Harry predicts Fighters Pass 2
Apr. 12th, 2020 01:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoyBecause why the hell not, right?
Now, to be clear, my predictions for Smash Ultimate characters have never been right before -- they haven't been public before (well, other than a contest I entered on Reddit), but they've been uniformly wrong so far, other than my predictions that Wolf and the Ice Climbers would be back (before Everyone Is Here was revealed). None of the characters in Fighters Pass 1 was anyone I predicted for that.
But, hell with it, I'm gonna try and predict Fighters Pass 2 anyway.
So. We already know something about Fighter #1: They're from ARMS. This gives us 15 possibilities. (Some people have speculated they could be a new character from a hypothetical ARMS 2, but Nintendo seemed to be pretty clearly indicating it's one of the 15 from the actually existing ARMS game.)
Some people have suggested it could be multiple characters in one, like Olimar/Alph or the Koopalings. That's possible! But in that case I'm predicting who's going to be the face, the default costume.
Now, this one is a tricky one because of the fact that, in a vacuum, the obvious choice would be Spring Man -- he's the game's mascot, they always go with that first before adding secondary characters. But Spring Man is already in the game as an assist trophy; and they wouldn't add as a character someone who's already an assist trophy, would they?
Moreover, the next most obvious choices for the game are all already Spirits. Thus far, none of the DLC characters have already been Spirits in the game. But, of course they weren't, because the characters in Fighters Pass 1 were planned from the start. In Smash 4, where the DLC characters weren't planned from the start, we did get characters who were already trophies (Mewtwo and Lucas), despite the awkwardness. Given that they did it (or rather the analogue) in Smash 4, I think the Smash team are probably OK with adding characters who are already Spirits, even if it's kind of awkward to do so. So I wouldn't rule out characters on that basis.
OK, but what about Spring Man? Surely they wouldn't pick someone other than Spring Man... but surely they wouldn't add a character who's already an assist trophy. One of these must be false. But which one?
My bet is on the second one -- I think Masahiro Sakurai cares more about picking the best characters to add than he does about avoiding awkward cases as a result of unplanned addition (see Mewtwo and Lucas, above). That's right, I'm predicting Spring Man. There are various ways such an addition could be handled. It could be that the Spring Man assist trophy just won't pop up when someone is playing as Spring Man -- certain assist trophies already don't appear on certain stages. Or, as various people have suggested, the Spring Man assist trophy could be replaced with an identically-behaved Springtron assist trophy. Either way! I just think the Smash team will regard this sort of thing as a problem to be solved, not a fundamental obstacle.
So why are they being so cagey about who it is? Well, because we all know that including Spring Man opens the door for Waluigi or Isaac or whoever, and I think they'd rather people focus their speculation on the question of who this first character will be, rather than whether Waluigi or Isaac might be getting in.
OK. That's character #1. Who will the rest be? (The rest of these are unordered, obviously.)
I think a very good candidate at this point is Rex. Sakurai said, Rex didn't make it in because his game came out too late, but he knows people want Rex in. Well, Fighters Pass 2 is the perfect opportunity to correct that; and the fact that an ARMS character being added is evidence that they're willing to do this sort of thing. I'm betting on Rex being in.
My next bet is Crash Bandicoot. He's the one big remaining platforming mascot who's missing from Smash. Obviously this relies on Nintendo being able to make a deal with Activision, but, well, look at who they've added so far; they've had no trouble making deals to get characters in so far, it seems like! He's from a Western company, sure, but Sakurai seems to have gotten more comfortable with that. And he's just such an obvious choice.
Another third-party character I'd bet on is Heihachi. Why Heihachi? Well, we know he was considered for Smash 4 but rejected. But, considered-but-rejected characters have often made it in later before, such as Pac-Man and Villager. So I think Sakurai might go, you know what, I think we can make it work this time, let's put Heihachi in after all. And y'know he'd be another Namco representative, and they're largely the ones developing the game...
A generic prediction: There will be another new Pokemon, because of course there will be. Which one specifically? Well, I don't really know much about Pokemon, so that's hard to say. But, uh, I'll bet on Kubfu, I guess?
At this point I think we've kind of exhausted the obvious choices. So, I'm going to go with Rayman as my last pick. Nintendo has been pretty friendly with Ubisoft recently, and he's their version of the platforming masoct, so I could easily believe Rayman getting added in.
Well, I guess we'll fight out how right or wrong I am in, uh, a year and a half! Man, and we won't even find out character #1 for another 2-3 months. Yeah, it's gonna be a while...
[Sneaky addendum May 24th: Btw, my backup pick for the ARMS character is Min Min. Reasoning: If it's not Spring Man it won't be Ribbon Girl either. And of the other plausible contenders, Min Min has the moveset advantage that she can kick.]
