EdgeTheLucas
Smash Lord
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2013
- Messages
- 1,695
Even still, this is a discussion about whether that decision was JUSTIFIED, not how it came to be. I know why Dr. Mario was included and how little resources he took, but the question is whether it was justified to include him at all.My Theory of what happened is that they decided to make Doc Mario an alt because of melee and such, but soon realized that he was going to throw fireballs instead of pills, use fludd,etc and, like what happened to Lucina, made him a new character.
He didn't take anyone's spot on the roster, consider him a + character, he wasn't chosen from a list of possible characters, if he was never included in the game we would have a smaller roster, not a character to take his place.
Im glad he came back.
I still stand by no, as on a conceptual level he's Mario wearing different clothes. He could have been an alternate costume and worked fine like that.
On a moveset level, for those that want to discuss his Melee moveset and how transferring that over justifies him being a separate character again, we should examine said moveset. His fair, throws, neutral special, and down special are all better than Mario's, and no one has been able to point out a crippling weakness Dr. Mario has against regular Mario. If it's true that he ends up being this way, then I see no reason not to remove F.L.U.D.D. (it just pushes opponents, someone tell me what it's useful for that Mario's bair and Cape don't already do) and give Mario his Tornado special back (even as a custom special at the very least, for those that still really wanna keep F.L.U.D.D.), give his fair Doctor Mario's fair properties (its upwards-sending trajectory is more useful than Mario's downwards-sending one because it can be used anywhere on the stage to be effective rather than just the ledges), and buff Mario's fireballs to work like Dr. Mario's pills because frankly they're more useful for harassing opponents and controlling space than Mario's current fireballs anyway.
Regular Mario's downthrow looks much better than Dr. Mario's down throw, though (some have been calling it the new Melee Sheik down-throw--that's saying a lot), so with Dr. Mario's other better throws (his own down-throw looks only decent), we have to question whether different throws are worth a separate character after examining that his other changes are just buffs that could have easily been applied to Mario himself. Just giving Mario Dr. Mario's throws on top of his already really good down-throw would make him beyond broken, but wouldn't it be cleaner to just take both of their throws and put the most balanced combination into a single Mario? I think it would.
I guess the last real reason people want Dr. Mario to be separate is that maybe people want Mario to wear a labcoat really badly, and also really want to see him throw pills around. Well, what's stopping Sakurai from programming Mario's doctor outfit so that his fireballs (which could theoretically have the pills' properties by default--this is important to remember) change to pill graphics and make the trademark sound effects when Mario switches to it on the character selection screen? And for people that say that the Dr. Mario franchise is very successful and important to Nintendo and deserves a fighter, well, wouldn't said doctor outfit with the pills and pill sound effects work alright? I mean, Dr. Mario and Mario are one and the same. Miyamoto's stated on numerous occasions that Mario and the rest of the crew are like a troupe of actors, taking on a variety of roles, Mario being both a plumber and a doctor among them. Some like to say that Dr. Mario is an alternate universe version of Mario, which isn't explicitly stated much like any of the non-mainline Mario platformers not being canon isn't explicitly stated, either. As such, it would be perfectly fine to make Dr. Mario an alternate costume for Mario even if it turned out he was a different person after all.
Last, and in the case you could call it least, some people have stated that being a costume wouldn't work because fire and pills have different properties when you hit an enemy. Fire is energy, and pills aren't. If Ness used PSI Magnet, he could absorb Mario's fireballs but not Dr. Mario's pills. I argue that, in a sense, the pills ARE energy because they're medicine, and one could easily adjust the pills to look more ethereal rather than physical to make up for it. Or, my favorite fix, put the pills on fire. After all, you're a doctor and it could make way for heartburn jokes. In this game Dr. Mario's pills aren't curing anybody, they're hurting people, which goes against what the pills did in the Dr. Mario games. Putting the pills on fire could circumvent that, turn the projectile from physical to energy, and solves the problem.
All in all, the reasons above are why I have a very hard time justifying Dr. Mario's inclusion. I understand that Dr. Mario was very easy to implement, but at the same time he doesn't really add anything that couldn't have been done to Mario. I can only see him as filler, which I don't see as a good thing regardless if it's extra content or not, and unless someone else puts up a really, really, REALLY good argument for the other side, I'm going to keep thinking this way.
Last edited: