We’re halfway through with the Smash Marvel series, so we
might as well finish it off. In case you need to get caught up, here’s
the original, and here’s
the sequel.
First, the context we’ll be dealing with. In real life, Super Smash Bros Brawl in early 2008,
the same year that the first Iron Man movie
was released kickstarting the Marvel Cinematic Universe. My suspicion is that
this would have had a small impact on the roster, but a definite one. I imagine
there would be some extra consideration given to characters expected to be
movie leads in the near future, as a way to help build them up (it also helps
we’re starting to go a little deeper into the Marvel character list; without
this, it might be a little harder to differentiate who would get preference).
It’s also worth noting that, with a seven-year gap between games, there was
actually time for new characters to be created and popularized in between
installments, unlike between the first two.
Also, Smash Bros Brawl
was where Nintendo began introducing third party characters to their
roster, starting with Sonic the Hedgehog and Snake. I really struggled what to
do with this information. In the end, I decided to ignore it, because there’s
just not a particularly satisfying direct comparison, and there are still so
many Marvel characters to choose from.
If you’re interested, though, I had a few attempts at
mirroring this move. My first thought was to copy it literally, with other
comic companies’ characters appearing. However, while that would be somewhat
manageable for the two slots we’d need here, we’d be pushing it come the next
installment. We’d need four (or five, depending on how well I kept my “no
cutting characters” rule) different comics companies represented, and while we
could do this* (say, Batman from DC, Spawn from Image, X-O Manowar from Valiant
Comics, Hellboy from Dark Horse Comics, and Scott Pilgrim from Oni Press, for
one set), no configuration feels like it has the same impact as “Sonic,
Pac-Man, and Megaman” does. If you truly wanted
to get characters that most people would know and not small cameos for hardcore
comics geeks, you’d be better off sticking with to just picking DC characters;
Justice League vs the Avengers gets a
lot closer to that “Sonic vs. Mario” feel I’m aiming for. But again, you’d
eventually be giving five to six slots out of about fifty just to DC characters
to guest-star in what is ostensibly a Marvel fighting game. At that point, it
feels like you might as well just make a straight-up “Marvel vs. DC” fighting
game. And I thought about letting Marvel borrow other characters from within
Disney, but they weren’t purchased until 2009 (and Star Wars, the Disney
franchise that could most readily lend characters to this concept, wasn’t
purchased until 2012). If you’d like, though, feel free to use any of those scenarios
as the basis to your roster if these explanations aren’t doing it for you.
Anyway, Smash Bros
Brawl had 39 different playable characters (although several were combined
into single characters, there were 39 distinct movesets). Of the 18 new characters
(5 characters were cut from Melee), we had a good-character-to-evil-character
breakdown of approximately 15:3 (I’m counting Wolf, King Dedede, and Wario,
although I feel like you could argue with the status of the last two as well as
Meta Knight). The gender makeup (which I’ve roughly matched so far as well) was
14 to 3 to 1 (ROB is a robot, so I guess genderless? Plus the Pokemon, which
could be either, although I suppose all of the new additions have gender ratios
that skew male, so summing those odds up probably comes out below 3…this is
more complicated than I hoped). And lastly, one franchise (Pokemon) added four
characters, but three of them were combined into one, plus they lost two
representatives from the last game… These breakdowns seem to get more
complicated with each game. I’ll try to keep each franchise to two
representatives max, since there are so many mitigating factors there, although
maybe there is a franchise that can justify four new representatives.
Unlike Smash Bros,
I didn’t cut anyone, so I only have thirteen roster slots to work with. The
best place to start, again, will probably be with the villain slots. Who are
the biggest villains left in the Marvel universe? I’d start that list with Green Goblin, and coincidentally, Marvel
was about to move to a storyline in the comics in which Norman Osbourn would
seize control of the Avengers. On top of that, he’s both (arguably) the biggest
foe to Marvel’s premiere super-hero, and he even had a (rather memorable) film
appearance, which would be rather big deal at this point in Marvel’s pre-studio
days.
