What if EVERY Rejected Fighter Actually Got In? - Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

in this video we're gonna imagine if every rejected fighter in smash history actually got into the game why did these characters get cut who would they have replaced if they got in and did nintendo make the right or wrong calls here would we actually have been better off with the scrapped character in comparison to what we got at the end we're going to see the complete roster had every rejected fighter gotten in and the major ripple effect there would have been because of these decisions the first character or characters i should say i want to talk about are toon zelda and chic undoubtedly one of the game's most interesting rejected character slots we could tell they were cut sometime during the development of the series third entry super smash brothers brawl based on a file name found in the game's data for a character called quote toon zelda chic which kind of interestingly was the first entry in the series that added toon link who was effectively the replacement for young link who got cut from super smash brothers melee which i totally understand it made a lot more sense from nintendo's perspective that a character who could promote a whole slew of zelda games in a particular art style instead of really just ocarina of time in majora's mask for the most part but what if toon link wasn't the only character planned to be in this style what if we got etune zelda as well this is something that a lot of the fan bases sunk their teeth into examining the what-if scenarios so let's break it down but first um toon cheek doesn't exist there's been no iteration of the character in that art style so would this have been a smash original character then well this almost certainly would not have been the case it's almost a certainty that tetra would have been this character as she was basically designed to have been wind waker chic potentially providing a different moveset style to chic which could have been kind of cool and also probably a burden on brawl's development since reportedly back then there were major setbacks during the devising overall which almost certainly led to this character being cut probably a little bit too ambitious and while i praised the inclusion of toon link as a replacement i would have been much more on board if he couldn't be included because these two joined the battle instead i think would have been so much better particularly because the uniqueness in the character swapping mechanic but also in the playstyle of tetra i don't think the discussion ever would have been to replace zelda and chic with the toon version of the characters because then why won't they have just brought back young link if the toon reference was already planned to be given out right you don't desperately need two characters in the toon style if this duo actually got in i think there could have been a very interesting lasting impact as if they had to split them up in smash 4 like they did with regular zelda and sheik and left them in their solo forms going forward we could have ended up having an ultimate three forms of link two forms of zelda two chic styled characters and a version of ganondorf who started out as a clone of captain falcon in his own right just further establishing how ridiculous the zelda situation is in smash although i suppose in an ideal world we would have gotten one of the pairs split up and one kept together because that way you appeal to pretty much everyone the crowd that liked playing the two together in brawl and melee could use toon zelda and tetra those who liked just playing zelda could choose her and those who just wanted to play sheik could play a chic really just checking all the boxes here and because of all these scenarios i've gotta say that this duo is one of my favorite rejected characters of all time and that's saying something because they're really only half original here a bunch of the other characters that we're gonna cover today are completely original so we're gonna chalk one on the board for them making the wrong call here we're gonna see by the end of this video how many rights or wrong calls they would have made in my opinion at least now while toon zelda and cheek were a couple of my favorite rejected characters they were from brawl and there were actually many characters rejected before this so for the rest of this video let's try to go in chronological order let's start with the rejected characters from super smash brothers melee why not smash 64 well it kind of seems like every rejected full-on character slot from smash 64 actually ended up getting into smash sometime in the future martha was supposed to be in and got in the future bowser was supposed to be in i believe mewtwo was supposed to be in as well all these guys ended up getting in but that's not the case for takamaru in super smash brothers melee takamaru is a character from the nes and famicom title the mysterious murasame castle and in the game you go about this castle with your sword slicing and dicing the enemies trying to clear the areas it's a genre that's been replicated numerous times since its inception and according to sakurai he was indeed considered to join the roster of super smash brothers melee but said his chances were low due to his lack of relevancy and while they certainly must have been pretty low as he said because takamaru never ended up joining the battle in the mysterious mural zombie castle takamaru attacks enemies physically so it's safe to say that he'd probably be an exclusively melee fighter in the vein of marth a pretty quick and up-close playstyle and while some characters who weren't overly relevant have been carried by the unique play style to get a spot in the smash bros roster takamaru's playstyle didn't seem to completely justify it for him it's hard to gauge how relevant he really was but i'd say it was probably in a similar vein to the ice climbers before they got into smash or just a straight up retro rap likely wouldn't have made him the hugest priority to add if he was actually in melee though they likely would have had him take roy's spot due to the marth similarity as i mentioned and roy being fairly irrelevant outside of japan at the time since the game that would go on to feature him hadn't yet released at the time of melee honestly go either way in terms of if i would have preferred them to take a shot and attack mario here weighing against takamaru is roy's fun playstyle and the fact that not many people know who he is but weighing for him is the irrelevancy of roy outside of smash the fact that fire emblem already is bloated as a series character-wise the fact that takamaru being in smash could have potentially led to a revival of the franchise like pit's inclusion for kid icarus as well as the fact that the playstore would have likely been very similar so it's not like we're losing much here anyway and because of this i'm going with them once again making the wrong call here if this was a decision that they weighed although there's no confirmation of this but even though takamaru got rejected here this may not be the last that we see of him we're gonna come back to him later on another rejected fighter from the roster of melee was mock rider and this is one who was brought up within the past couple of years so you may recognize this name for those who don't know mock rider was a conventional 2d racing game released for the nes in 1985. it often gets confused with excitebike which we're going to talk about in a second but the games were much different with mock rider giving you the perspective behind the rider whereas in excitebike you get to see the perspective of all the rioters traveling in a 2d plane despite their differences though both apparently had representatives considered for the roster of super smash brothers melee and for mock writer in particular he wasn't likely considered too deeply for a playable role although sakurai has mentioned him in interviews stating they thought mock rider had a cool sounding name mock this would have likely just gone down as a small blip in