Past and Current Activities
I write the fully-detailed Franchise Descriptions for every character-based Universe page, and am interested in a variety of other edits to the content of those pages.
| Ballot
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- Peach
- Diddy Kong
- Wario
- Sheik
- Toon Link
- Zero Suit Samus
- Ice Climbers
- R.O.B.
- Olimar
- Captain Falcon
- Jigglypuff
- Ike
- Mr. Game & Watch
- Snake
- Sonic
- Bowser Jr.
- Waluigi
- King K. Rool
- Vaati
- Viridi
- Krystal
- Mewtwo
- Zoroark
- Samurai Goroh
- Chrom
- Little Mac
- Isaac
- Matthew
- Andy
- Ray Mk III
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Okay, so on 6/19/2013 I submitted my character ballot for Omega Tyrant's Smash 4 Character Prediction game in the form shown to the right.
2/13/2014: Well, a lot's been revealed in the 8 months since the E3 reveal (as of this edit), so I'm just going to lay out what my original thought processes were for each character choice:
- The first 15 choices, the returning veteran predictions, were my attempt to handpick the vets I thought were technically less "might-as-well-be-confirmed" than others like Dedede, but still likely to remain in the roster compared to Lucario's chances. But nowadays I think I probably should have looked more at the other contestants' ballots and simply picked vets that had fewer votes for them, if I wanted to get points; it's like, of course most would have picked Peach, Diddy Kong, Wario, Captain Falcon, Jigglypuff, and especially Mr. Game & Watch. To some degree, these count as wasted votes in my ballot in terms of trying to get points for them. Meanwhile, though, I missed a large opportunity in leaving out Lucario... At least I can hope that if Ike makes it in, he'll be in his Radiant Dawn vanguard form.
- Bowser Jr. and Waluigi were, of course, my two Mario predictions chosen over Rosalina, with these three seemingly the most likely of all the prospective non-clone newcomers from the core Mario universe. It's definitely not like I disapprove of Rosalina being chosen - I just had the mentality that she would fit in the roster of SSB5 after the other two would make their debut in SSB4, due to the mental image I had of two other colorful, certain-to-be-uniquely-playing characters versus one that was specifically designed aesthetically to be very similar to Peach (who she was once considered to be made a relative of). I'm personally glad they at least took all the opportunities to make Rosalina play entirely different from anyone else, though I do fear that both of my previous two choices will not make it in at this rate, not just one of them.
- It was either King K. Rool or Dixie Kong for me, and I figured K. Rool would provide more opportunity for roster diversity by virtue of being a heavyweight and by having various different get-ups from the DK games to draw from, and was therefore worthier of a dark horse vote. But of course, Dixie seems more likely nowadays, and would be perfectly capable of a distinctive moveset of her own.
- For Vaati, that was an exotic newcomer choice I put in because I figured that, between the triforce of Link, Zelda/Sheik, and Ganondorf for the core Zelda aesethetic, and the representation of the more childlike cel-shaded style in Toon Link, the best fifth-character-slot choice for a balanced series representation on the final roster would be a second Toon character, and a villain is always more interesting. Now, I never played Skyward Sword, so I never heard of Ghirahim when I made my poll, though he definitely looks cool...
- It was either Viridi or Magnus for me, and choosing her was for both gender diversity and weapon diversity's sake - Magnus is technically another sword-wielder, as much as he looks like he'd be a very different-playing one and an awesome character to play as in and of himself. ...Yeah, it somehow didn't occur to me that Palutena even could be playable because she was squarely planted in my mind as Pit's Final Smash from Brawl (where her modern design was first debuted), and as a very large entity in that appearance to boot. It does seem incredibly likely now that she's the only second KI character that could have ever been considered for Smash by the developers, since of course she isn't that large in Uprising, and Viridi, at least, seems to have been confirmed as a background element.
- I have a fairly unique and radical prediction for Star Fox representation in SSB4: That both Falco and Wolf will be cut, and Krystal - seemingly the only other character outside of Fox that is referenced nowadays in forums - will replace them. This is based on a mental image I have that the sheer dearth of new Star Fox content since Brawl would end up signifying to the developers that the series warrants only two reps nowadays, and for that second character slot, one that is much more colorful, represents a much more significant dimension to the Star Fox series than some co-pilot, and is guaranteed a different moveset based on psychic powers seems like the ideal one.
- Of course I would love to have Mewtwo back in like everyone else, but IMO Lucario's confirmation does little to indicate he won't make a reappearance in SSB4, since I think I understand how Mewtwo had to be removed in Brawl (Sakurai strongly expresses that the Brawl roster being as large as it was required an especially great effort from the production staff, as if to imply they couldn't even make many more characters available on the roster if they wanted; there is also a very thorough column-per-series logic on the Brawl roster screen in which 4 slots can represent 1 series like Pokemon or Zelda. This basically means there was only 4 slots available for Pokemon on the roster screen to begin with - and between Pikachu, the much-expected return of Jigglypuff as the trump-card wielder of the smashers, the desire to push a very different and unique multi-character-swapping mechanic with the Pokemon Trainer, and the need to have Lucario - a Pokemon Game Freak continues to put a lot of effort into promoting in its own games - represent the entirety of the modern Pokemon style, there basically was no room for Mewtwo back then). But with my hope that the SSB4 roster will be able to devote at least 5 slots to Pokemon now, there's no better choice for that 5th slot, and Game Freak seems to have provided more impetus for Mewtwo's inclusion by giving Mewtwo two mega evolutions.
