Post by Flint on Mar 27, 2008 10:07:44 GMT -5
So I have unlocked everything that I could consider spoiler, and that means that I am finally back! ;D (not that many of you had missed me).
I Still have plenty of work ahead (trophies, stickers, music and chronicles, really, whose idea was to make the chronicles unlockable?
)
And now here its something I wanted to do since the days of the character speculation, but never got the time to do it, lets analyze the rosters of the three games of Smash 64, melee and Brawl.
First there was Smash 64, the main idea behind the cast seemed to be Nintendo´s greatest heroes battling each other. Thats it, no bad guys, and no secondary characters, and like this, the cast was pretty well ensambled ;
Mario, Link, Pikachu and Donkey Kong where Nintendo most popular characters for the time, then came Kirby and Fox who were also well known among Nintendo Fans (most of the N64 user base) Yoshi who had a great success in the still recent “Yoshi´s Island” even if "Yoshi Story" had damaged a little his career, he was still considered a rising star and finally Samus, Her series was closed, but was considered a classic in the west (and by some magazines the best game ever with Super Metroid).
Then came the secret characters.
Capitan Falcon was easily the most well known Nintendo franchise after the first 8, so he was a No brainer;
then came Ness which series MOTHER was quite popular in Japan and had the advantage that Earthbound was also released in North America (and the fact that it was developed by HAL the same developer that made Smash also helped);
Luigi who still was difficult to separate from Mario (at that point in time when Mario was in a game without Luigi people will still complain, they where called Mario Brothers), also he was nearly a clone of Mario so he was easy to include;
and finally Jigglypuff who is probably the strangest character who got in the game (but I´m sure the facts than she was from the hottest Nintendo property of the moment, was another female-ish character and similar to Kirby so they wouldn't have to start from zero to put her in helped)
Following this logic of Nintendo´s greatest heroes, the cast seemed complete, every character from the game was the hero from one series of games (which means that his/her game had sequels) if we wanted to ad more characters, we would have to dig into one hit wonders, obscure/forgotten series or second parties.
But still there were some series that I felt could have been represented in Smash 64 and these where:
Banjo-Kazooie; back then Banjo seemed to be Nintendo´s hottest new (non-Pokémon) property (it was still owned by Nintendo not Rare) was quite popular, had appeared in 2 games (Banjo-kazooie and Diddy Kong Racing) and had another game coming, Still diddn´t got in probably because japanese second parties avoided everything Rare developed(see Mario Party, Mario Tenis 64 and Mario Golf), the only thing they would use was DK and thats because he was an EAD original character. They probably didn´t hated Rare´s charactres, just went with characters who where easier to get the rights to.
Fire Emblem;Fire emblem was a huge series in Japan, but just like Banjo-Kazooie getting a character from the series meant getting another second party on board, so they just went with the characters they already had access (Nintendo and Hal characters, Pokémon was also in probably because of its HUGE popularity and the fact that HAL and Gamefreak where in the same building, Hal even helped developing the original Pokémon games and some of its spin offs)
Kid Icarus.- To us americans at least, even if his series were dead since the beginning of the SNES, he got Two games (now I know that this was only in America.) Also the fact that he apered in Tetris winning screen and in Captain N, made us believe he was one of Nintendo´s big characters (I remember that before the game came out, some magazines where speculating that Captain Falcon and Pit were the obvious choices for secret characters.)
Wario.- back in those days Wario´s Status as a sub series to Mario was quite similar to Yoshi´s, so if Yoshi got in the game why not Wario? He had his own games and was a rising star, Still we would not see Wario in Smash till brawl, but at least Mario got Wario´s colors
after those series every other Nintendo game became To obscure, to One hit wonder, or to Local to be viable for Smash, but then the Sequel would came and would change all the rules
So well, what do you think? Latter I should post my analysis on Melee roster and finally Brawl´s but for now lets talk about the first game...