the long history of sakurai interviews which likely would have been an even smaller blip had mock writer's eligibility for smash not been brought up in more recent years in the later part of mid-2018 at the height of the build-up to smash ultimate's release we received one of the most popular leaks of all time this being the grinch leak although unlike the video where we covered every real leak in smash history this leak was not legit although it still included mock writer and despite this character's lack of relevancy there had not been many retro characters revealed for smash ultimate at this time so many of you'd mock writer as a realistic representative here to some this guy being here added a little bit of credibility to the leak myself included it got his name out there again but when the game's base roster was finally shown and then we subsequently got every dlc character finally revealed showing that mock rider was nowhere to be found this leak was proven to be completely false so it was likely proven accurate that this consideration to be in the roster of super smash brothers melee was probably the only time he was ever considered to be playable in smash history and was likely rejected due to the lack of relevancy at the time if he was even seriously considered at all but i mentioned excitebike and he was another character who was apparently considered any joking manner although potentially more of a serious van compared to mock rider as sakurai's quoted in interviews as saying that they would have needed to add ramps for excitebike to jump on to make it a realistic moveset and implementation into smash brothers which likely wasn't very feasible at the time of melee's release although since then they have added more complicated mechanics like ink for inkling which was likely not the easiest mechanic to include either so if this was the only reason why he was rejected then it doesn't fully explain why he's not in smash today the bottom line for mock rider and excitebike is that both of these characters being rejected with only one of them having been given a slight official reasoning gives some slight hope that maybe they'll make it in as a retro representative in the future with excitebike being much more likely in my opinion if they figure out the moveset since nintendo has been pretty keen on referencing it in recent years with it being included in the switch online service and getting a complete track for mario kart 8 deluxe whereas mock writer if he was truly cut due to lack of popularity back during the developments of melee it's certainly not going to help his cause now being 20 years after that at the time both would have been retro representatives and likely would have taken the place of another with a unique moveset if they ended up actually getting into the game since they don't see these characters being clones of any other too easily especially excite bikes since they mentioned the development perils that they'd be put through so we're really only left with ice climbers or gaming watch to replace if we had to swap out a character and i really don't prefer either one gaming watch is much more iconic than either of these two and all the ice climbers are definitely not more well known than excitebike at least disregarding smash the mechanic of having two characters fighting at once is still really innovative despite the simple move sets and while it's arguable i'd say they made the right call here in both situations so now we're kind of tied up in the tally too too we're gonna see how this plays out going forward and it's gonna be really interesting to see the complete roster at the end of the video to see just how right or wrong nintendo and the team may have been here another interesting rejected character was a yumi tachibana from famicom detective club a duo of adventure games for the famicom disk system in japan but not for anywhere else and sakurai himself has stated that he was quote a big fan of the games and was thinking about including them during the melee days ayumi even has her own trophy in the game but in the end there's no way she would work overseas so they ultimately couldn't include her so even though she got rejected from melaye there's an interesting piece to the story if you fast forward to today things have kind of changed in the regard of her being regionally restricted as funnily enough in 2021 we actually saw an international release of these two games for the first time remade on the nintendo switch the character is still not overly relevant or anything but at least the japan only argument cannot be made there as much anymore if she actually got into smash we could have expected attacks from her accessories in the game like the magnifying glass briefcase rope and the like a bit more of a unique move set and due to this i really don't know who she would have replaced when getting in you could say roy since he was the closest thing to a japan exclusive character in melee but he was also a clone as we just went over so that definitely doesn't qualify maybe a retro character then and if that's the case it's difficult to say that replacing someone like game watch would have been a good call concerning that both seem to be unique characters and game of watch is clearly a more important reference to have so overall it was probably for the best that ayumi missed the cut but still an interesting rejected character regardless someone else who was rejected from the roster of melee was balloon fighter from well the nes game balloon fighter this is a game where you float around on balloons shooting things around you and he was rejected for it not really making sense for the character to be fighting after his balloons are popped since that's how you die in the game would obviously once again be a retro representative and was said to be up for the ice climber spot in a similar vein to excite bike and mock rider but this time i'm really adamant in hindsight that i wouldn't have wanted balloon fighter to be included due to the main gimmick of the fighter eventually being given to villager in smash 4. vulger being another character in a similar vein to toon zelda slash sheik who was considered for super smash brothers brawl but was eventually scrapped this time due to there not being too much of a fighter concept being first seen for the animal crossing protagonist but when the series was recognized as too popular to exclude by the time smash 4 came out their hand was effectively forced and they had to draw moves from somewhere so they took the main gimmick of balloon fighter and since this has sort of led this guy's gimmick to living on and this reference is still in there in smash probably forever it's safe to say that we got the best of both worlds here we got a balloon fighter reference while also getting a unique character in instead of one who is completely literally one-dimensional another rejected fighter from melee was urban champion this is the protagonist of the nes two-player 2d fighting game of the same name and the fighter from there was initially considered as a retro rep for the roster of melee by sakurai since while on the surface who's more fitting for a 2d platform fighter than one of the pioneers of the genre for nintendo at least right but due to the simplistic design of urban champions gameplay it was seen that the character wouldn't have too many interesting moves to use and was eventually rejected from the roster because of that i'm pretty glad they excluded him since after examining his moveset potential since he'd likely be an entirely melee based fighter i mean pretty fitting for the time i guess but with just some mixes of strong and weak punches being included here we're really looking at a less interesting little mac at best which makes it difficult for me to believe that he was said to be up for the ice climber spot again as it seems like he would have been much easier to create in theory i'd say it would be more likely that he would have replaced ganondorf who would have made a lot more sense to me since he's the closest thing to an up close new fighter introduced for melee this