Spoiler Thoughts on the Smash Poll After the Fact

[A Link In Time]

Now that we know that Bayonetta was the winner of the Smash ballot and Cloud was heavily influenced by it, I think it's time to reevaluate what everyone thought about casting their votes for fighters to appear in Smash for the first time.

I will say that the final presentation was very good, but there were a bit less characters than I expected. I did expect that they would take the winner of the overall ballot, but I also thought there would be several more characters added that reached a point above a certain threshold. It seems Sakurai did not wait for the ballot to end either, as evidenced by Cloud being revealed less than two weeks after its conclusion. If anything, Cloud was just another effort by Sakurai to include more gaming icons in Smash. That said, Cloud's reveal was definitely the megaton announcement Smash needed in 2015, especially after Ryu got leaked before E3.

While certain people, including myself, were no doubt a bit disappointed that Sakurai used the ballot to guide only two of the seven DLC characters, it's worth remembering that most game developers don't even give their fans the opportunity to participate in such voting. The two fan supported characters were both characters people wrote off as having little to no chance in Smash, so the excitement was almost palpable when they were finally announced.

What are your thoughts on how things turned out with the Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS/Wii U ballot?

 

[the8thark]

Cloud was just a SquareEnix asskiss. Basically being nice to SquareEnix so they will keep wanting to support the NX. Sure the FF fans liked it. But Cloud was put in the game for a reason, and it was not (in my opinion) to please the fans, that was just a side bonus. No surprise that Cloud is in the SSB4.

Bayonetta was purely fan service. The one character that truly came from the Smash ballot. I know the bayonetta games are not for me. I palyed them and can not stand them. But I can understand that they are good games and I am glad she is in SSB4. A worthy adition that many fans will like.

The other FE characters are in game to advertise the new FE games. Nothing more. Just like how Roy only existed in Melee because of a game was in. Sakurai has admitted to this. The FE games came out just after Melee, Brawl etc etc so the FE characters got the nod to advertise their up coming games. Pure advertising by Sakurai again. It worked too as Roy has lots of fans now. Me being one of them.

Ryu for me was the surprise. Sure leaked. But the leak did surprise me. I didn't see any game Nintendo needed to advertise or any third partnership Nintendo needed asskissing to maintain by having Ryu in the game. I still can't work out what Nintendo's motive for him in the game was.

The returns - Lucas, Mewtwo and Roy were part fanservice and part because Sakurai liked them. Only Snake and Wolf didn't get asked back for SSB4. Snake possibly because of the whole MSG5 issue with the MSG creator being booted from the company. Wolf, I assume was just not liked enough by anyone, Sakurai included to make it back. Not a huge loss. I really liked Wolf in Brawl but I can live without him in SSB4.

 

[Farore's Chosen]

Im fine with them, I'm especially excited for Bayonetta. Shes very unique. Actually I heard a lot of people wanted to bring another Earthbound character in.

I don't care either way about MewTwo.

I'm not an FF fan, so I'm meh about Cloud.

I don't know anything about FE so I was initially neutral to Corrin. But damn he has some really cool moves!

I'm happy about Ryu because I like him. Not as much as Chun Li, Guile, Cammy and Dalsim but he's a good choice. It's only right to have another popular Capcom character from their other most popular franchise represent.

I don't know anything about Lucas so I'm neutral.

 

[Ver-go-a-go-go]

Here's some sacrilege for you: I never really voted in this ballot, because I never thought they would ever use it in a literal sense and put whoever won it in the game. This always seemed to be more of a litmus test - they already had a list of characters they were willing to do, and just kind of used the ballot to justify one of them in the end.

That being said, I like Bayonetta as the final character, and not just because she's, uh, aesthetically pleasing to look at. I always meant to pick up Bayonetta 2 and give it a shot, and now I think I'm really going to have to because it kind of has the Xenoblade thing going on. No one else wanted it, Nintendo picked it up, and apparently it's awesome even though its sales didn't blow the roof off. I feel like taking that new IP that no one would ever associate with Nintendo and throwing it into the celebration of all things Nintendo is an appropriate end to the ride.

Fire Emblem Character No. 6 is not something I appreciate, however. You need to understand that I'm a huge Fire Emblem fan dating back to Path of Radiance, and that Awakening and Radiant Dawn are both on my top 10 favorite games list. Despite that, getting this new character solely to promote a game that's a followup to a very successful game that saved the series seems questionable to me. Something just seems wrong about Fire Emblem now having more characters than Zelda, and tying the amount of Pokemon characters we have. It doesn't help that most of them fall into that stupid "anime swordsman" trope that's been going on for a while, and it just kind of looks bad.

