Official Next Smash - Speculation & Discussion Thread

[Wonder Smash]

• Pikachu V Agumon
• Ryu V Scorpion/Sub Zero
• Nintendo characters V Sony characters V XBOX characters
• Chun Li V Lara Croft
• Tekken character V Soul Calibur/Virtua Fighter/Dead or Alive character
• Dante V Bayonetta
• Samus V Master Chief V Doom Slayer V Gordon Freeman
• Duke Nukem V Serious Sam
• Final Fight characters V Streets of Rage characters

Any other dream match ideas?

Most of these are what I want to see too. But I gotta add one more and it's one of the most obvious ones:

Mario vs Sonic vs Crash!

 

[RodNutTakin]

Once again I want to bring up the possibility of keeping over 70% of the character roster retained, but taking big axes and cleavers to the stage roster instead.
I'll ask the armchair developers here--would a drastically smaller stage count positively affect the number of veteran characters returning, or would it be negligible in terms of time and resources? I'm willing to sacrifice stage variety for character variety to flourish further.

 

[RileyXY1]

Once again I want to bring up the possibility of keeping over 70% of the character roster retained, but taking big axes and cleavers to the stage roster instead.
I'll ask the armchair developers here--would a drastically smaller stage count positively affect the number of veteran characters returning, or would it be negligible in terms of time and resources? I'm willing to sacrifice stage variety for character variety to flourish further.

In fact that 4chan rumor that was posted earlier suggested just that, as it said they would do Everyone is Here again but at the same time severely cut down the stage roster.

 

[Gengar84]

Most of these are what I want to see to. But I gotta add one more and it's one of the most obvious ones:
View attachment 398797

Mario vs Sonic vs Crash!

Yeah, I think is the biggest reason I’d be happy to see Crash despite not caring much about his games or him as a character otherwise. Just seeing the major console mascots from back in the day all in the same game would be pretty cool. I know Crash isn’t an official mascot since he was developed by a third party but he was advertised as one.

As for returning stages vs veterans, I’m not positive but I’d imagine bringing back a stage is significantly less work than bringing back a character so I’m not sure how much that would help.

 

[ninjahmos]

• Pikachu V Agumon
• Ryu V Scorpion/Sub Zero
• Nintendo characters V Sony characters V XBOX characters
• Chun Li V Lara Croft
• Tekken character V Soul Calibur/Virtua Fighter/Dead or Alive character
• Dante V Bayonetta
• Samus V Master Chief V Doom Slayer V Gordon Freeman
• Duke Nukem V Serious Sam
• Final Fight characters V Streets of Rage characters

Any other dream match ideas?

Hmm, let's see:

• Takamaru VS Onimusha Protagonist
• Ayumi Tachibana VS Phoenix Wright
• Lu Bu VS Nobunaga Oda
• Sonic VS NiGHTS
• Final Fantasy Character VS Phantasy Star Character
• Akira VS Kiryu
• Mario VS Sonic VS Rayman VS Crash Bandicoot
• Mega Man VS Bill Rizer
• Kunio and Riki VS Billy and Jimmy
• Ryu Hayabusa VS Strider Hiryu VS Joe Musashi

 

[Dukefire]

Most of these are what I want to see to. But I gotta add one more and it's one of the most obvious ones:
View attachment 398797

Mario vs Sonic vs Crash!

Ah yes, the third challenger that faced against Sonic and Mario.

Would be cool if that 90s style transition into a smash bros reveal like how duck hunt was done.

 

[Jave]

I still think about that from time to time. What even was her end game? That whole situation still makes no sense.

She initially lied about how much she was offered to do voices in Bayonetta 3, claiming Nintendo offered her very little money, causing people to rally against Nintendo and Hideki Kamiya, the latter of which was so bad it prompted Kamiya to delete his Twitter. But it later turned out that Jennifer Hale had been cast as the new voice of Bayonetta and Taylor was offered a smaller paycheck to "voice some lines" in the game.

At the end she kept doubling down on what happened, as more and more evidence piled against her but she kept insisting on people should boycott the game and donate the money to charity. She also caused a lot of people to send hate messages to Jennifer Hale.