making urban champion the new captain falcon clone and there would have been some benefits to ganondorf not being included in the roster of melee likely because he wouldn't have been based on captain falcon for no reason he could have potentially been included in a more unique vein later down the line but i still don't think it was worth it taking the risk here especially for a character as irrelevant at the time as urban champion was and they have been tweaking ganon bit by bit over the years as well particularly in ultimate with the sword the final character who was said to be up for ice climber spot and melee was bubbles from the nes title cuckoo land this is an arcade title that released on the nes where you play as this bubble and travel through the maze trying to find all the gold that's been stolen by an evil sea urchin guess nintendo stories haven't changed too much over the years huh the obvious issue that comes from including a character as simple as this one is what kind of moveset would you give to them and this is a question that sakurai and the team simply could not answer with no moveset ideas at the forefront for bubbles this fighter concept simply had to be caught needless to say if bubbles actually replaced the ice climbers like they were rumored to do i certainly would not have been happy if they ever found a way to make it work as a unique joke character in the future i'd be intrigued but there's so many more iconic characters who could be put into that spot that i don't even really know if it's worth it at this point and while this was the final melee character rejected for ice climber spot there is one who might not have been put in anybody's spot a spot of his own one of the most unique rejected characters in smash history has to be james bond while the double 07 film franchise has taken on a massive life of its own over the years we shouldn't forget that this fictional character was in the golden eye universe goldeneye being one of the classic nintendo 64 titles held in high regard by longtime nintendo fans throughout history boomers basically but as one would expect when dealing with a character with the amount of appearances and rights holders as him there would certainly be some issues arising following the thought of adding him into smash sakurai stated in interviews that they couldn't include him in the roster of melee due to licensing issues with his live actor pierce bronskin's likeness his realistic weaponry possibly being too much for the game's age rating the film rights for the character and the n64 game rights all compounding together to create a mountain too large for the development team to scale over now if james bond actually got into smash this would have certainly opened up a ton of possibilities for the future maybe more than almost any other character out there while we have the quote-unquote rule now that no non-video game original characters can join the battle having someone like james bond in smash brothers could have busted the door clean open and smash would undoubtedly look much different today definitely would cause one of the biggest ripple effects throughout the years who knows who could have followed him while i like the video game nature of smash right now and opening it up to other types of characters who appear in a greater capacity outside of the gaming bubble may be controversial to some and while i am apprehensive myself don't get me wrong i think if the door was open the advent of reveal trailers would be made that much better because the who's it going to be mantra could have so much more of an impact now suffice to say that james bond is definitely going to be one of the biggest standouts on the final roster when we take a look at the end of the video if every rejected character actually got into the smash roster and what that would look like and now we're back where we started this video in the roster of super smash brothers brawl who was the first character apparently considered to join the battle that ended up getting rejected and never seen again well this would be the nintendog yeah an interesting piece of super smash brothers ball trivia to me is that villager and intend dogs and the mies were all considered for the roster of the game and sakurai thought that they were not meant to be fighting characters i already mentioned villager and online bullying was said to be the issue for the means but both the mees and villager would go on to debut in smash 4 regardless however the nintendogs would remain as assist trophies now some of you actually may not be too familiar with nintendogs if you weren't playing games during the ds era considering that this game only had massive popularity around that time and when i'm saying massive i mean massive if you owned a ds you almost certainly owned at least one of new super mario brothers or nintendogs as they were the two best selling games in the history of the console massive sales numbers which would in most cases lead to a smash implementation right and while it did for some nintendogs were not included in that bunch and why was this well even though they didn't seem to have realistic moveset possibilities for the roster of brawl by the time smash 4 came around they include the other two as i mentioned this series wasn't doing as hot the sequels 10 to 10 dogs were just not able to sustain the initial interest of the first game the concept of owning a virtual pet on your ds was novel at the time and a really good game to pair the console with for someone who wasn't really into video games or just trying to get acquainted with the console's features but after one experience with it what's really left for there to do add more types of dogs cats things to do we talk about a lot of franchises like call of duty or pokemon getting recycled over and over with the same core formula but at least there's a little bit of depth and replayability there nintendogs not so much there hasn't been a new one since the 3ds despite the concept possibly working well for both the wii u and the switch and due to this lack of modern relevancy and the perceived lack of moveset potential during the series heightened popularity we likely shouldn't ever expect one to join smash unless some random revival of the series happens with something unique being added in that could eventually be used in a platform fighter if they actually did get into the roster of brawl though i could have seen him replacing someone like rob since he's the closest thing to a general quote unquote nintendo rep than anyone else our next rejected character is blastoise pokemon trainer's team was originally going to be a bit different during the development process of brawls this guy was actually considered to be part of a three but was ultimately replaced by squirtle the first pokemon in its evolutionary line and there's a couple reasons for this on the surface it seems better to have three pokemon at varying sizes types and stages of their evolutionary lines to work very well in smash as a character concept and just looking at the pokemon trainer aesthetically having blastoise charizard and ivy store and middle stage to go with those two finals it looks kinda weird in comparison unless they plan on having venusaur instead of ivysaur despite there being no evidence of that and even if they did the evolution mechanics wouldn't be present so i feel we'd be worse off but this was not the entire reason sakurai felt squirtle could quote establish itself better as a character than blastoise when i covered this situation in a previous video i noted that this would mainly have to do with the moveset potential and fitting in amongst the others in the cast but what i've never really gone in depth on is why would this have been a problem for blastoise anyway a slow bruiser character who can shoot water cannon seems unique and interesting to me and we really don't have something like that in smash yet but maybe that's exactly the reason maybe sakura and the team don't like the idea of this type of playstyle a big powerful slow character whose main gimmick is pushing the opponent away from you like