Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: European Limited Edition

We're getting this in Europe and I've just pre-ordered it. It's nothing too special, it's just the game, the GameCube Controller and the adapter. I never got the GameCube Controller Adapter for the Wii U, so it's finally nice to have one. And I wanted to get that controller anyway, because I only have two GameCube controllers so far (including the one from Smash 4), so this is a nice deal.

There is also another big reason, why I'm getting this package. The German version has this ridiculous USK logo on the game cover, where they had to de-center the game's logo and remove Yoshi from the cover:

It looks so bad that I was even considering importing the game. But the Limited Edition will have the game with its normal cover inside without any ratings, because it isn't required there. This was usually an advantage of buying Limited Editions packages like this one. You get a nicer cover for the box.

December 7th may come now... And it's time for Nintendo to finally sell me a Zelda themed Switch. But even if they don't, I know someone with a Switch, who would be willing to let me play. The same person also has borrowed my copy of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which I've won in a raffle. So, my Switch library keeps growing without the system in my possession.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Skull Kid?

Today's Direct for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate showed us a new Assist Trophy, which was the Moon from Majora's Mask crashing on the stage. What a spectacle! But it's really noticeable, how Skull Kid was missing in all of this. They could showed his Assist Trophy in addition to the moon or even make the Moon the final phase of his pranks. But he is nowhere to be found...

His chances of becoming playable basically sky-rocketed and he is slowly becoming my new most wanted, next to Princess Hilda and Minecraft. The Zelda series needs at least two newcomers, now that Fire Emblem has surpassed Zelda with its count of playable characters. And there's a good chance that Fire Emblem will have at least one more newcomer as well. So, Zelda needs to step it up!

With Echo Fighters Hilda and Impa seem like the likeliest candidates now. I was previously against adding Impa as an Echo for Sheik, but seeing how Chrom got added as a Roy Echo, the characters don't necessarily have to be counterparts in some form, like Samus and Dark Samus. Speaking of, Dark Link or Shadow Link could have been Echoes as well, but they are seemingly still just alternate costumes.

Anyway, back to Skull Kid... It seems like there is a bigger focus on villains this time with Ridley, Dark Samus and King K. Rool all being added to the roster. And the only villain left in the Zelda series, who is interesting enough, who isn't a one-off character, who isn't potentially stuck in some Capcom rights limbo and who isn't just another henchman of Ganon would be Skull Kid. He appeared in three major 3D Zelda games and was basically the villain of one of them. He's easily the most deserving candidate to finally become a playable unique character from the Zelda series in Smash, who isn't part of the Triforce Trio.

Majora's Mask itself is also an icon of the series. It has been in a lot of games lately, including A Link Between Worlds, as an item in Breath of the Wild and even a Mii costume in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS / Wii U. Plus, Majora's Mask 3D came out in the same year, where Super Smash Bros. Ultimate started development, so it was certainly in mind at the time.

I can already picture the reveal trailer, where Young Link fights against him and both their Final Smashes clash at the end: Fierce Deity vs. Majora's Wrath. Since the Moon is an Assist Trophy, it makes sense that Skull Kid's Final Smash is some form of Majora. The trailer could start in the Lost Woods with the Earthbound kids getting lost and being tricked.

Skull Kid wouldn't need his own stage, necessarily, but a Clock Tower stage on the Carnival of Time would be amazing to have. It could even transition to the Moon Meadow.

Update:
Apparently, the room deco in the Direct referenced the colors of Skull Kid, mainly the colors of the couch and a yellow and a purple chair for Tatl and Tael. Nintendo seemingly did something similar for K. Rool in the E3 Direct, where you had a barrel and rope ladder in Sakurai's office, hinting at a DK newcomer. The hype is on!

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Dark Samus Joins the Battle!

And there we already have both major Metroid villains finally playable in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. That they would reveal Dark Samus so soon after Ridley was quite surprising and overall I have mixed feelings about her inclusion as an Echo Fighter.

Dark Samus as a playable character is great, no question, Metroid is finally getting all the representation it deserves. It's also fully understandable that Dark Samus became an Echo Fighter, because she looks very similar to Samus and therefore should also behave very similar.

And they didn't introduce the whole Echo Fighter concept for no reason. Semi-clones probably won't be a thing in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and with Dark Samus being an Echo Fighter it should be clear that Dixie Kong most likely will be one as well, if she makes it into the game.

But... it's not entirely accurate to the source material and the Dark Samus Assist Trophy had some really cool moves, which are probably now gone. She shot three homing orbs of Phazon like in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, while in this game she shoots actual missiles, which she never did in the Metroid Prime Trilogy. It's off, but at least she's levitating and she also does her clone move in the victory animation. So, it's not all bad.

Well, I guess this is the price for having her playable, which is certainly awesome and well deserved as the antagonist of the Metroid Prime Trilogy. I also hope that Dark Samus would come with alternate costumes based on Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, especially the final form.

The only other Metroid character that might have a shot later on would be Sylux, but for now Metroid is fully complete in terms of playable characters, where you can't really say the same for the Zelda series. Which brings us to the next post...

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: 96 Classic Stages!

Brinstar Depths! Pirate Ship! I'm happy!

This is a direct response to my post from June, where I suggested that the game should aim at exactly 100 returning stages. Well, they aimed at 100 stages for now, but four of them are new, which leaves us at a total of 96 returning stages. Close enough!

We already knew about 80 of them and these are the ones that got confirmed today:

• Peach's Castle (64)
• Kongo Jungle (64)
• Mushroom Kingdom (64)
• Rainbow Cruise (Melee)
• Yoshi's Island (Melee)
• Brinstar Depths (Melee)
• Fountain of Dreams (Melee)
• Mario Bros. (Brawl)
• Pirate Ship (Brawl)
• Hanenbow (Brawl)
• Golden Plains (3DS)
• Paper Mario (3DS)
• Dream Land GB (3DS)
• Mute City SNES (3DS)
• Gamer (Wii U)
• Windy Hill Zone (Wii U)

You can view the complete list of stages on the official site.

I'm really happy about most of these and I got almost everything I wanted. If you look at my list of suggestions from that last time, there's not a single stage here that wasn't on that list. Four are missing, however, which are marked bold in the next list, which shows all stages that didn't make it:

• Planet Zebes (64)
• Sector Z (64)
• Mushroom Kingdom (Melee)
• Icicle Mountain (Melee)
• Poké Floats (Melee)
• Mute City (Melee)
• Rumble Falls (Brawl)
• PictoChat (Brawl)
• Rainbow Road (3DS)
• Pac-Maze (3DS)
• Woolly World (Wii U)
• Jungle Hijinx (Wii U)
• Orbital Gate Assault (Wii U)
• Pyrosphere (Wii U)
• Miiverse (Wii U)

I can live without all of those, so there is nothing on this list, where I feel like this is a big loss. It's quite surprising that so many Wii U stages didn't make it, considering that they wouldn't take as much work to port over, but there were probably good reasons for these omissions.

I guess, except for Rainbow Road (and maybe Woolly World) I can even understand, why all of these stages didn't make it, especially with the new toggle for Stage Hazards. How would vertically scrolling stages even work then? And the other of the missing stages feel simply redundant or were probably too much effort for their own worth.

Orbital Gate Assault for example was said to be one of the most difficult to make stages (one year development time according to Sakurai), which is why it probably was left out considering that the stage isn't that much fun to play and even had some collision errors.

Jungle Hijinx, while completely unique, was also pretty bad with the background level, because it was hard too see what's going on there. And if you think about it, this gimmick probably wouldn't work any longer with the new Stage Morph feature, which is probably why the stage didn't make the cut. I personally didn't like the stage all that much, so I'm not sad that it's gone.

It's a small shame that they apparently didn't go for a "PictoChat X" stage, which combines both PictoChat and PictoChat 2, but whatever... Not a huge loss. Oh, and Metal Cavern from the 64 original remains in a limbo, but I could see this one as Stage Builder material.

Of course it's possible that they will announce more returning stages than the ones that got showcased today, but it's most likely the final selection, where from now on they will only reveal more new stages.

