Super Mario Galaxy 2

[A Black Falcon]

Admittedly it puts into stark relief the presence of far more male leads than female leads,

Very true, and it is a core part of the problem, but even despite that it doesn't excuse SSBB's lack of any new female characters.

Who would you suggest? Note: Has to be a MAIN character, the character that DEFINES a franchise. At least Nintendo HAS some female leads. Doesn't help that it's called "Brothers"

Lyn or Micaiah would be the two most obvious ones... Lyn for the character with more overall popularity, and/or Micaiah because she was one of the two main characters (the main character, arguably) of a game that came out just the previous year...

When Lyn was annouced as an assist only I knew it was a bad sign for the game, as she seemed to be the female character with the best chance for getting in. Micaiah didn't make it in at all. Too bad, it'd be cool to see an FE mage in SSB, all three FE characters in the games are sword users. I like the mages best, myself, mages are always among my most-used characters in Fire Emblem game playthroughs. :)


If you want an older character, um, the NES really didn't have many female main characters. From Nintendo itself, other than Metroid, the only ones I can think of are Lala in Lolo 3 (in the first two games you just have to rescue her, but in the third one both characters are playable), or whatever the CluCluLand character's name is... I know that is supposed to be a female ... um, octopus or whatever. Probably too obscure and unpopular though, Kid Icarus at least is still somewhat popular (and probably my favorite new character in the game, but yeah).

Alternately, and I just thought of this, Captain Syrup might be interesting to play as in an SSB game... and I'm sure there are some more.

... Balloon Kid for the GB starred a girl. The original Balloon Fight starred a boy, but in Balloon Kid you're a girl who has to rescue her kidnapped brother. Not a prominent enough character for an SSB game I think, though, but one of the few I can think of.

Also, of course, in every Pokemon game since the third one you can choose your gender, but in SSBB, the Pokemon Trainer is male only. There's another obvious missed option.

Overall, for SSBB, I don't think there's any good defense for what they did. I mean, NINE new characters in the game and ZERO are female? Seriously? I know I said it at the time, but fighting games just don't DO that anymore. I can't think of one fighting game sequel from Capcom, SNK, etc. from the last decade or more which did anything remotely like that.

The arcade version of The King of Fighters XII did only have two female characters, of a cast of 20, but the game has a very small roster for a KOF game, and has zero new characters -- everyone returns from past KOF games. Also, the home version of the game added two new characters, both female, to bring the final ratio to 4 of 22.