mario's flood so what are you gonna do as a follow-up to that attack you're likely gonna be so slow that the opponent has probably landed and gotten a hold of themselves before he could even reach him while it's luckily not the biggest problem and the issue could have likely been remedied in many ways if they really wanted to add in blastoise but if squirrel fit the train are better for all the other reasons that we mentioned why would they have had any urgency to add blastoise in at all in my opinion we ended up with one of the best character concepts in the entire roster with the current pokemon trainer without a doubt so it's pretty easy to say they made the right call here although if they added blue down the line and really wanted to try out blastoise again i certainly wouldn't be disappointed now during the development of brawl the team wanted to add another star fox character in with crystal being the original choice which makes some sense she was one of the main characters in star fox adventures which was a fairly recent title during the time of brawl's development and despite its controversial uniqueness from the established star fox formula at the time it still managed to sell close to 2 million units which was pretty good for the gamecube and over double what the more traditional follow-up star fox title would go on to sell on the same console in 2005. lots of people were starting to get familiar with the character many of them happened to be artists if you weren't aware she could have had a very unique moveset too with her basic attacks focusing around the staff with magical abilities being usable from it such as shooting fire shooting warp portals which could have been really cool we could have been in store for a very unique rep here but it didn't happen crystal ultimately had to be rejected due to time constraints during brawl's development as wolf who would end up being her replacement fighter was much more close to the concept of fox and falco who were already included in the roster of melee the argument pertaining to crystal's popularity in the series didn't have much weight when wolf was revealed to be the replacement it'd be one thing if you were talking about a more obscure character but wolfe being the main rival character in the series he presented a natural foil of the fox in terms of a gameplay style and yeah him being significantly easier to create definitely didn't hurt either it's a shame to me though as i could have definitely foreseen an interesting move set here and i know wolfe is a fan favorite super cool and all and highly requested to return for ultimate after being cut in the roster of smash 4. i still would have much preferred for a unique addition to the roster and crystal she was eventually included as an assist trophy in ultimate which is a step in the right direction maybe it might not have been enough though star fox has been in a terrible state recently and while it wouldn't shock me at all to see them give the series one more shot on the switch if it flops once again that'd be very doubtful that this rejected character ever becomes playable and because of that i'm definitely gonna say they made the wrong call with this one gina was one of the most infamous rejected characters in smash history without a doubt and while i've covered parts of his story and videos through the past this is the complete story of gino why is this guy brought up so often in smash brothers discussions he's literally appeared in one game and i'm not trying to discredit him he's a decently important and interesting character from there but he's definitely not like the biggest video game icon ever you want to talk sales numbers i brought them up for star fox it'd only be fair to talk about it here too this game only barely passed adventures sales-wise and this was on a console that sold over double the gamecube and a super mario on the cover of it so make of that what you will this guy should not be brought up as much as he is right well that would be the case had he not been rejected from smash multiple times in the development process of super smash bros brawl he was considered to be a playable character due to sakura believing that he could have a very unique moveset with the gun hand from mario rpg and all the magical attacks that he uses transitioning perfectly into a smash brothers moveset in a stark contrast to many of the rejected characters that we've covered whereas those guys don't really have much potential for a smash moveset gino does his lack of relevancy shouldn't have really needed to matter if there's a bunch of other characters that are in for mainly retro purposes right well the issue likely came down to the legality of who owns the character while gina was in a super mario game this game was developed by square enix and the character of gino being an original creation for that game likely ended up being their property and due to the relationship of nintendo and square not being what it is today at the time of super smash brothers brawl it meant that even though sakurai wanted it to happen it couldn't but if rights were really the only issue here then why was geno given a me outfit and not playable in smash 4. we're going to get into that once we move on to smash 4 but before that we're going to finish out the brawl characters with our next duo here being plussel and minus this duo appear to have been rejected from brawls there are file names in the game for pra and mai both being the first syllables of possible and mining's japanese names respectively these are quite interesting omissions which may seem kind of random thinking about it now but i'm going to try to explain why this makes a lot more sense than you may think especially at the time brawl began development in late 2005 with pokemon's fourth generation also being in development at that time which likely led to the idea of bringing lucario into the game to eventually promote pokemon diamond in pearl when they released but gen 3 was actually out at this time so even though it wouldn't be the most relevant in the two and a half years or so later that they figured it would take to develop brawl plus landmine were already in a pokemon game people knew who these characters were pokemon's third gen didn't sell as well as gens 2 or 1 before so who knows if that trend was going to continue maybe lucario would have debuted an even less popular game than these two did it seems crazy saying it now with how well diamond and pearl did we got the remakes and all that but at this time those thoughts had to be going through the heads of the smash brothers development team so the idea was to develop this duo based on pikachu since they are literally pikachu clones in the pokemon game in which they appear and this would sort of be combined with the ice climber concept of having two characters fight together since they fight together in double battles in the game as well further credence to this can be added when examining that brawl cut pichu from melee these two were certainly intended to be the replacement as this is exactly what happened with mewtwo and lucario lucario has a very similar aura charging mechanic to mewtwo's ballistic object that he shoots and some other similarities were seen so he was clearly a replacement and they were likely gonna do the same thing here but maybe ended up scrapping the idea due to the success of pokemon diamond and parole and the massive popularity lucario would receive so in this situation i think the debate for brawl's roster would have came down to having porcelain mining or lucario and while it certainly would have provided a unique character i still don't know if i would have preferred this due to the ripple effect it would have caused considering ultimate brought back every cut character from the past we would have had pikachu pichu and the duo of plusla and mine in all with similar move sets and i'd feel like such a hypocrite saying that this is okay while complaining about three links being in smash all the time it doesn't seem right so if this was the choice i'd say they made the right one here adding lucario in