I’m kind of disappointed with all the characters that Sakurai added in as secret characters. I mean, sure. We added in some good characters as main characters, but none of the hidden characters are unique or cool in anyway.

Luigi, Jigglypuff, Ness and Captain Falcon were in the first one, so we knew they’d be back.

Mr. Game and Watch, Marth, Falco and Ganondorf came back from the second, so they aren’t anything original.

The new unlockable characters are R.O.B. (who is a common enemy in the adventure mode, and was probably just made playable because it was easy), Toon Link (clone of Link), Wolf (clone of Falco, who is also a clone of Fox), Lucario (meaning we swapped out Mewtwo’s original moveset for Lucario’s), and then Snake and Sonic (who are both actually cool).

Why did he leave so many disappointing characters to be secret characters? I was expecting some Nintendo mainstays, or at least people from his poll on the Japanese Smash Dojo. Here are that poll’s results, ranked by popularity. The people who got in are labelled:

King Dedede(5) - CONFIRMED! Diddy Kong(4) - CONFIRMED! Geno(4) Ike(4) - CONFIRMED! Ridley(4) Captain Olimar & Pikmin(3) - CONFIRMED! Krystal(3) Takamaru(3) Windwaker Link(3) - CONFIRMED! Animal Crossing MC(2) - in BG of Smashville stage Claus(2) Demiru(2) Isaac(2) Jeff(2) Kawasima(2) King K.Rool(2) Lip(2) Lucas(2) - CONFIRMED! Mega Man(2) Oguma(2) Ouendan(2) Sukapon(2)

So, why did he even have the poll if he wasn’t going to listen? I mean. Okay. He did his best. Geno doesn’t belong to Nintendo, he belongs to Square Enix (they developed Super Mario RPG, the game Geno was in). As a result, I can understand that adding him was hard. So, he jumped to the next on the list, Ike. Ike was confirmed. Then Sakurai had to skip Ridley, because - I guess - Ridley is too big. So he jumped to Captain Olimar. Wicked. But Krystal is next…so, how did people like Windwaker Link and Lucas even get considered before Krystal? And more importantly, how was Wolf considered AT ALL if he isn’t on the list? Instead of Star Wolf, we should have Krystal (who would have an original moveset) and instead of R.O.B., we should have Isaac, or one of the other two rankings.

I mean, come on. Why have the poll if you aren’t going to listen to the results? You tell the fans that you’ll change things. You promise them no more clone characters, and then fill three spots with Foxes. You say you want to add more female characters, but when it comes time to add a female with a unique moveset (Krystal), you add a clone. You also promised that you would pick main characters from more obscure titles rather than obscure characters from mainstream titles. So, why Lucario then? Because he is the Pokemon “bad-guy” flavour of the month, as Mewtwo was last time around? As far as I can see, the only main characters from obscure titles that I see are Pit and Olimar. We definitely should have had more people like Isaac in there, to spice up the lineup. Instead, we can play as three Fox clones. Hurray. I wonder if Ganondorf has an original moveset or not.