I’d also argue that Loki
should get a space. While he hadn’t gotten the supercharge to his
popularity that Tom Hiddleston’s performance in the movies would deliver in
2011, but he still had a place of prominence among Marvel’s villains. I’d also
wager that Marvel knew they might be using him soon if their movie plans worked
out, since he was one of their biggest villains they had the film rights to,
and would be the obvious rival for one of their bigger heroes in Thor. I think
that would be enough to push him over the edge for a definite spot.
For the last villain spot, I’ll go with Doctor Octopus. He’s up there with Green Goblin for Spider-Man’s
number one enemy, he had an acclaimed appearance in a huge movie, and this
gives us our two-representative franchise. Also, I think Doc Ock would provide
an interesting play-style, with the extra arms and everything, so that’s
another good reason to add him.
Throughout this process, I’ve repeatedly equated the Mario
and X-Men franchises, given their extensive rosters. I’m going to continue that
trend here; while there were no “full” Mario characters added in Brawl, there
were two characters from spin-offs, Wario and Diddy Kong. Since we counted spin-offs
back in the original game, we’ll count them here. So, with two slots, which
X-Men are left? We still have plenty of big names, like Colossus, Emma Frost,
Gambit, Iceman, Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, and several others. I can’t really see
any specific reasons to pick two of them over the others, but I’ll go with Iceman and Nightcrawler. As I’ve said before, you could probably add several
X-Men here and be reasonably close to what it would have been in real life, but
I’ll stick with just two for the time being.
Before moving on to the list of Avengers, I’d like to pitch
two more unlikely characters. There’s a good chance I’m overshooting here and
this hypothetical game would just go with more traditional picks, but if they
were moved to try some more unexpected characters, this would be a direction
they could go (and to be fair, Nintendo occasionally throws a few less-expected
characters).
First, I’m a
big fan of Runaways, so I might
be biased, but I think there would be some way to fit one of the stars of the
series in. To be fair, the series had been picking up awards since it began,
and Marvel was even
making moves towards a movie back in the day. As the leader of the team, Nico Minoru would be a good choice,
although I would entertain arguments for any of the others. Second, the
Guardians of the Galaxy had just been restarted in 2008. I doubt Marvel knew
exactly how big they would eventually be, and they might have even not had any
idea that a movie was on the horizon (I have a sneaking suspicion that they had
it in mind, hence the relaunch, but no real proof of that). All that thinking
ahead aside, it could be a nice bit of publicity for a new series using older
characters. For a representative, I think it would be fun to go with a tag team
of Rocket and Groot; after all,
Smash Bros has the Ice Climbers as a fighting pair, and we still don’t have an
equivalent to them.
That leaves us with six more slots for this game, so I’ll
return to some of the Avengers I threw out last time: Vision, Falcon, Dr.
Strange, Ms. Marvel/Carol Danvers, War Machine, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch.
In fact, that list is only one more than the number of remaining slots. It’s
tough to decide which one to cut from that list, but if I had to…I think I’d go
with War Machine. If nothing else, I’ll point to comic book appearances as my
hard tiebreaker, although I could be open to arguments against that decision. That
gives us 3 new villains, just like in the real game, a 10-3 men-women ratio
that’s roughly in line with the game, no franchise with more than two new
characters… All in all, this seems like a pretty well-balanced group of
newcomers.
Our additions in Super
Smash Marvel Brawl:
Iceman
Nightcrawler
Ms. Marvel/Carol Danvers
Rocket and Groot
Nico Minoru
Green Goblin
Doctor Octopus
Loki
Dr. Strange
Vision
Falcon
Quicksilver
Scarlet Witch
Returning characters: Spider-Man, Venom, Wolverine, Cyclops,
Storm, Rogue, Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, The Thing, Daredevil
Beast, Phoenix, Magneto, Dr. Doom, Mr. Fantastic, Invisible
Woman, Human Torch, She-Hulk, Ant-Man, Wasp, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Black
Panther, Silver Surfer
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