even though the concept of having two pokemon fight alongside one another is something i'd like to see sometime maybe not with two electric road and pokemon like pustle and mine in though now without a doubt one of the most fascinating rejected characters from brawl has to be dixie kong as she actually wasn't intended to replace anybody seemingly being planned to appear in a dual role with another character before eventually being cut according to sakurai at one point there was a working prototype that featured a dixie and diddy kong combo character which i think could have been the coolest thing ever this would have called back to their tag team mechanics in donkey kong country 2 where you could swap between one you controlled and the other would still follow you around and contribute with certain moves this would have likely been a hybrid between the swapping of zelda and chic with the duality of the ice climbers which i think would have been amazing and definitely a character concept that could have stood the test of time still seeming unique and innovative today the problem is something so innovative must have been oh so difficult to develop at the time considering the limited window they had during the development of brawl they ended up having to just settle on having one of them in the game and with diddy being the more famous of the two having his own game and everything he was definitely the clear choice this one is such a shame although i do understand it in terms of a ripple effect if this actually happened i don't think too much would look different for the donkey kong franchise in smash right now i don't see any reason for why k role wouldn't get in because of this although he probably would have gotten a captain cairo alternate costume to reference donkey kong country 2 as this is one where he actually fights a duo but other than that not too much and you know what while a lot of the concepts and characters that we've covered today i still don't think have a chance to make it in smash in the future if they ended up having to tone down the roster for a future smash entry lowering the amount of total characters as many would expect concerning just how many ultimate had there's still a chance that they could modify diddy to allow her to get in still providing something new without as much effort as a completely original fighter and why do i believe this the reason is with the many echo fighters included in smash ultimate and how easy it would have been a theory attack on dixie kong to go along with k-roll in a similar vein to how they threw dark samus in to go with ridley they chose not to and maybe that was because they always envisioned this diddy in dixie concept and making her a separate clone now would probably ruin the chance for that sometime in the future if they didn't presently have the time to modify diddy dad dixie in who knows if they may have that shot sometime down the road right and if so i'd be all for it i can see if you're a big dixie kong fan or whatever really wanting her to get her completely own unique spot the fact is the outside of the hair trolling mechanics nothing makes too much sense to change from diddy kong so we could either likely end up getting a standard run-of-the-mill clone with that one alteration or you can end up getting them both placed in this one slot creating one of the best character concepts the series will likely ever see and if that was the choice i'm taking that one all day long we finally move on now to smash 4's rejected characters one of the first characters that we talked about in this video i've got to bring up again this being takamaru we could argue about how relevant he was at the time of melee all day long but one thing that's for certain about his relevancy though is that when he was once again considered to be in the roster of smash 4 trying to bring back an nes character like they did for pitt from cad icarus and brawl he was just seen as true relevant and too unrecognizable to join the battle so an assist trophy role was given to the character instead hard to say who he would have replaced in this case probably not roy since he was only brought back his dlc specifically because he was at this point a character that fans knew and was easier to develop so maybe duck hunt as the duo was sorta taking the nes role here for smash 4. but concerning how much more unique the dotcon duo is compared to the move set that we envisioned for takamaru earlier and it probably would have been a similar moosa for smash 4 since there have been no new content for the mysterious mural zombie castle released by that time i think we were much better off getting dark gunter instead of this character even if the uniqueness of the characters doesn't put it over the top for you if you want to talk icon status duck was frequently bundled with releases of super mario brothers during the nes time period so he was definitely much more iconic than a character from the mysterious mars on my castle a game which most people have never heard of they undoubtedly made the right call with this one a pretty interesting rejected character from smash 4 is hahachi from tekken with ben and namco having a hand in smash 4's developments a character from there was on the table now more than ever but the character was probably the most obvious choice to include from them being pac-man without a doubt one of the biggest video game icons of all time maybe not in this form but still popular nonetheless so when sakurai was asked if anyone else from bandai namco was under consideration for the roster he initially said none only to elaborate further that there were some who were briefly considered but not strongly but the only specific name he would drop here being haihachi being tekken's most popular character it's natural to bring him up at least for a period of time through the discussion process but the reasoning for his omission seemingly wasn't just because pac-man was the obvious pick another reason was given by sakurai when he stated that quote implementing hahachi's movement in smash would be difficult it's complicated examining this modernly trying to find out what he meant by this because it had to have been a hachi issue specifically a naughty tekken one as kazuo would go on to be implemented into smash ultimate as dlc coming from the same series and there were no movement issues there perhaps there was fear of the tekken fan base not being happy with the oversimplification that would have been required for including heihachi's moves that could have been a reason for omitting him but it's definitely still possible that they only had time to develop one bandai namco character they only had one slot available and pac-man was just given that spot this isn't going to be the last that we see of haihachi though we're going to talk more about him in a little bit another interesting rejected character from smash 4 has to be a rhythm heaven representative as there's no interview confirmation of this but we found out that there was one considered for the roster of the game due to files that were found in the game as well as leaks that were going on during the time period well according to the gematsu leak which i covered in a previous video that in short called almost every single character revealed in the first half of smash 4's promotional cycle except for two inaccuracies being the cause of krom and the chorus men from rhythm heaven prom was confirmed by sakura to have been scrapped during development of smash 4 only to go on to appear as an echo and ultimate so it stands to reason that the chorus kids were also considered before getting cut now on the surface it seems like a rhythm based moveset could have been really interesting maybe time your attacks to the music of the stage that you're fighting on it would have been a nightmare to enforce in competitive but for casual play wow that would have been so much fun but somewhere along the way an issue was found be it this rhythm concept not working too well on the minds of the team them not being able to get all three characters functioning on the screen at the same