- On the subject of Pokemon, we come to Zoroark. It did not occur to me that Lucario could actually count as sufficient for representing all Pokemon generations from 4th onward, which seems to make sense now since those more-or-less collectively represent what can be called "modern Pokemon". Instead, I thought that Zoroark would outright replace him, if not some kind of 6th-gen Lucario equivalent from the then-unknown, then-upcoming 6th Generation, and basically amount to being your latest representation of the collective "modern Pokemon" concept for your latest Smash game - something that could be done for each future Smash game. And while Zoroark would still be really cool, I imagine that translating his illusion ability into the Smash Bros. format would be incredibly difficult to program. Besides, as it would turn out later, Lucario got a mega-evolution in X and Y, but not Zoroark, and knowing that in advance would've made my ballot different.
- Samurai Goroh's a simple newcomer choice for me - a rival to Captain Falcon that was already established as able to fight in the Smash Bros. environment by his assist trophy appearance. I'm not sure how much better what other F-Zero racer could have been as a secondary rep - Black Shadow? Deathborn?
- I basically put in Chrom without thinking about it too much, since, you know, latest Fire Emblem hero and all that. Maybe he's too much of a "second Marth" due to being a distant descendant of Marth in the game itself, but I personally wouldn't know the best way to handle SSB4's overall Fire Emblem representation at this point in time. One creative idea, I suppose, is that Intelligent Systems could announce Fire Emblem 14 and SSB4 could include its hero, much like Melee included Roy before the release of Roy's own game.
- I definitely hoped for and wanted Little Mac in this game, since it sort of makes sense his outdated version wasn't included in Brawl, but he certainly had the credentials to be included thanks to the Wii Punch-Out!! game and design. And I was definitely not disappointed.
- But since I'm probably the "Mr. Golden Sun" the nursery rhyme is talking about, it should come as no surprise that my greatest hope for Smash 4 is one representative from Golden Sun. But who should it be? Everyone knows Isaac from the Brawl assist trophy and from being from the better-loved first two games of the series, but I would actually be even more excited if it's his descendant Matthew, main guy from the third game; after all, it's pretty clear that game's story is not done yet, and Camelot would obviously want to conclude their series with at least a fourth game. Matthew probably would be the main character in Golden Sun 4 as well, and there's no better promotion for that than Matthew being in here. But I can't rule out Isaac will be chosen for the reasons I listed, so I'll just have to devote an "expected" vote for Isaac and a "dark horse" vote for Matthew.
- Andy, main "boy" commanding officer from three of the Advance Wars games, was a prediction I had for Brawl because he was much more recent at the time. But there hasn't been a single Nintendo Wars game since Days of Ruin - released right around Brawl - so I have my doubts my vote for him is more than a dark horse vote. His weapons would be a pair of wrenches.
- Finally, the Ray Mk III Assist Trophy makes me think there should be a Custom Robo rep, mainly him, though I don't know much of anything about the series - for all I know, maybe I was supposed to submit my vote for him as "Ray", not "Ray Mk III". But a battle robot with missiles would inject a distinctive flavor into the roster.
The only character exclusion I'll bother talking about is Ridley, the most controversial character of all. Back when I didn't put him in my ballot, I had two different reasons, which I think weren't as puerile as "he's too big" because that's obviously not an issue that can't be fixed with a simple solution like a resize. One: How would you possibly be able to translate a limber wyvern that predominantly hunts from the sky into a grounded, hopping smasher that can be grabbed, tossed around, and sent helplessly falling off the stage and into the bottom blast line, without compromising any of his distinctive menace? I wish I knew what ways it could be possible, because I fear it's likely that the fans who want Ridley in could ultimately be even more angry about the actual playable Ridley they are going to get than those who don't want Ridley in. Two: Would having any Metroid character other than Samus being playable compromise the "one-woman-against-the-world" theme that the Metroid series seems to treasure greatly?
Perspectives change over the course of many months, however, and with all the unfortunate problems Nintendo has been coming across and putting itself into recently, I now think that not including Ridley could be as destructive to Nintendo's image as not handling Ridley's inclusion very well. Nintendo has definitely been needing to show more of a certain boldness and vision, and Ridley could actually be a very important saving grace as that kind of bold inclusion. I just hope it can be done... My best guess as to how it could be feasible is if, in the reveal trailer, there's a Kid Icarus: Uprising-style conversation where Pit and Palutena talk about how she is able to temporarily give Pit's wings several minutes of flight at a time, and Palutena explains she was brought in to Super Smash Sisters - er, Bros. - to temporarily take away extended flight in the same sort of fashion, in order to qualify a certain anticipated newcomer. And this is the lead-up to a Ridley debut in which Ridley is shown now to be a grounded combatant that is clearly forced now to obey the laws of jump-based smashing like everyone else. That's the only possible compromise I can think of...
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