Wildest thing to me was how she claimed Bayonetta was "a 450 million dollar franchise", which is pretty much the number you obtain by taking the total of Bayo 1 and 2 copies sold and multiply it by $60.

 

[Swamp Sensei]

She initially lied about how much she was offered to do voices in Bayonetta 3, claiming Nintendo offered her very little money, causing people to rally against Nintendo and Hideki Kamiya, the latter of which was so bad it prompted Kamiya to delete his Twitter. But it later turned out that Jennifer Hale had been cast as the new voice of Bayonetta and Taylor was offered a smaller paycheck to "voice some lines" in the game.

At the end she kept doubling down on what happened, as more and more evidence piled against her but she kept insisting on people should boycott the game and donate the money to charity. She also caused a lot of people to send hate messages to Jennifer Hale.

Wildest thing to me was how she claimed Bayonetta was "a 450 million dollar franchise", which is pretty much the number you obtain by taking the total of Bayo 1 and 2 copies sold and multiply it by $60.

To add to this, she's done and said a lot of things on Twitter that... how to put it... irked Bayonetta's fanbase.

 

[ninjahmos]

So...what does all this say about Bayonetta's chances for the next game?

 

[Þe 1 → Way]

Been on my mind for awhile, but do you guys reckon Raven Beak missed the boat? Dread releasing right as Ultimate ended kinda leaves it poorly timed for a future entry, but I think I and a lot of others still expect Samus to be modernized to that design next game. Personally, he's next to Sans as my most wanted character, with so many great moves and moments with such little screen time. I imagine he'd be an assist or potentially even a boss if not a character, but I would totally trade Zss and Dark Samus for him.

Sylux finally has the floor for Prime 4 but as of right now I honestly don't like a lot of what I see given to him for moveset ideas. Hopefully he gains more attacks in that game so there's more to draw from because I do still like the idea having
him.

 

[Gorgonzales]

So…what does all this say about Bayonetta's chances for the next game?

I don't think real-life controversies such as this really affect chances of characters getting into a fighting game. They're fictional characters.

 

[Perkilator]

Been on my mind for awhile, but do you guys reckon Raven Beak missed the boat? Dread releasing right as Ultimate ended kinda leaves it poorly timed for a future entry, but I think I and a lot of others still expect Samus to be modernized to that design next game. Personally, he's next to Sans as my most wanted character, with so many great moves and moments with such little screen time. I imagine he'd be an assist or potentially even a boss if not a character, but I would totally trade Zss and Dark Samus for him.

Sylux finally has the floor for Prime 4 but as of right now I honestly don't like a lot of what I see given to him for moveset ideas. Hopefully he gains more attacks in that game so there's more to draw from because I do still like the idea having
him.

If anything, considering Sakurai’s next project began full production in April 2022, half a yearly after Dread’s release, I think that makes Raven Beak perfectly timed for a spot on the base roster. Sylux can be DLC, though.

 

[chocolatejr9]

So...what does all this say about Bayonetta's chances for the next game?

If she comes back, she's getting a redub. That much is obvious.

 

[Hadokeyblade]

Once again I want to bring up the possibility of keeping over 70% of the character roster retained, but taking big axes and cleavers to the stage roster instead.
I'll ask the armchair developers here--would a drastically smaller stage count positively affect the number of veteran characters returning, or would it be negligible in terms of time and resources? I'm willing to sacrifice stage variety for character variety to flourish further.

I'm pretty sure stages are less work than characters, they usually just copy paste things to make the stages

 

[Idon]

Bayonetta's not making it in the next smash...

Because Dante is.

Spoiler

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

Since the Bayonettas from 1, 2, and 3 are separate entities, I wouldn't be surprised if they kept Bayonetta's voice lines, only rerecording them for her Bayonetta 3 appearance.

 

[Captain Shwampy]

Question about Doshin the Giant, I noticed the composer for that game uploaded the soundtrack and it seems like Nintendo doesn't own the rights to the music? A shame since Doshin OST is incredible, not that it was ever used in any previous smash game but still.