 

[Krazy4Krash]

I may as well have ignored it. I got my two most wanted newcomers in the base game, and anything else was a bonus. It's unfortunate that of all the DLC characters, only one was a newcomer who wasn't also a new third-party, and it was another Fire Emblem character (and we already had one as veteran DLC). No matter how unique Corrin is, it was a missed opportunity to not expand other existing first-party franchises (even though I couldn't tell you who it could/should have been instead. )

 

[DeactivatedUser2]

I would have liked Young Link using a mask based moveset, but really, Corrin was literally the definition of hype

 

[Dio]

No goku! No Shrek! This is a complete outrage and I am glad I didn't purchase the game and buy into the massive scam that is smash 4. A game which costs hundreds of pounds to actually have the complete experience.

 

[ihateghirahim]

I like me some FE, but Corrin was a stupid addition. Six characters from a niche series? Besides, Corrin looks to be there for advertising FE Fates, another characters, like an inkling or K.Rool, would have been needed. Bayonetta was a good addition. It would have been nice to see the results of the different ballots, though, so we could know how people felt.

 

[DeactivatedUser2]

Inkling was unnecessary in my opinion (doesn't really fit the Smash idea; however, I felt the same with Bayonetta, so it's obviously not a shared opinion I have), and I know it's not really fair to say this since we already have a lot of characters to fill a lot of roles (eg; the dashing hero, the blue haired swordsman, ect.) but we already have an anthropomorphic heavyset reptilian King. Sure, Corrin honestly is just fan service for Fates, but Smash is what got Fire Emblem popular in the west in the first place.

 

[mαrkαsscoρ]

once i look past corrin being another fire emblem guy,his moveset actually looks pretty interesting,i may even consider getting him
though it still stands that he was kind of an unnecessary addition,and of course we have the whole smash is full of anime characters thing; so while he looks cool to play as i definitely would've preferred someone else

same case with bayonetta (the would've preferred someone else bit),though unlike corrin, i have no real gripe with her apart from i just don't know her that well,which of course isn't a real complaint
im pretty sure if i played her games i'd be ecstatic,but overall,its awesome to see her make it in and good on people who voted for her

 

[DeactivatedUser2]

 

[Ver-go-a-go-go]

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Fire Emblem's strength as a brand and life time sales numbers/popularity don't even compare to the other three series.

Mario/Pokemon/Zelda is the true triumvirate of Nintendo with several million-unit selling games (Mario and Pokemon have had obscenely high sales figures figures in the past) , Fire Emblem isn't even top five.

 

[DeactivatedUser2]

Okay, but you can only include so many Pokemon before it gets stale. Maybe if they included a trainer or something, it'd be better.

Let's face it, Zelda is an amazing franchise, but their reuse of characters doesn't give any characters an individual identity.

Fire Emblem may not be the best selling franchise, but it certainly deserves rep. Hell, the only reason Fire Emblem was brought to the west was because of Roy and Marth being included in Melee, so I'd be damned to say that I'm perfectly fine with more FE characters.

 

[Zonda]

It looked to me like they're trying too hard to push Fire Emblem. It's the (I want to say) equal second most heavily represented game franchise in terms of character numbers, despite FE: Awakening (the most popular Western release) selling 12 million less copies than Pokemon X and Y, released on the same console and equally represented in Sm4sh. I'm not against the series being in the series altogether, but having so many characters is hardly justified when it isn't one of Nintendo's biggest franchises.

Cloud's inclusion surprised me, but I guess the advertising for FFVII remake is beneficial for Square Enix. They could've applied the same logic to First-party titles like Twilight Princess HD with Midna & Wolf Link too, but I guess they didn't feel the need. The existence of an Amiibo had convinced me that was going to happen.

I feel that Bayonetta is literally only there because Boobs and Skinsuit, but as the winner of the Ballot I guess that's not really on Sakurai. Considering Nintendo's attitude of "lmao, 3rd party developers who haven't exclusively been with us, who needs 'em?" I would've backed Shantae in as a more likely candidate.

I also think that the Ballot should've influenced the addition of more characters. Particularly in the West I know there was a lot of fan hype around Banjo & Kazooie, Shovel Knight, K.Rool and Rayman.

 

[DeactivatedUser2]

K.Rool would have been the nail in all of humanity's coffin.