Black Shadow (disambiguation)
Black Shadow is a character in the F-Zero series and will only ever appear as:
Pain.
Pain.
Pain.
Pain parades through my soul and sets my every blood vessel afroth with rage, and there's a very good reason for it. I just saw another person - yes, yet ANOTHER person - come to the positively infallible conclusion that... since Ganondorf is still kind of a clone of Captain Falcon... they should just make Black Shadow be the Captain Falcon clone and give Ganondorf his canon abilities! Clearly this solution would make every single person in the universe happy and then we can oh my god shut up sHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP
There is an obsession with this guy that I absolutely do not understand. Actually, that's not entirely fair to say - in fact I think I've managed to ascertain the root cause. It's from people who have never actually played F-Zero in their entire lives, which - and let me be clear about this - is not something to be ashamed of. Emulation is pretty much your only option if you're not a collector because... yeah, may F-Zero rest in peace. It can be easy to assume that, since Black Shadow is painted as the main antagonist of the series, he would have an impressive repertoire of cool villainous deeds. After all when you're in a position like him you chiefly get brought up in discussion as The Villain™ and that carries a certain weight to it which makes you think he might be cool.
(john mulaney voice) But here's the thing.
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I have played every F-Zero game and I can tell you up front that you're only scratching the surface - of a piece of paper. You're preparing for a huge leap down the rabbit hole only to end up stepping off the sidewalk and into the grass. You're only seeing the tip of a tip-sized iceberg. If you take a cursory glance at Black Shadow, you know everything about him. If you look up "afterthought" in the dictionary, you won't find him because the dictionary people forgot he existed. Black Shadow isn't just creatively bankrupt, he's in crippling creative debt. Black Shadow is about as nuanced as graph paper - as flavorful as an oatmeal-on-white bread sandwich. Black Shadow is what you'd see when you boot up an Evil Cartoon Bad Guy Dress-Up flash game, BEFORE you've added any clothing. Black Shadow's backstory is one sentence long. Black Shadow is less developed than most Scooby Doo villains.
Not dissimilar to the likes of Daisy and all the babies in Mario Kart (why are there so many babies in Mario Kart), Black Shadow's sole purpose - the only reason he's even a thing - is to fill a slot. They were making F-Zero X, realized "ah man we don't have an insufferably generic villain," and whipped up Bootleg Duck Dynasty Bull Batman (B.D.D.B.B.) in 41 seconds while they were waiting on a frozen burrito to be done in the microwave. The only game in which Black Shadow has had an actual story appearance and not just been a profile picture with a blurb in the manual is F-Zero GX, and in it he is a ridiculous moron who dances in front of fake CGI explosions and spends the whole 15-minute story mode getting his face handed to him on a paper plate by Deathborn, who is the actual villain. He might have been threatening in the anime if the anime wasn't so weird and dumb. And if we're talking about Smash, we're not about to reference anime Black Shadow anyway, so it's a moot point.
So why is he even in the DISCUSSION of new Smash characters. Why do people looking for old video game series to rally behind keep specifically settling on Black Shadow as if that'll be the interesting surge of energy that will get F-Zero back on its feet? Is it because of that stupid Ganondorf idea that everyone thinks they're a genius for thinking of? If it bothers you so much that there's a clone of Captain Falcon, why do you want to instantly unfix the issue by adding this guy to compensate for the loss of Falcondorf??? You know how you ACTUALLY compensate for the loss of Falcondorf? You just make Canondorf's gameplan and attributes similar so you win Zelda fans without losing Ganondorf mains. Boom. There is now no need for Black Shadow to be remembered by the human race and we can erase him from the history books without losing anything of value.
You really want a new F-Zero character? How about literally any of them. There are SO MANY F-Zero characters to choose from and almost every single one of them is more interesting than this misshapen wad of charcoal. Put Mr. EAD in the game and make him a killer robot armory. Put The Skull in the game and make him a dark bone wizard. Put Samurai Goroh in the game and make him a techno pirate knight. Put Bio Rex in the game, he's literally a cyborg dinosaur and that is AWESOME. Put Pico in the game and give him a sniper rifle. Put Spade in the game and make him a black hole playing card thrower. Put Octoman in the game, I don't even care. He's cool.
I'm.
I'm gonna say it.
I can't believe it but I am actually genuinely going to say this.
Digi-Boy would be a better character than Black Shadow. He has a computer monitor and he can digi-hack your mind. That is a defining trait, and defining traits are a commodity entirely foreign to the Black Shadow household. Black Shadow is just. JUST. An evil guy. His evil laugh sounds like this. This dude's a farce.
I am literally begging you. BEGGING you. To stop asking for this guy to be in Smash. You have no idea how bad it would be.
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