IV cover version of Simon, myself, but at least the Chronicles version fits with the SotN style. Judgment's got its own art style, and it's scarringly horrible stuff from the manga artist behind Death Note.

As for Snake, I just don't think we'll see him because the recent MGS game was not on Nintendo and the next one won't be... and the last MGS game before that wasn't either, and the collection (MGS2+3+PW) collection wasn't either. All Nintendo got was that very late port of MGS3 for the 3DS... I don't think that's enough to make up for all the missing ones. As for this actually being closer to MGS3D's release than the gap between Twin Snakes and SSBB, I hadn't thought of that and I guess it's true, but still... I doubt it'll happen. But we'll see. Really though, a character like Rayman would've been a better choice -- despite Ubisoft and Nintendo's current issues, almost every Rayman-universe game has been released on a Nintendo platform, and they have been successful there. The only one I know of that isn't on any Nintendo system is the 360 Kinect Rabbids game.

I guess it's just a matter of opinion. I will say that it's really weird how Japan's comic industry all but requires comic makers to be writers and artists rolled into one. How many comics there have different people making different parts of the comic?

Anyway, the Chronicles one is most likely the one they'd go with, second most likely would be his appearance on the artwork of the original NES games. (Well, Famicom games if they're different. It's just to be expected they'd favor the look the Japanese are most familiar with.)

I gotta say his Judgement clothing was pretty bizarre. Like, Voldo bizarre. I mean, they went heavy on the leather with the Chronicles artwork, but this takes it to a bizarre extreme.

Anyway, I just don't think your thinking about how many Metal Gear games Nintendo gets is anything Sakurai is concerned about. It's not just that Twin Snakes was released 4 years before Brawl, it's that it was the ONLY Metal Gear game Nintendo had gotten from Konami since Ghost Babel on Gameboy Color, which was many years before that. Further, Nintendo had NO promises from Konami, no expectations, of any future Metal Gear games coming to Gamecube or future consoles. They knew that it was a one-off then, and there were no plans for porting over MGS2 or 3 (even though the Gamecube was capable of playing them, sans a number of buttons and pressure sensitivity on every individual button (except start and select) like the Duel Shock 2 had). If Nintendo was willing to put Snake in there despite the utter lack of any recent Metal Gear releases, and, at the time it was released, knowledge that Sony was getting all the Metal Gear games for a while (like Portable Ops, Peacewalker, and of course MGS4), then I don't see why that'd stop them this time. That's what I'm saying.

But more than that, it sets a basic standard. All Nintendo requires to put a character in Smash Bros is that it had at least ONE game on a Nintendo console, not that it comes from a series regularly released on a Nintendo console.

Anyway, I suppose we'll be waiting another month before we see any new announcements. One thing I'm hoping for? Well, Nintendo FINALLY has a good system in place for managing automatic game updates. They've also got a... decent system for DLC (generally, you can get it from their online store on the Wii U, but on the 3DS it must be purchased in-game from individual shop menus). So, for the first time, there's a really good possibility for characters to be added to the game as time goes on. Also for the first time, major balancing issues can be patched. In other words, I won't be TOO heartbroken if this or that character isn't in the game. Patches and DLC have the potential to add more as time goes on.

Well, I've never really thought that Snake makes much sense as a SSB character, honestly. It's not only about this game, though I do think that with no Nintendo games coming with Snake in them, he probably shouldn't be there... though sure, I'd probably have said something similar with Brawl. Brawl had some bad character choices, though. I'm very glad to see this game doing a much better job choosing characters to add.

Otherwise, I think that those Castlevania Judgment redesigns are eye-scarringly awful. As I said, they're from the artist who drew the manga Death Note, and I don't like the style at all... and it's even worse on Castlevania characters. There are some which are even worse than Simon there -- Maria's particularly bad, for instance -- but he certainly looks a lot more absurd than the Super Castlevania IV or even Castlevania Chronicles versions. Anyway though, I'd be very surprised to see Simon, but I think I'd rather see a Super Castlevania IV-style Simon. Chronicles would be okay but second to that, and Judgment... please pretend that game never existed, from an art design standpoint, anyone...

