Today, Nintendo announced humorously that at E3 2014, an invitational Super Smash Bros. tournament has been announced. This either means that the project is finished, or it merely means a glorified demo version will be shown off with exciting competitive measures before launching the game first on the 3DS in the summer.
After the Nintendo Direct, discussions and speculations surrounding most of all the character roster have bombarded the internet on curious places such as Smashboards. Before I give my thoughts about that, let's talk about an exciting new mode for the 3DS first.
Called Smash Run, this is a very enjoyable inclusion because it is reminiscent of the mode that made Kirby Air Ride very enjoyable as well, which is City Trial. This is where your mission is to collect upgrades and stat boosts in a time limit and in the end battle off against each other with these differences.
Many more announcements, specific technical features and such were covered by Sakurai, such as attempting to please both casual and hardcore gaming groups by including For Fun and For Glory modes, which includes a feature to reshape many stages with a flat Final Destination touch.
But also being able to report abusive online behaviour which looked helpful and thoughtful, and the option of having customizable movesets are interesting for the franchise. As Sakurai promises gameplay speed to be between Melee and Brawl standards, plus all of these other features means that he is attempting to bring both groups closer and closer on each other.
As the release date of the 3DS version is now only a few months away, which is earlier than anyone expected, some people are worrying that there isn't enough new content left to be shown or developed. Well, these people are wrong on two grounds.
First, Sakurai has said that he did not want to show us as many new stuff as he did with Brawl, and second, the option of downloadable content seems more plausible than ever considering the experiments Nintendo has done already with titles such as Fire Emblem Awakening, Pokemon X/Y and recently the new Mario Golf, all on 3DS.
Which means that, as far as character speculations go, I'm sure that the majority of people will be satisfied as always, except for maybe that one time when Mewtwo, an original fighting character, did not return for Brawl.
Popular wishes for character inclusions are for instance the controversial Ridley, Isaac, Shulk and Palutena who seems inevitable at this point considering by the way how many times Sakurai trolled viewers with examples such as the mocking of Waluigi, the shadow of Ridley and showing a Pseudo Palutena in a trophy quizzing game.
Other desires include obviously the return of yet unannounced veterans, although some of them have been heavily hinted at and are guaranteed to return including Captain Falcon and Ness. Although I am extremely, extremely happy that both of my character wishes Mega Man and Little Mac managed to enter Super Smash Bros. 4, I can't help but be excited to wish for a few more characters.
Which without further ado include a representation for the Advance Wars franchise, which only Andy seems logically to do so, as these games are so wonderful especially in multiplayer sessions. Furthermore, I would love to see Dixie for even more female representation and King K. Rool would have quite an interesting moveset considering his encounters with Donkey Kong at every end.
To be honest, all these names I mentioned are popular wishes. Although I will publish this post for now already, I will give other wishes a few more thoughts before sharing them here. Please understand, it's all about the timing. So expect a small update here soon.
EDIT: As promised, here are a few more potential likable suggestions. Now Snake may or may not return, but either way, if Konami is still on the boat, Big Boss and Simon Belmont are considerable alternatives.
Other than those, a new rumoured retro based Nintendo character could potentially revive another one like Kid Icarus. NES suggestions could be Mike Jones, Takamaru, Sukapon, Goku and Donbe/Hikari, SNES suggestions could be Tin Star, Lip, Hakkun and any other obscure characters I missed, which probably aren't much.
In any case, although it's fun to try to guess who makes it in, it's even more interesting to eventually see the inevitable "challenger approaching" warning scenes with silhouettes teasing your next introduction to a familiar or unfamiliar face.
Out of all those, give me only Andy and I would be more than content with the roster. For now, let's carefully await our expectations at the upcoming E3 event with patience, as it surely will be yet another devastating one, either on stage or digitally.