 

[Hadokeyblade]

Question about Doshin the Giant, I noticed the composer for that game uploaded the soundtrack and it seems like Nintendo doesn't own the rights to the music? A shame since Doshin OST is incredible, not that it was ever used in any previous smash game but still.

View attachment 398808

Does Nintendo own anything about Doshin?

It's suspiciously absent from Ultimate's spirit list.

 

[Dukefire]

Does Nintendo own anything about Doshin?

It's suspiciously absent from Ultimate's spirit list.

That game is very old and niche that's exclusive to Japan. Only had 2 games in existance on the N64.

 

[Captain Shwampy]

Does Nintendo own anything about Doshin?

It's suspiciously absent from Ultimate's spirit list.

Half ownership with Param. He had a trophy in melee however.
Param went defunct, so id imagine Nintendo got full ownership of the game.

 

[Arcanir]

Since the Bayonettas from 1, 2, and 3 are separate entities, I wouldn't be surprised if they kept Bayonetta's voice lines, only rerecording them for her Bayonetta 3 appearance.

I'm pretty sure she getting changed entirely. When the controversy with MByleth's old VA happened they scrubbed all of his voice lines completely from Three Houses and Heroes and replaced him with the new one. Her burning bridges as she did will likely get a similar response since I don't think either Nintendo or Platinum want anything to do with her.

 

[dream1ng]

I'm sure it will be SF3 in how some people react to the cuts, but certainly not in the actual quantity where we've lost almost all the roster, even by its final iteration. That's not happening.

SF3 deliberately wanted to do what SF2 did and basically have an entirely new cast again. They didn't even try to bring back the vets other than Ryu and Ken until the iterations. I doubt Smash will ever be that.

Smash will prioritize a lot of vets, but in the end, when you rebuild a roster that size, there's just a lot you're not going to be able to include right away.

 

[DarthEnderX]

I did prefer its more stylized graphics to SFVI’s attempts at being photo realistic though.

Not me. I'm no fan of SF6's 'realistic' graphics. But I like SF5's 'Slightly uprezzed version of SF4's 'plastic action figure'' graphics even less.

SF6 looks better than SF5. Just not in the way I wanted it to.

Smash fans aren't ready for their Street Fighter 3 moment. Might not be the immediate next thing but you can only kick the can down so many times.

You mean the thing that killed the SF franchise for a decade?

Smash is never going to have a "SF3 moment". Because there's never going to be a Smash where Mario and Luigi are the only returning characters.

Yep. I was saying that not having every single Pokémon in the game didn't negatively effect sales at all.

Something you can't prove without knowing how much it would have sold if it had had every Pokemon.

That game is very old and niche that's exclusive to Japan. Only had 2 games in existance on the N64.

There are more obscure games that have Spirits.

Frankly with some 1500+ Spirits in Ultimate, there's no excuse for any Nintendo game to not have at least one Spirit.

Justice for Pro Wrestling and StarTropics! Because reasons!

 

[chocolatejr9]

Half ownership with Param. He had a trophy in melee however.
Param went defunct, so id imagine Nintendo got full ownership of the game.
View attachment 398810

That would make sense, pretty sure that's happened before. Then again, the example I'm thinking of is Mario & Luigi, so maybe I'm not the right guy to ask...

 

[SMAASH! Puppy]

Stage Reviews (Melee):