I guess I just disagree on that count, but on with the news.

Meta Knight's in. Just got confirmed recently on the site.

The bigger news though is an apparent leak. Now, a lot of the time these leaks will consist of edited character roster images or editing in some character into a still image of the game. This one's different though. There's actually video of the game in action with these characters, taken on "shaky cam" hovering above a 3DS. Seems pretty legit there, so I'm going with it, although unfortunately the video that proved it to me has been taken off Youtube.

Well, the roster from that video is interesting, to say the least. Most of the characters I listed above that had no confirmation one way or the other have that now. Ice Climbers are gone. They were somewhat awkward, and the way they talked about Rosalina did suggest she was intended as a "replacement" for a "team" character. Some suggest the Ice Climbers would have pushed the 3DS too far, but that's silly. The 3DS is essentially a portable Gamecube with more RAM, and if the Gamecube could handle 4 Ice Climber teams, so can the 3DS (for that matter, it can handle 4 Rosalina teams, so there's that).

Aside from Ice Climbers, Snake seems completely absent as well. That's a shame in my opinion, and it basically means Nintendo doesn't have anything worked out with Konami this time around. It also means no Simon Belmont. Numerous "clones" are missing in action. No Ike, No Lucas, and no Wolf this time around. Oddly, an old clone seems to be coming back from Melee, Dr. Mario. (Considering how minor his differences were, it's a bit of a lame addition unless he's really changed this time around.) Beyond that, Ness, Ganondorf, Jigglypuff, ROB, Wario, and Mr. Game & Watch seem to be coming back. That's good, although Ganondorf himself is a clone, he's important enough to the Zelda universe to merit a character anyway (hopefully he's even more differentiated from Captain Falcon now).

For brand new characters, where the video really told all, there seems to be Bowser Jr. (in a koopa clown car, which looks adorable), Shulk (from Xenoblade, the game Weltall NEEDS TO PLAY, but won't because the name confuses and infuriates him), and lastly the dog from Duck Hunt. Yeah, that last one is really out there, but makes a sort of weird sense when you consider a defunct accessory (ROB) and a character that was never even a single character (Game & Watch) got to be in the series.


I'd say the lineup is pretty solid. Of course I'll add the caveat that it could have been faked, but considering the videos, it would have to have been a very masterful fake indeed. I'd say this crosses the line enough to say it's more likely that this is real than that they actually hacked entire levels and uniquely animated unique characters into Brawl (plus adding the black outline) and then hijacked the video feed into a 3DS's screen.

So that leaves one last little detail. There's 6 extra spaces total on that roster sheet, all empty. That COULD just be how it was set up, but considering how easy it'd be to set up the rows to eliminate most of those empty gaps, I'd say that means there's room for yet more characters. My hypothesis is that the new Smash Bros. actually will be set up for DLC. This would be the first game in the series released on systems that actually properly support patching and DLC (the Wii... kinda did? Not really though...), so it's certainly a possibility worth considering. They're already adding in DLC for Mario Kart 8, so I believe that their work won't be done just because the game's complete. I think we can expect those empty spots to be filled with yet more characters in the form of DLC.

That's a weird feeling. Even seeing the full roster in a complete game won't be enough to kill fan hope of this or that character showing up in the game. That'll be something.

... So you actually think that Death Note-style artwork is okay? Huh, it takes all kinds... I think that for many, the art was one of the major reasons why so many people hated the game. I thought that way too, until I finally played it and found that the gameplay is moderately enjoyable, as bad as the art design is...


Anyway, as for SSB, so supposedly the Ice Climbers are gone because they couldn't get them working on 3DS, or something. Uh, why not just put them in only the Wii U version then? Why must both versions have the same character set? That's annoying, the Ice Climbers are kind of cool. Also they didn't prioritize them because there's not likely to be another game in that series anytime soon... too bad. They should make one sometime, it'd be great as a downloadable game I think!

As for other characters, I don't mind that they cut some of the clones. You don't need so many similar characters, really, and there is a large roster. They did add some new ones, though -- Lucina's a new Marth clone, after all.