Now, to be clear, my predictions for Smash Ultimate characters have never been right before -- they haven't been public before (well, other than a contest I entered on Reddit), but they've been uniformly wrong so far, other than my predictions that Wolf and the Ice Climbers would be back (before Everyone Is Here was revealed). None of the characters in Fighters Pass 1 was anyone I predicted for that.
But, hell with it, I'm gonna try and predict Fighters Pass 2 anyway.
So. We already know something about Fighter #1: They're from ARMS. This gives us 15 possibilities. (Some people have speculated they could be a new character from a hypothetical ARMS 2, but Nintendo seemed to be pretty clearly indicating it's one of the 15 from the actually existing ARMS game.)
Some people have suggested it could be multiple characters in one, like Olimar/Alph or the Koopalings. That's possible! But in that case I'm predicting who's going to be the face, the default costume.
Now, this one is a tricky one because of the fact that, in a vacuum, the obvious choice would be Spring Man -- he's the game's mascot, they always go with that first before adding secondary characters. But Spring Man is already in the game as an assist trophy; and they wouldn't add as a character someone who's already an assist trophy, would they?
Moreover, the next most obvious choices for the game are all already Spirits. Thus far, none of the DLC characters have already been Spirits in the game. But, of course they weren't, because the characters in Fighters Pass 1 were planned from the start. In Smash 4, where the DLC characters weren't planned from the start, we did get characters who were already trophies (Mewtwo and Lucas), despite the awkwardness. Given that they did it (or rather the analogue) in Smash 4, I think the Smash team are probably OK with adding characters who are already Spirits, even if it's kind of awkward to do so. So I wouldn't rule out characters on that basis.
OK, but what about Spring Man? Surely they wouldn't pick someone other than Spring Man... but surely they wouldn't add a character who's already an assist trophy. One of these must be false. But which one?
My bet is on the second one -- I think Masahiro Sakurai cares more about picking the best characters to add than he does about avoiding awkward cases as a result of unplanned addition (see Mewtwo and Lucas, above). That's right, I'm predicting Spring Man. There are various ways such an addition could be handled. It could be that the Spring Man assist trophy just won't pop up when someone is playing as Spring Man -- certain assist trophies already don't appear on certain stages. Or, as various people have suggested, the Spring Man assist trophy could be replaced with an identically-behaved Springtron assist trophy. Either way! I just think the Smash team will regard this sort of thing as a problem to be solved, not a fundamental obstacle.
So why are they being so cagey about who it is? Well, because we all know that including Spring Man opens the door for Waluigi or Isaac or whoever, and I think they'd rather people focus their speculation on the question of who this first character will be, rather than whether Waluigi or Isaac might be getting in.
OK. That's character #1. Who will the rest be? (The rest of these are unordered, obviously.)
I think a very good candidate at this point is Rex. Sakurai said, Rex didn't make it in because his game came out too late, but he knows people want Rex in. Well, Fighters Pass 2 is the perfect opportunity to correct that; and the fact that an ARMS character being added is evidence that they're willing to do this sort of thing. I'm betting on Rex being in.
My next bet is Crash Bandicoot. He's the one big remaining platforming mascot who's missing from Smash. Obviously this relies on Nintendo being able to make a deal with Activision, but, well, look at who they've added so far; they've had no trouble making deals to get characters in so far, it seems like! He's from a Western company, sure, but Sakurai seems to have gotten more comfortable with that. And he's just such an obvious choice.
Another third-party character I'd bet on is Heihachi. Why Heihachi? Well, we know he was considered for Smash 4 but rejected. But, considered-but-rejected characters have often made it in later before, such as Pac-Man and Villager. So I think Sakurai might go, you know what, I think we can make it work this time, let's put Heihachi in after all. And y'know he'd be another Namco representative, and they're largely the ones developing the game...
A generic prediction: There will be another new Pokemon, because of course there will be. Which one specifically? Well, I don't really know much about Pokemon, so that's hard to say. But, uh, I'll bet on Kubfu, I guess?
At this point I think we've kind of exhausted the obvious choices. So, I'm going to go with Rayman as my last pick. Nintendo has been pretty friendly with Ubisoft recently, and he's their version of the platforming masoct, so I could easily believe Rayman getting added in.
Well, I guess we'll fight out how right or wrong I am in, uh, a year and a half! Man, and we won't even find out character #1 for another 2-3 months. Yeah, it's gonna be a while...
[Sneaky addendum May 24th: Btw, my backup pick for the ARMS character is Min Min. Reasoning: If it's not Spring Man it won't be Ribbon Girl either. And of the other plausible contenders, Min Min has the moveset advantage that she can kick.]
