Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has been out for about two and a half years now, and during that time players have had 11 new characters to play. Adding so many characters to the game is a monumental task in itself, but when you consider where they all came from, it’s more impressive. The list of DLC characters for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate covers a mishmash of games and genres, including Joker from Persona 5, Banjo & Kazooie, Minecraft‘s Steve and Alex, and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII.
With the reveal and addition of Tekken’s Kazuya to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, there is only one place left for another fighter. If you’ve been talking about the game in the past year or so, you’ve heard or seen debates about who the next fighter should be. Sora from Kingdom Hearts is a favorite, just like Super Mario RPG‘s Geno until he was revealed as a Mii Fighter costume. Waluigi is understandably called upon quite often, but would be just too powerful to take on the other fighters.
Joking aside, with a slit left in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, you’re going to see a lot of arguments about who should get that last spot. I don’t have a specific competitor, but what I do believe is that the game’s DLC character roster should end as it started, with a Nintendo character.
Sticking to the roots of Smash
If Smash’s final character were to be one of Nintendo’s own, that would rule out the majority of the characters fans are hoping for, but it’s time to stop looking at our own desires and think more about the context behind. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
The majority of characters added to the game since its release haven’t come from Nintendo-owned titles, and a decent handful of the game’s default fighters aren’t either. Nintendo, or more precisely, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate game director Masahiro Sakurai, has made the game a veritable melting pot of video games. No matter how long you’ve been playing or what kind of games you like, you’ll almost certainly find a character you know in Smash. It’s a feat the series has apparently pursued for over two decades.
Before all that, however, Super Smash Bros. was a Nintendo game. It wasn’t somewhere where the newest and hottest characters would appear, or where developers and publishers could advertise their characters (although Nintendo was often to blame for it itself). To give the last place to a character like Fortnite‘s Jonesy, for example, feels like it would be hollow.
Call me old and out of touch, but Jonesy isn’t a beloved iconic character. It doesn’t have the same backstory as so many other characters on the game’s roster. A character like Jonesy filling that last spot would yell at me “sell off”, as if Nintendo were just auctioning seats to the highest bidder. Instead, these characters should resonate with players, make them think of another gaming experience they’ve had in the past, and leave them in awe of the fact that they’re reconnecting with a series or franchise through Smash.
Honor a rich history
I can’t tell you who I think should be in this last place on the list. Nintendo’s library is huge, filled with characters that some people would love to see and others would hate to see. The final character has to be formal, a true tribute to Nintendo and its games, something or someone that captures the essence of the business. Whether it’s Waluigi or Geno, or any other Nintendo character, I can’t say.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is Nintendo’s. It’s not Epic’s, Square Enix’s, or Microsoft’s. Forget about the hype or character you were hoping for and think how weird it would be to end a Smash game without another character in the company that started it all.
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