Spoiler: Melee added more stages than I realized

Want

• Princess Peach's Castle: I don't particularly care for this stage, and others like it that separate players, but it's probably the best execution of an iconic location, so I think it should stick around.
• Rainbow Cruise: It's a classic, and I think it would be weird if we didn't have it. I also like it as a 1v1 stage with hazards off.
• Kongo Falls: This stage is neat. I like the layout and the aesthetic, and the stuff that the rapids hurl at you. It's just a fun time.
• Temple: This baby ain't going anywhere. Which is good, because even fully HD it feels retro, and I love it for that. It's also just impeccably designed.
• Fountain of Dreams: I want this in a game that isn't filled with tri-plats on the new system that's powerful enough to handle it even when 3 players are Ice Climbers and Wario is on his bike. That way I can see this beauty in tournament play in all it's HD glory.
• Mute City: This looks like fun. I want to play on it.
• Onett: It's a classic, and it's always fun to mess around on.
• Icicle Mountain: I want to see what this would look like in HD. I have no other motives, I just wanna see the glow up. I bet it could look pretty cool.
• Battlefield: Gotta have it. Smash isn't Smash without it, though I wouldn't say "no" to them changing up the aesthetic.
• Final Destination: See above.
• Poké Floats: GIVE IT ME NOW!!!
• Big Blue: I used to hate this stage, but 3 games in and it's growing on me.
• Fourside: Love the aesthetic and there is ample room to fight on either side of the empire state building. Also a l i e n s.

Like, but Don't Necesserilly Want

• Great Bay: It's kind of awkward, but it's full of charm.
• Corneria: I like the layout of this stage, and the visuals are really crisp in Ultimate. It just isn't something I go to often.

Indifferent

• Mushroom Kingdom (Melee): No cool pipe gimmick, but also no fight club walk-off...Eh? It'd be neat to experience it once, but I otherwise don't really care.
• Yoshi's Story: It's a neat stage, but it's my least favorite tri-plat and there are so many at this point. If it comes back, neat, but I won't cry if it doesn't.
• Jungle Japes: One of the stages of all time. Probably everyone's least favorite mainstay stage (though 75m will take that spot if it returns for a third time), and while I don't particularly dislike it, I have never thought "hey, I never go there, I should pick it this time".
• Brinstar: I've never been a fan of this stage. It's OK, and I will probably play on it a couple times when it comes back, but I'm very rarely in the mood for it.
• Green Greens: It just doesn't appeal to me. It's a unique layout with interesting gimmicks, but I can't bring myself to care...Maybe it's just the bland grassland aesthetic?
• Pokémon Stadium: I like this stage idea and think it should exist in every game, but I don't think we need both it and its sequel. More than that, I want to see a Pokémon Stadium 3 with four more type transformations. I know that's kind of what Kalos Pokémon League is, but eh. It's no the same.
• Mushroom Kingdom II: It's just OK. I like it's faux 2D aesthetic, and it can be chaotic fun, but that's about it.

No Thanks

1. Yoshi's Island (Melee): Why on earth does this stage have perfect attendance since Melee (discounting 3Ds)? I mean, it can be fun, but the weird bowl shape and slanted walk-off make people live forever unless you just die because you tried to fight in the center. Also if we're renaming redundantly named stages, why didn't they call this one Super Mario World? And why is this a Yoshi stage, it's from a Mario game!
2. Venom: I'm glad I got to play on it once, but now I'm good. It's got the problem I have with Princess Peach's Castle, but way worse, and not a whole lot is going on.
3. Brinstar Depths: I want to like this stage, so I keep going here and not having fun. Release my from my prison in the depths of Planet Zebes! Or if they do bring it back please make the AI run better on it so they actually try to fight me instead of sitting off to the side as the platform rotates.
4. Flat Zone: Just keep Flat Zone X.

This game added most of the iconic stages we know today, and that's reflected in the number of stages that I want to be there even if I don't necessarily like them. I also feel it makes the most out of simplicity and I admire that about these stages. The duds are mostly just "eh" rather than "I hate this gimmick please kill it" like you see in future games.

 

[dream1ng]

Once again I want to bring up the possibility of keeping over 70% of the character roster retained, but taking big axes and cleavers to the stage roster instead.
I'll ask the armchair developers here--would a drastically smaller stage count positively affect the number of veteran characters returning, or would it be negligible in terms of time and resources? I'm willing to sacrifice stage variety for character variety to flourish further.

It's likely the way they allocate budget and potentially have sub-teams working of different aspects of the game makes this an oversimplification, but in every game they could've theoretically cut content other than characters and funnelled that back into character development.

And they do cut some things that draw resources wherein that time/budget could be spent elsewhere, like the removal of target tests, all-star, trophies, etc.