If I could chose four more returning stages to complete the 100, it would be Metal Cavern, Rainbow Road, Woolly World and Mute City (Melee). The latter wasn't on my original list, but it's still different enough from Port Town Aero Drive to be considered. And they renamed the Mute City stage from the 3DS to "Mute City SNES", so it has this going for it. But maybe they just did this to match Dream Land GB...

Anyway, I got all my most wanted stages and I'm especially happy about Brinstar Depths and Pirate Ship. With Pirate Ship we have absolutely all Zelda stages in the game with one for each major 3D Zelda title. And with Planet Zebes and Pyrosphere not making the cut, it's nice that at least Brinstar Depths returned. Though, I'm still hoping for a new Metroid stage.

Overall the selection of new stages seems pretty slim so far. Only four ones, though four excellent ones. Five, if you already count that Monster Hunter stage. But I hope that each of the bigger franchises will get at least one new stage, which includes both DK and Metroid. Heck, even Fire Emblem should get one, considering how many games it had in the last years, full of potential places.

However, judging from the stage select screen, there are probably only five unannounced stages left for a total of 108.. There are six open slots on the stage select screen, but the last one is probably used for the new training stage in Training Mode. With the Monster Hunter stage and the rumored Minecraft stage, it would mean that there are only about three more stages left... Which isn't a whole lot. But I hope that there's more than that in the end.

I also hope that you will be able to change the order of both the stages and characters to sort them by franchise. It would be nice to have all Zelda stages right next to each other and so on.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Direct: Roundup

What a show! It started with a blast and it ended with a blast. And we just got two of the most anticipated newcomers confirmed: Simon Belmont and King K. Rool. I expected one newcomer and maybe two Echo Fighters, so my expectations got surpassed. But of course it was Mr. Sakurai's tactic to keep our expectations in bay for this one, which worked really well so far.

The Castlevania representation is overall glorious. Two weeks ago I watched the AVGN episodes of the classic Castlevania games and I really felt how all of it would great material for Smash. And they nailed it. Simon Belmont looks great and the Dracula's Castle stage is absolutely impressive with all of those bosses. 34 music tracks and an Alucard Assist Trophy... No 3rd Party franchise got so much love when it entered Super Smash Bros. like Castlevania did and it's quite amazing.

On top of that we also got Richter Belmont as an Echo Fighter, which emphasizes the lineage of the Belmont clan. Much like there are many different Links over the ages, who fought Ganon, you have many different Belmonts, who fought Dracula over the ages. And having at least one of them as an Echo Fighter feels right, even though I didn't recognize him.

Anyway, we also got Chrome and Dark Samus as Echo Fighters and while I can see the popularity, I'm not too excited about either choice. There will be a separate post about Dark Samus right after this, but I can already say that Chrome feels massively redundant. Yes, he's popular and he already got teased as an addition in Smash 4. But he's the fourth Marth in this game and the fourth blue-haired sword fighter. Is this Sakurai's way of respecting the weapon triangle? Because axe and lance wielders would have to be respectively weaker or stronger than the sword cast? Well, they could have at least added a bow user.

Chrom is also the fourth character from Awakening and I'd rather would have someone from a different game, like Celica. Speaking of, the chances of getting any more interesting Fire Emblem characters feel slim now.

And of course we got King K. Rool. I have to admit that I wasn't really sure about him before now, because to me he felt like a relic, but seeing his trailer completely changed my mind. It's certainly a worthy addition and now all we need is Dixie Kong. But seeing how Dark Samus became an Echo Fighter, Dixie will most likely be one as well. Maybe she gets revealed together with Funky Kong next time.

There were also some Assist Trophy confirmations, including Ashley and Shovel Knight. I'm a little bit disappointed about the latter, but it's still good to see that Shovel Knight got any representation at all. This is still huge deal, considering his Indie status. And Assist Trophies have now a better chance of becoming playable in the next game. I never got the recent Ashley hype, where I'm fine that she's still an Assist. But it's still noticeable how certain Assist Trophies are still absent... Mainly Shadow, Skull Kid and Isabelle.