time for the 3ds version of the game this was proven to be an issue as the ice climbers had to be cut from smash 4 for this exact reason or maybe the priorities just shifted to a more relevant character instead it probably would have ended up taking the spot of someone like bowser jr who was also very unique and interesting and if that was the case it didn't really make much sense junior was on a much higher level of priority for smash 4 apparently they really rushed to get him into the game since this was a mario rep they desperately wanted to add and with him being on this higher priority level it doesn't make sense to reference rhythm heaven here even though you do get a new franchise in there there's undoubtedly still a lot more people that would want to play as bowser jr in smash than a rhythm heaven character this is how it is maybe rosalinda could have caused an issue with the courseman getting in as they probably didn't want to introduce multiple reps with the several characters gimmick thing wouldn't have stopped them from including someone like karate joe instead but i digress just throwing out theories yours and sakura hasn't provided anything concrete surrounding this issue it's unknown whether these guys will join the battle sometime in the future but the series hasn't really gotten any more popular since this time period so we're kind of in a similar state if there's technical issues though hopefully as nintendo's hardware continues to improve and improve going forward this won't be an issue any longer getting back to the geno situation as we were discussing before this guy would end up getting a neat costume in smash 4 which coincided with the dlc release of cloud strife a major step forward for nintendo and square enix's relationship to have the protagonist of final fantasy 7 included here but things were still not as peachy as they are today for starters there were only two music tracks included in here and not much other content outside of the character and stage included as dlc the sign that square was still being pretty stingy with their properties but along with that this was also downloadable content and what many forget about gino's me outfit is that that was dlc as well releasing in late 2015 since smash 4's dlc was mainly focused around bringing back previously cut characters with a few brand new big heavy hitters even if the rights were available to get geno into a playable role at the time it likely wasn't feasible to develop this character as dlc when others were either significantly easier to create with their moveset already being conceived had big name value like ryu or cloud or had marketing motives behind their decision to be included such as corn gino had none of these and subsequently didn't get in as a fighter he got in as a me outfit and the unfortunate part for gino and all of this is this may have been his last chance i've covered this in a previous video about characters who may have completely missed their final shot to be in smash and at this point i feel gino has the game's director wanted him in during the development of brawl but couldn't he was considered for the roster of smash 4 but had to be relegated to a me costume due to these extenuating circumstances and now we've gotten so many years later and an entire entry has passed us by that any relevancy that he did have at the time of those two games is almost all but faded away and if this really was the director's passion project the character that he really wanted to include he definitely would have taken up one of the spots he would have probably taken a piranha plant spot he was another character included in a similar vein for similar reasons he has fun move set potential and i think this is agreed upon by most fans who played mario rpg and sakurai alike but there was no mention of him being rejected from the roster of ultimate like he was for smash 4 and brawl so he unfortunately may be done for good but the point of this video is not just to examine why he got cut but the ramifications for if he did get in and oh boy there would have been a lot with brawl in particular first of all a square character getting into brawl would have not only shown the significant growth of nintendo and square enix's relationship allowing for partnerships that we're seeing modernly to have happened much sooner but someone like cloud would have been a much more realistic of an implementation into smash 4 than he was and while sora is disney owned the gateway through square would kind of be open for more discussions at least absolutely right if you've gotten to brawl i find it really difficult to find a direct replacements and there's really no retro mario character added in and nobody who would play any similar vein to him but for smash 4's base game maybe rosalina although nintendo was really trying to push her around this time so who knows it would have been nice to see gino in one of these games regardless but if he had to replace someone more interesting i definitely would not be for it this guy's an obscure character from some random snes game this is something that people need to recognize and since we brought up cloud i'd be remiss not to mention that cloud was not the only final fantasy representative considered to be included in smash 4 as dlc once it was seen that a deal with square enix could be done to get one of their final fantasy characters in a playable spot the team began wondering who it should go to and while some of the fanbase had thrown out names like black mage who had been included in mario hoops 3 on 3 in the past in mario sports mix the only characters that sakurai has mentioned in interviews pertaining to the topic are tara brantford the protagonist of final fantasy vi straggle magnus another playable character from the same entry bart's claws are the protagonist of five and fusoya one of the playable characters in four an interesting variety here each which could have had their own unique play style and more importantly to me their own unique ripple effect you see when cloud got in the franchise listed next to him and his reveal was final fantasy vii not simply final fantasy and with seven specifically being the focus here we would end up getting seth roth as a playable character in the second fighter's pass for smash ultimate and i think it's safe to say that if one of these four rejected characters actually got in there would be no sephiroth at least not for right now let me explain the reason why i believe this is if terra took cloud spot for instance and that would have made a rep from final fantasy vi the franchise's sole representative you're not gonna go add sephiroth the main villain of final fantasy vii before adding cloud first this isn't a situation where that character is so much more unique and interesting that one just has to happen first no i mean sephiroth is unique and all but cloud still has the limit system which provides him more attacks to use he's definitely not a skippable character right especially when you consider the icon value and the fact that terra and sephiroth wouldn't really work well together so it's pretty important for seth roth fans that cloud got in here and you know what i'm going to come out and say it if straight or for soya got in we may not even have cloud in smash today these two aren't the protagonists of their games if there was a natural next step to go for a final fantasy rep after one of them got into smash 4 it would have been the protagonist of six or four respectively not seven with cloud i'm not as adamant about this take as i am with the last one but i'll definitely say that it would not be a faded complete av cloud in for sure the fact that seven is a cult classic and was getting a remake definitely helps don't get me wrong but also don't forget in this hypothetical scenario this is the same guy that got passed on for one of these guys from other entries cloud would have already been rejected here so to say that he's an automatic would be like saying that if ike was the first firing lumber up then marth would be an automatic i mean sure it would make sense to add him in as