Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Going Forward

Min Min has been released earlier this week as DLC for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and the focus finally shifts from "Who's going to be the ARMS fighter?" to "Who's going to get in next?", where things feel a lot more open and exciting than they did after the announcement of the 2nd Fighters Pass.

We're going to get a total of five more Challenger Packs until the end of next year, as well as many more Mii costumes. And there is still the possibility of there being more stages and fighters beyond that. So, let's go over all of this another time, even at the risk of sounding like a broken record.

The Challenger Packs?

The addition of ARMS really has blown the doors wide open for more DLC based on Nintendo's 1st or 2nd party games. It paints a very different picture than what we had after the first Fighters Pass, where four out of five fighters came from 3rd parties and the only 1st party addition came from a brand new Nintendo Switch game, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which wasn't represented in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate at all before its Challenger Pack – no Spirits, no music, nothing.

At the time it felt that games like ARMS or Xenoblade Chronicles 2 were simply the victim of poor timing and fans of these games had to live with the consolation prizes in the form of Spirits, Assist Trophies and Mii costumes, while Nintendo would be focusing on newer Nintendo Switch games for the DLC.

But this has changed and getting a Challenger Pack for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 seems like one of the likeliest candidates for more 1st/2nd party contents right now. But even games like Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze or Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker might be back on the table.

The 3rd party realm was mostly unaffected by this. Rayman now seems somewhat likelier, but otherwise there are still dozens of possibilities of 3rd party newcomers. However, you shouldn't expect ARMS to be the only first party addition, where ideally there will be a healthy mix of both in the end.

More Stages?

Of course each Challenger Pack comes with a new stage, so there will be at least five more. The random stage selection in the rule sets already gives you a good idea how they stage select screen will expand after Spring Stadium: there is another row for a 11 x 11 grid.

This gives us actually slots for up to five more stages beyond the second Fighters Pass (the last slot is reserved for "custom stages" in the rule sets) and it would be a shame, if those didn't get used somehow.

They could bring back some of the missing stages, e.g. Rainbow Road, but ideally they would focus on stages for Nintendo games that don't necessarily have to come with a fighter. Games like Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Yoshi's Crafted World, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening or Luigi's Mansion 3 would be perfect examples here.

All of these games are from established franchises in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and none of them would feel odd without a new fighter. And this would really fill some gaps, where so far only Splatoon, Super Mario Odyssey, Breath of the Wild and Fire Emblem: Three Houses have gotten proper stage representation in this current generation of Smash. Normally each new Smash came with many new stages from recent Nintendo games, but the focus of Ultimate was bringing back as many of the old stages as possible...

Also, I'm still in love with the idea of an Eagle's Tower stage. The Evil Eagle could be a stage boss and the tower could even rotate so that the Windfish's Egg gets into view, emulating the title screen of the remake of Link's Awakening. I'd pay good money for such a stage.

And it can't be said often enough, but Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze only being represented by two songs and some Spirits is a massive shame. In the least it should get a new stage with more of its excellent soundtrack.

Echo Fighters?

This was already discussed last month with a look at the expanded roster, where there are four more open slots, which would work best for additional Echo Fighters. Dixie Kong, Jeanne, Impa, Dry Bowser, the Octolings or others still feel like possibilities here and we have to see whether Sakurai's team is willing to take this route to fully push the roster to its limits.

But after the introduction of "Echo Fighters" as this new concept to add zest to clone fighters, it almost feels like a wasted opportunity. The branding really changed a lot, where Sakurai and his team got the fans from despising clones to asking for them. And there is probably no easier way of fulfilling some remaining fan wishes than with certain Echo Fighters.

Ideally, those would be part of the upcoming major updates. In general it feels like Sakurai's team really wants to add to the game with the updates, where we got some really big additions so far, like the Stage Builder, Online Tourneys, Home-Run Contest or the new Spirit battle feature. Now, Echo Fighters would certainly be an exciting way of adding more to the game and since they are free, people probably wouldn't complain much about getting some more clones. You don't look a gift horse into the mouth.

Alternatively, they could do an "Echo Fighters Pass", which could go hand in hand with adding some more stages. There could be Dixie Kong as an Echo Fighter, bundled with a new stage for Tropical Freeze for example.