Super Smash Bros. on Nintendo Switch 2

Super Smash Bros. finds itself in a similar position to Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Switch 2. Both franchises usually only produce one game per system, if at all, and both have gotten their most extensive and ambitious entry in the series so far on the Nintendo Switch, with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Animal Crossing: New Horizons respectively. These games can still be played on the Nintendo Switch 2 and with Kirby Air Riders and Splatoon Raiders in the making, we shouldn't expect successors anytime soon, since these projects block their usual developers.

Of course, Masahiro Sakurai may retire after Air Riders and never make another Smash Bros. game again in his life, where someone else might take over, but we all know that this is not how famous producers roll. He will likely return to Smash Bros. after development of this side project has finished later this year, but this still means that we shouldn't expect a successor to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in the next two or three years.

As for Ultimate, it's possible that they may update the game for Nintendo Switch 2 somehow, but we shouldn't expect any meaningful additions here, like new stages or fighters, though it would certainly be lovely. And it won't fix the game's biggest issue, which is the latency based netcode, where a change to rollback netcode wouldn't be possible due the required backwards compatibility, where you will still be playing against Nintendo Switch users. And even for a new Smash game on the Nintendo Switch 2 rollback might still be too tricky to implement, since the game isn't just about itemless 1v1s. We'll see.

The next game will have to face a number of challenges anyway, the biggest one being Super Smash Bros. Ultimate itself. With 89 fighters and 115 stages to offer, it creates a similar situation to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and its 96 courses, where it will be difficult to top this. Mario Kart World doesn't even try and instead went into a completely different direction, much to its success.

And this might also be an option for the next Super Smash Bros. title – don't just make it the next game in the series, make it a completely new game. So far every entry has always built upon its predecessors, step by step. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate even used most of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U as a foundation to make "Everyone is here!" possible, arguably the greatest moment in the franchise's history.

But it's easy to tell how historically grown the series is at this point and how much dead wood it's been carrying. By focusing on bringing back most of the classic stages in the series, there was ultimately little room for new ones. And a bunch of the characters only exist on the roster, because they used to be in one of the past titles, not because they have any real relevance today.

Just look at Sheik, who has been in every entry ever since his/her introduction in Melee, where Ocarina of Time was such a massive milestone that it led to four character additions at the time. But the character of Sheik is long in the past, never to be featured in any of the Zelda games again, where today the spotlight in Smash Bros. may feel a bit odd. And Ganondorf, even though his moveset has evolved a little bit, is still a heavyweight Captain Falcon clone at his core... Which probably won't ever change, unless Super Smash Bros. itself changes.

And that's the idea behind a reboot: ignore everything that came before. Treat it like a completely new thing, as if Super Smash Bros. was first made today. Mainly use the latest iterations of Nintendo's characters as an inspiration to make it a true product of its era. And don't limit yourself by any conventions of how Super Smash Bros. was played before.

Let's take Samus, for example. We're long past any range limitations with attacks, so there is no good reason why she has to fight with such a limited Power Beam. Firing long-range beams should be her normal attacks, where potentially she should even have access to the Wide and Wave Beam upgrades. She should also be able to crouch slide, like in Metroid Dread, and the Grapple Beam could be so much snappier.

Donkey Kong may come with his redesign from Donkey Kong Bananza, even when people haven't warmed up to it yet. And gameplay-wise he could become the Anti-Steve, a character who is able to completely demolish the stage (at least temporarily). Someone wants to recover? Just rip off the stage's corner and throw it at them!

They could also go crazy with Link and give him abilities from Tears of the Kingdom, like Fuse, Recall and Ascend. The latter could be his recovery move, where he could dive right through the stage from below. Recall could become a fancy reflector and Fuse could let him do all sorts of things with the game's items, like merging a baseball bat into the Master Sword.

If this all sounds ridiculously overpowered to you, then keep in mind that this article was written by a Min Min main, who obviously doesn't care for restraint. But the way of how they had translated ARMS into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was truly something else – a character that feels like no other in the entire game. And maybe this shouldn't be an anomaly, maybe that's how every character should get treated going forward. Playing Samus in Super Smash Bros. should feel like playing a Metroid game, not like playing a completely crippled version of her, which conforms to certain basics. (If we ever see the Knight from Hollow Knight as a guest character, then I expect the same here.)

With every fighter redesigned completely from scratch, the roster will get much smaller, of course. But the roster will likely end up smaller in the next game in any case and the huge number of 3rd party deals won't be sustainable forever. However, if everyone is new, then it will be much easier to accept any cuts, because ultimately no one is truly returning in such a scenario. You will get a new Mario, a new Donkey Kong, a new Link, and a new Samus, instead of the same old characters from the past six titles.

This philosophy should also go into all the other aspects of the game, like stages and items. Don't take anything for granted. Don't even take for granted for how things are supposed to work. Items and stages could be completely connected in this game, where instead of having all these random drops, the items become an integral part of each stage.

Let's say that there is a "Great Sky Island" stage, based on Tears of the Kingdom, then it could feature Bomb Flowers, Puffshrooms and different Zonai Emitters as its items. They would work similar to your classic Bombs, Smoke Balls and so on, but they appear as a natural part of the stage. There could even be a Device Dispenser present in the background, which spits out different Zonai capsules.

Or, in a Super Mario stage you would find ?-blocks for your typical power-ups, like the Super Mushroom, Fire Flower, Super Leaf and alike. Pokéballs would only be present in Pokémon stages. Maybe some stages (and franchises) won't have items at all, which is also okay. There doesn't necessarily need to be a default set that always appears, but this is where Assist Trophies come in place, which could function similar to the Flying Man on Magicant. Instead of an actual item that you pick up, they should work like stage bosses, where you can get them on your side by attacking them. For example, there could be a Hyrule Castle stage from Breath of the Wild, which features a Guardian as the "main item".

By making items an integral part of the stages, it would already add a unique experience to every stage by default, making the stage selection a lot more interesting. But it would also limit things, where you won't be able to summon Metroids at Hyrule Castle any longer. This is just one possible idea for a different approach, however, and you would be able to turn off items in any case, together with stage hazards.

If the stages were to get more crazier by design, then having competitive variants of each stage would become even more important. We already had the Battlefield- and Omega-versions in the past, but maybe a new game could offer both a normal and a competitive variant for all its stages, where the latter features a simpler layout, no stage hazards and no items. If you play "For glory" online (which really should return), then it will choose those, where such an approach will offer much more variety than just playing Final Destination all day long.

Anyway, this article has turned from the question of Super Smash Bros. on the Nintendo Switch 2 into a discussion of how to reboot the series... But it's by far the most interesting approach, where after Super Smash Bros. Ultimate it's time for something fresh.