his original title was getting a remake on the ds around the time of roll's release but would their arm really have been twisted enough to add him in over someone like the black knight from the same game doesn't that make more logical sense regardless we have plenty of interesting scenarios here although according to sakurai it was difficult to imagine a first final fantasy rep who wasn't cloud so he was really thought to be the obvious choice you're not gonna start adding mario reps with luigi right you gotta go with what works best first and they definitely went with the right choice here definitely gonna be interesting when we reveal the complete roster of every rejected fighter got in at the end of the video and not having cloud in there is going to be quite a stark difference next is a rejected character who actually is in smash sorta so are we breaking the rules of this video i'll leave that up to you in the same way that larry koopa is playable in smash ultimate alf from pikmin made his playable debut in smash 4 as a pallet spot for olimar but according to sakurai this was not the original plan alf was supposed to be his own character the reasons for this were due to the desire to reference the newer series release at the time pikmin 3 by including the new rock pikmin from there as part of alf's move set sort of making him a semi-clone type character to olimar but the interviews that have been gathered surrounding the subject it seems like alph was very close to getting in was that guy saying he was quote next in line to become a clone so why didn't it happen well this was likely due to a lack of development time even though he was supposed to be a semi-clone there was still a unique pikmin concept that would needed to have been developed for this and since him using omar's existing moveset is still pretty fitting there likely wasn't too much pressure to put in the extra effort when those resources could have been better spent elsewhere probably on that board game mode that everyone totally played right and that lack of urgency is seemingly still persisted to this day with alf being nowhere to be seen amongst the plethora of echo editions added to pad out smash ultimate's roster but let's take things back for a second if alf got into smash 4 would there have been any significant impact well aside from having the rock pikmin in you could potentially have allowed olimar to keep his brawl recovery in smash 4 and give alf the winged pikmin recovery instead this is the one that they transitioned to olomar to still provide some references to pikmin 3 but this way you could provide some difference between the two while distinguishing alphas to sword a modern pikmin rep allowing all march to remind us of the series past but other than that there really isn't too much that isn't nitpicky would it have been great to see elephant as a semi-clone yeah absolutely but considering how good the roster ended up turning out with the decision to leave him in as an alts you never know maybe spending more resources on him could have changed things for the worse overall so hard to call out nintendo out too hard on this one i'd love to see him or some other pikmin rep included in the future though maybe not as much as we'd like to see that pikmin 4 release but hey at least it's something and moving on to the final entry in the series the final set of dlc characters this is super smash brothers ultimate and this may be the biggest set of all let's start with alucard from castlevania who was rejected from the roster of smash ultimate in the place of simon and richter why the reasons behind this i feel were mainly due to the increased desire for roster padding in the game simon was the original protagonist with alucard appearing as a boss in castlevania dracula's curse before eventually assuming the full-on playable role in symphony of the night arguably becoming mystery's most popular character modernly meaning it would make sense in theory for simon to be cast aside for someone who may would likely recognize more but it didn't happen sakurai stated in interviews in the past that smash fans in his mind would prefer one of the belmonts to alukar which could be conjecture or information he gleaned from the fighter ballot results and there's really no way of knowing for certain because they never ended up releasing these probably hide the fact that shrek and goku were probably like top five combined with all this the ability to add in richters and echo fairly easily allowed for more references to be added in instead of just having one character and he certainly got a point there while alucard could have certainly had an interesting move set simon and richter are already pretty unique in their own right play style wise so i feel they could have made the wrong call here if the rejected character actually got into smash it's not like this is alucard's last opportunity to get into smash either we could potentially see him in the future i'm not saying he's the most likely pick or anything but still has some semblance of a chance i don't know if the sam can be said for decidueye though definitely without a doubt one of the most viral omissions from smash ultimate if you want to consider any of them in that vein as this one got a lot of buzz when sakurai came out in an interview saying that for the gen 7 pokemon rep they wanted to have in the game the decision came down between decidueye and incineroar and the phrase the grass is always greener may never have been used more appropriately here as the grass-type pokemon was seen by many as the better option of a fighter but why was this and more importantly why was incineroar chosen while many fans prior to the reveal of pokemon trainer's return for smash ultimate including myself kinda wanted that firewater grass core with the three starters being decidueye greninja and charizard in the roster of the game charizard was left on his own for smash 4. we didn't know at the time that squirtle and ivysaur would be brought back but with the duo coming back this didn't really persist as much in the fan base even though some still wanted it despite this many believed that deciduous combination of grass and ghost type attacks both from long range and up close could have led to a fun character yet despite this he got passed on in favor of incineroar who to the uninitiated would just seem like your standard prototypical fighting game type character that didn't have too much interesting to offer which makes sakurai's reasoning for including him that much more fascinating as incineroar was said to be included due to him having a quote more unique move set compared to decidueye sure and sonora has uniqueness from many other characters in smash with the wrestling styled fighting attacks being different from someone like ryu for example but still not overly unique this especially being combined with the fact that in sonora doesn't even use any dark type moves like come on that's one of his two types and the only one that's not shared by any other fighter in smash are you kidding me i don't know maybe we as fans saw something more indecisive than sakurai and the team did but bottom line as he got cut but the ripple effect for if he got in may not have been the best as i feel if decidueye got in we would have been much more likely to get a gen 8 pokemon rep included as dlc since cinderace was one of the front runners here and they likely didn't want to have three physical fire type pokemon in smash for moveset diversity's sake so if decidueye was included instead of incineroar we would have only had one physical fire type leaving the option open for cinderease despite this i still think i would have preferred to situate in smash instead of incineroar though weighing the two options was close but i'm gonna come out and say they made the wrong call here and i brought up hihachi earlier and we're gonna return to him briefly once again i brought up kazi in the last segment for a reason as according to sakurai haihachi would be considered once again as the tekken fighter slot for this game before they eventually determined that kazuya having