So yeah, anyway, the game is out in Japan. Not too long now until the US release of the 3DS version too. There was a four-page ad in this months' Game Informer. I haven't played it yet of course, but I definitely question some of their design choices here... I mean, as far as modes go. Yeah, I know that the single player arcade/story-style modes in previous SSB games weren't very good, but doesn't this game essentially have none at all? Like, single match, or that Kirby Air Ride-gone-2d mode, or... is there anything else? Is there at least a basic tournament style single player mode, or has the game gone full Kirby Air Ride? Because even bad single player modes are better than NO single player. I know Sakurai said early on that he'd have no good single player, so this is an old complaint, but I still don't really understand it. Try to make an actual decent one this time, or just have a standard fighting game style tournament mode like the original N64 game had! That's good enough. I hope it at least has that, Kirby Air Ride was kind of ruined by its complete lack of anything to do outside of multiplayer. SSB has always been best in multiplayer, but it shouldn't be ONLY for multiplayer. At least SSB has online play on both platforms, though... that does help.

I didn't really say I liked the art, just that I don't find it distracting. Anime all sort of blends together anyway for me.

They didn't cut Ice Climbers for any technical reasons (the 3DS is more powerful than the Gamecube after all), they just had to make cuts.

The game is out! I shall play today...

The Duck Hunt dog is a blast to play. Kinda reminds me of Snake a bit.

Little Mac is really growing on me, though the key with him is staying on the ground. Now they just need to add Ivan Drago.

Nintendo put out a video for Bowser Jr.

[video=youtube_share;UI7mc5OMssw]http://youtu.be/UI7mc5OMssw[/video]

Oh, side note: ALL of Bowser's kids are playable actually. They all exist as costume changes for Bowser Jr. They're "full" changes mind you, as even the character name changes when you switch costumes (as well as voice acting and such). Very well done, as it feels like 8 characters in one slot.

Oh, the first DLC has been announced. It's free DLC for Mewtwo, which is certainly appreciated.

Dark Jaguar Wrote:They didn't cut Ice Climbers for any technical reasons (the 3DS is more powerful than the Gamecube after all), they just had to make cuts.

In his article in the November (I think it is?) Game Informer, Sakurai actually does say that they were cut in part for technical reasons -- getting both Ice Climbers was hard on 3DS, or something. I don't get it either, there should be plenty of power... He also said that characters who aren't in currently-running series would get lower priority too, which also hurts them... Nintendo hasn't brought back Ice Climbers, though I think it could make a good downloadable game for sure.

Near as I can tell, it's the "lower priority" thing that mattered more. They ran into some sort of technical issue, most likely solvable, but rather than invest time in dealing with it they decided it was better to focus on other characters, such as Rosalina & Luma (who would seem, to me, to have the same technical issues as Ice Climbers might).

Addendum: Okay I think I have a better idea now. 4 player ice climbers wasn't the issue, most likely it was 4 ice climbers online that would have caused issues. The difference between Luma and Ice Climbers is that Luma has no AI. Luma is more or less directly controlled by the player. While that AI isn't exactly complex in any meaningful way, when you add in online play, negotiating 4 different sets of AI controls across online packets while an online match is going on likely only added to latency issues. Rather than have a character seemingly arbitrarily struck from online play, they opted to simply leave them out entirely. Nintendo likes consistency. This is the sort of thing I can understand, as the online play already has latency issues in dire need of resolving. In fact, they already need to patch one major issue: ad-hoc wireless (that is, multiplayer between others in the same room) sometimes has big latency spikes. There's really no excuse for this, considering that multiplayer is basically the defining reason to get a game like this, so I'd say it's in need of an update somewhere down the line.

I should note that Brawl included Ice Climbers even with online mode. However, I think we all remember just how laggy Brawl's online was, even when connected directly with a LAN adapter (now that they are basically all but demanding you buy such an adapter for Smash Bros, it really makes it seem like not including a LAN port in the system that doesn't go through USB 2.0 was shortsighted).

I still am not sure why the console version lacks them though. Ultimately, I still think that the Climber's lack of development focus is the real reason. I think down the line they may just decide to focus on them completely for a few months and solve all of those issues.