So if anything were cut to redistribute the budget elsewhere, it probably wouldn't be stage count. After characters, stages are not only one of the bigger draws/focuses of promotion, but an aspect central to the game. Stages are actually important. Unlike some modes which are neat but ancillary.

They're also something that can be sold as DLC. They weren't in Ultimate (separately from fighters), but it's possible they bring that back. And that could probably be pretty lucrative considering if they sell them for even half the price of a fighter, it's certainly less than half the work than to create a fighter pack.

Plus I think you would be disappointed in how many stages it would take to equal one fighter in terms of time and resources.

 

[The Stoopid Unikorn]

I did prefer its more stylized graphics to SFVI’s attempts at being photo realistic though.

I honestly think SFV doesn't look that great.

SF4 is pretty ugly but it's stylized enough that it actually ends up being charming and SF6 being so photoreal would be kinda generic if it wasn't for how vibrant and colorful some of the visual effects can be, especially Drive Impacts. Drive Impacts look ****ing awesome.

SFV feels somewhere in between while not really being good enough at either.

 

[dream1ng]

Something you can't prove without knowing how much it would have sold if it had had every Pokemon.

Well by that logic you can't prove it would've sold better had it had them all either, because reasonable as that might be, that game also doesn't exist.

What we can do is make logical deductions based on the available information, which is that despite cutting out so many Pokemon, it still sold in excess of the previous six gens which had them all. If Nintendo really saw it as crippling their potential return, they wouldn't have done it again. And then that gen also sold better than gens 2-7. You don't need to be an economist to see the games aren't significantly hindered by these cuts.

The primary factor in how much these games are going to sell is the total buying install base of the system. That's why Smash 4 Wii U can add like 15 characters to its count from Brawl and still sell less than half. That's why the "Switch Effect" was even a thing.

 

[Kirbeh]

I really didn't expect people to take the SF3 comment so literally...

Obviously, they would never reduce to Smash to only two veterans. I thought it was pretty clear that the idea was that it's about a larger set of cuts. Smash will never cut 70+ characters but when it eventually cuts 20+ or so, there's still going to be an outcry for that missing chunk.

It's not going to be as extreme but there's going to be a time when we'll be looking at a very different (and smaller) roster which will inevitably include some fan favorites that people convinced themselves were safe for sure. That's the idea I was trying to get across.

And, yes, the numbers are part of it, but the numbers won't be small enough for parity with SF3. That was never the point.

Apologies for the confusion I guess, but again, I'm honestly more baffled at the amount of people that ran with it in the most literal sense possible.

Tbh, i don't think Smash 6 situation is comparable to SF3, i think if anything it could be more comparable to MvC3 or MvC:I....depending how it goes.

Evidently, it's not. There isn't really any game situation that's really comparable, so I went with what I thought illustrated my point best. Though again, apparently that was a bad call.

As for MVC, I did consider bringing it up, but I actually think this series fits even less than the SF3 comparison tbh.

The transition from MVC2 to 3 was MVC's big comeback. It was generally understood that things were going to be taken in a different direction with a drastically different roster size/count. You still had people that were disappointed by "x" or "y" not making it but generally, most people were more excited for the fact that Marvel vs Capcom wasn't a dead series. There's also the point of MVC2 being a sprite-based asset dump while 3 was built from complete scratch. There wasn't an expectation for the roster to balloon past MVC2's. Or at least not for the majority of players.

Now, MVCI could potentially serve as parallel, but that game's issues went well beyond just the roster. The notable absences were definitely a point of contention for some but the circumstances as we've come to learn, were out of Capcom's hands. So, in that sense, it's not quite comparable either as I don't think Smash has to worry about losing say, Kirby or Fox (you could use most any notable characters as our X-Men stand ins.) You might run into a situation where Smash can't secure every third-party character again, which could net a similar reaction but again, I don't think Smash fans share that expectation in the same way Marvel fans expect X-Men in their MvC game.

What would that even look like? Get rid of everyone except Mario and Luigi?

I addressed this in the above, but no, it'd look like a healthy number of vets, but with enough missing to be seen as a problem by players who are used to being spoiled by Sakurai.