the devil gene would allow for a better moveset potential compared to haihachi once again the move component of the character design is brought up and considering that i'm gonna say they made the right call in both instances here in smash 4 and an ultimate without a doubt including pacman was a must that i absolutely support and if they thought that kazu would be a lot more fun to play than taking the less iconic character may have been for the better in the newer entry too the devil mechanics were pretty interesting and speaking of taking a less iconic character this is kind of what happened when minmin was introduced for smash ultimate as she was chosen as opposed to one of the cover characters such as spring man or ribbon girl but according to sack ride these guys weren't even considered to be in the game this decision came down to minmin or ninjara he would mention this in the june 2020 sakrap presents video that introduced the character and he said that min min was ultimately chosen due to the request of arms director kosuke ibuki between those two that we are considering meaning that ninjara is a rejected character from smash ultimate's roster and will we have been better off with him or without it i've talked about minmin a few times in videos recently and i've learned that a lot more people are fans of the character than i thought which is fine you're entitled to your wrong opinion i still don't believe that the fighter concept translates too well into a fun smash move set though this is likely due to the slow paced nature of the character with the long arm based attacks and while ninja would definitely share that component he would have definitely been faster with the use of his unique warping abilities for some added fun and because of that solving one of the fundamental issues about the character for me i think it's safe to say that choosing this guy would have at least had some more potential to be a decent character he certainly wasn't as popular as minman was but from a purely moveset potential perspective i would have liked to have seen it now one of the most unique rejected characters in the history of smash has to be slime from dragon quest just look at this little guy man are you trying to tell me that he was seriously considered for smash well if you listen to sakurai this was no joke we've talked at length about square enix properties in this video and how not everything in theory can just be given the green light when making a deal with them to get a new character added into the roster and while sakurai was asking them about the possibility of a dragon quest representative joining the battle for super smash bros ultimate and awaiting approval there were fears felt amongst the team that perhaps they wouldn't allow it to happen instead maybe allowing for some other character from the series who wasn't the main playable representative of a game to be in smash and according to sakra if this was the case they had a backup plan they would have quote been perfectly fine adding in slime as a character yeah now it is looking at this little guy on the surface there doesn't seem to be too much to get excited about but when you consider how many different appearances these characters have had and the tons and tons of different forms and abilities implemented onto them there certainly could have been a very unique moveset here kind of like the goomba and chaga character concepts i've talked about in previous videos comparing this to bubbles from clue land that i talked about earlier on the video slime is a much more iconic character compared to him and i would have much prefer to see this concept applied to slime instead of bubbles but all this didn't end up mattering since square allowed the team to use the various heroes in a playable role and despite my optimism for slime to an extent i still cannot say that they made the wrong call here considering if you want to talk character uniqueness i mean hiro has that in spades compared to pretty much everyone else you're not gonna get much more unique than this guy and hero was definitely one of the best additions so they undoubtedly made the right call and one more rejected character that we got here is that at one point during smash ultimate's development rex was planned to fight alongside pyro and mithra in a similar vein to how both ice climbers fight together but he ended up being removed due to technical issues with the implementation of the idea as sakurai claimed that getting both characters to move at the same time on the screen was quote impossible to do this meant that rex ended up being relegated to a supporting character slot appearing in pyramid mithra's up taunt final smash and victory poses while this is unfortunate for rex it's definitely understandable although i bet we can all agree that if this was possible in theory it would have been a much more interesting character concept effectively combining the swapping of zelda and chic with a more intricate version of the ice climbers are you kidding me it would have been just like the dixie kong concept that we talked about earlier on in the video it would have been great and possibly the most unique fighter we've ever seen if this combined concept didn't happen it didn't seem too likely that rex had a chance to get in on his own either it never seems to have been the proposed idea and even if it was i think it's safe to say that a swapping character is much better than an individual one because both pirate and mithra's movesets on their own are even on par in terms of uniqueness as compared to what we would have imagined rex would have turned out to be pyro and mithra are probably more iconic than rex anyway for uh reasons hey at least rex probably wouldn't have been censored right but this is the moment that we've waited for we've gone through every single rejected fighter talked at length about why each one of them was cut and the ripple effect that we would have had in smash had they actually gotten in and here's how the roster would have turned out had every rejected fighter gotten in i'm showing a couple different versions here due to some characters theoretically occupying the same slot as another one as well as accounting for the guys like gino takamaru and haihachi who had multiple chances to join the battle suffice to say with the tally of my preferences throughout this video leaning heavily towards supporting the decisions that nintendo made they clearly know what they're doing but despite that there were still many times where they undoubtedly made the wrong call and others were my opinion leans that way but some may not feel similarly and for that i really encourage you to leave your thoughts about every one of these fighters in the comments down below or at least the ones that you're passionate about many of these instances have got me riled up throughout this video because who knows these moments of rejection could have very well been the last chance for each of these characters to get into the roster getting into smash as fire emblem has shown can completely change the course of direction for your series it can completely save your franchise and that's why getting into smash means so much and why fans get so passionate about their favorite character during the battle this is what would have happened if every confirmed rejected character in smash history actually got into the game and if you want to see more content like this in the future don't forget to subscribe

Channel: Siiroth

Views: 1,089,049

Keywords: Nintendo, Mario, Siiroth, Smash, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, smash ultimate, smash bros rejected characters, every scrapped character in smash history, what if every rejected fighter actually got in?, what if every cut character actually got in?, what if every scrapped character actually got in?, what if every rejected character actually got in?, toon zelda smash, decidueye smash, every cut smash fighter, smash ultimate cut content, smash ultimate rejected characters

Id: dc2hRY6kLXg

Length: 47min 7sec (2827 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 19 2021