(Here its a picture I made back then of what I thought would be Smash 2 roster, see just how wrong I were)
I Still have plenty of work ahead (trophies, stickers, music and chronicles, really, whose idea was to make the chronicles unlockable?
)And now here its something I wanted to do since the days of the character speculation, but never got the time to do it, lets analyze the rosters of the three games of Smash 64, melee and Brawl.
First there was Smash 64, the main idea behind the cast seemed to be Nintendo´s greatest heroes battling each other. Thats it, no bad guys, and no secondary characters, and like this, the cast was pretty well ensambled ;
Mario, Link, Pikachu and Donkey Kong where Nintendo most popular characters for the time, then came Kirby and Fox who were also well known among Nintendo Fans (most of the N64 user base) Yoshi who had a great success in the still recent “Yoshi´s Island” even if "Yoshi Story" had damaged a little his career, he was still considered a rising star and finally Samus, Her series was closed, but was considered a classic in the west (and by some magazines the best game ever with Super Metroid).
Then came the secret characters.
Capitan Falcon was easily the most well known Nintendo franchise after the first 8, so he was a No brainer;
then came Ness which series MOTHER was quite popular in Japan and had the advantage that Earthbound was also released in North America (and the fact that it was developed by HAL the same developer that made Smash also helped);
Luigi who still was difficult to separate from Mario (at that point in time when Mario was in a game without Luigi people will still complain, they where called Mario Brothers), also he was nearly a clone of Mario so he was easy to include;
and finally Jigglypuff who is probably the strangest character who got in the game (but I´m sure the facts than she was from the hottest Nintendo property of the moment, was another female-ish character and similar to Kirby so they wouldn't have to start from zero to put her in helped)
Following this logic of Nintendo´s greatest heroes, the cast seemed complete, every character from the game was the hero from one series of games (which means that his/her game had sequels) if we wanted to ad more characters, we would have to dig into one hit wonders, obscure/forgotten series or second parties.
But still there were some series that I felt could have been represented in Smash 64 and these where:
Banjo-Kazooie; back then Banjo seemed to be Nintendo´s hottest new (non-Pokémon) property (it was still owned by Nintendo not Rare) was quite popular, had appeared in 2 games (Banjo-kazooie and Diddy Kong Racing) and had another game coming, Still diddn´t got in probably because japanese second parties avoided everything Rare developed(see Mario Party, Mario Tenis 64 and Mario Golf), the only thing they would use was DK and thats because he was an EAD original character. They probably didn´t hated Rare´s charactres, just went with characters who where easier to get the rights to.
Fire Emblem;Fire emblem was a huge series in Japan, but just like Banjo-Kazooie getting a character from the series meant getting another second party on board, so they just went with the characters they already had access (Nintendo and Hal characters, Pokémon was also in probably because of its HUGE popularity and the fact that HAL and Gamefreak where in the same building, Hal even helped developing the original Pokémon games and some of its spin offs)
Kid Icarus.- To us americans at least, even if his series were dead since the beginning of the SNES, he got Two games (now I know that this was only in America.) Also the fact that he apered in Tetris winning screen and in Captain N, made us believe he was one of Nintendo´s big characters (I remember that before the game came out, some magazines where speculating that Captain Falcon and Pit were the obvious choices for secret characters.)
Wario.- back in those days Wario´s Status as a sub series to Mario was quite similar to Yoshi´s, so if Yoshi got in the game why not Wario? He had his own games and was a rising star, Still we would not see Wario in Smash till brawl, but at least Mario got Wario´s colors
after those series every other Nintendo game became To obscure, to One hit wonder, or to Local to be viable for Smash, but then the Sequel would came and would change all the rules
So well, what do you think? Latter I should post my analysis on Melee roster and finally Brawl´s but for now lets talk about the first game...
(Here its a picture I made back then of what I thought would be Smash 2 roster, see just how wrong I were)