More about Skull Kid later, but it turned out that the Vergeben leak was pretty much legit. He confirmed returning Snake, returning Ice Climbers, Ridley and Simon. That is quite a lot for lucky guesses. And that leaves the following:

• some Minecraft content (probably a Stage + Assist Trophy)
• Isabelle (probably an Echo Fighter)
• some 7th Gen Pokémon (no big surprise)

I'm mostly excited for the first part and it looks like some 3rd party franchises now get representation in form of stages and/or Assist Trophies, like Monster Hunter did. Both Minecraft and Monster Hunter don't really have a protagonist, because the player builds his own character, where a "Minecraft" stage and a Creeper Assist Trophy would be the perfect representation. But of course there could still be "Steve" as a character, who would be similar to the Villager from Animal Crossing... He's certainly very recognizable, unlike a generic hunter from Monster Hunter.

96 returning stages have been confirmed in total. I'm very happy with the selection, but more about that in a separate post. A cool feature was certainly the Stage Morph, where as a Metroid and Zelda fan I was quite happy that they used Brinstar and Skyloft to showcase this feature. Now you can switch on the fly between your favorite universes!

The new and old modes and all the different ruleset options are all pretty great. The secret hidden mode seemed like an Adventure Mode, the whole Monster Hunter boss fight seemed to take place there, unless the series is really getting just a flat stage. The Dracula fight also seemingly took place in a bigger variant of the Dracula Castle stage. Update: Apparently the mode is called "Spirits". It's likely that this will be the main mode to unlock characters by collecting their spirits.

Now, all we need is a good Stage Builder and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will really be the best Smash ever.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Direct Announced

The wait is over and we're finally getting more infos about the game on Wednesday! It feels unusual to have a dedicated Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Direct so early already, because normally there is only one of these per game and it's still four months until the release. But I'm happy to learn many new things soon and it's possible that they might do more than one for this game, much like they did with Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS & Wii U.

The biggest topics on Wednesday will probably be "Stages" and "Items". After all these are the sections on the official site that are still offline. They've showcased two new stages and a handful of new items at E3, but it hasn't been a focus yet. Even the large number of returning stages (and items) was only graspable from all the E3 footage so far, but we still don't know the true extent of this.

It's imaginable that they might go through all returning stages, similar to how they went through all veteran fighters during E3. And then show off some new stages to finish things off. One of the new stages could even come hand in hand with a new Echo fighter, e.g. Lorule Castle with Princess Hilda.

Afterwards they could go through most of the items and what has changed, where it would be great to learn about all returning and new Assist Trophies as well, which could finally debunk certain characters. Apropos, Vergeben (the one leaker that I find to be somewhat believable) insisted that Isabelle was going to be playable this time, next to Simon Belmont. So, she would get the promotion from her Assist Trophy status, despite the fact that the Assist Trophy didn't really feature any fighter potential. But she certainly isn't the only candidate for getting promoted: Dark Samus, Ashley, Isaac, Shadow and of course Skull Kid all would be popular picks as well.

Of course there also will be at least one major newcomer reveal: Simon Belmont, Captain Toad, King K. Rool, some Pokémon, you name it... There are many possibilities and I'm open for surprises. But at this point I'm more interested in stages, to be honest, especially the total number of returning ones.

Another big topic would probably be game modes, but I feel like that's something that won't be revealed until later. They haven't even prepared a section on the site yet. With Nintendo Switch Online launching soon, some details about the online mode(s) might also be revealed, but again it's slightly early for this. So, the Direct still might focus on what's in the "Smash" mode of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Delfino Plaza Confirmed

We're in desperate need for more info about Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, where the blog so far didn't really help. Other than music pieces, there hasn't been anything new on the blog since the big reveal at E3. It's just things that we've already seen one and a half months ago...

But there was a special exception today. When going over the Rodin Assist Trophy, they showed him in the Delfino Plaza stage from Super Smash Bros. Brawl:

This stage was still unconfirmed so far, which gives me hopes that they really haven't shown the full extent of returning stages just yet. The chances for Pirate Ship returning are looking even better, now.

That's also now a total of 80 returning stages! 20 more and we will break the 100.