Glen-i

7th isn't in the middle of 17 people, you know. No, @Nintendo Fan gets that honour.

I mean, you went for Professor Yazoo Jr. Even in the context of 3 years ago, that was a long shot and a half!

Yup.

Well, here we are. The final stop on our prediction hype train and it's time for everyone to pay their fines for their awful choices. Bringing on uninvited passengers is not allowed, after all. Now obviously, I've already docked points for any characters that were relegated to Assist Trophies or Mii Costumes. No, this one last humiliation conga is for all the characters that were still in Limbo before the Smash door was thoroughly locked. He gets in, and then immediately makes sure no-one else can follow him. What a jerk! Release the Avalanche of Crushed Dreams! @Glen-i - Paper Mario, Dixie Kong, Yarn Poochy, Decidueye, Chorus Kids, Rayman (Minus 6) @markderoos - Rabbid, Qbby, Solaire (Minus 3) @Mandalore - Sami, Mia, Qbby, Kat & Ana, Ricky Winterborn, Professor Yazoo Jr, Rabbid Peach, Yooka & Laylee, Goose (Minus 9) @Jonnas - Twintelle, Dixie Kong, Decidueye, Captain Toad, Sami, Muddy Mole, Rayman (Minus 7) @Ugh first aid - Crash Bandicoot, Frisk, Wart, Cranky Kong, Decidueye, Marx, Porky (Minus 7) @Nintendo Fan - Fire Emblem Villain, Decidueye, Cranky Kong, Impa, Chun-Li, King Boo (Minus 6) @Fused King - Paper Mario, Professor Layton, Cranky Kong, Rayman, Captain Toad, Decidueye, Amaterasu (Minus 7) @Dcubed - Rayman, Chorus Kids (Minus 2) @RedShell - Tingle, Birdo, Drake Redcrest, Judd, Jimmy T, 9-Volt, Karate Joe, Ulala, Hatsune Miku, Kazuma Kiryu (Minus 10) @Julius - Decidueye, Captain Toad, Professor Layton, Rayman, Noctis (Minus 5) @Nicktendo - Ribbon Girl, Eevee, "Dapper" Bowser, Rabbid Peach, Qbby (Minus 4) @Vileplume2000 - Decidueye, Funky Kong, Olberic, Musashi, Solaire (Minus 5) @S.C.G - Paper Mario, Rick (Minus 2) @Ashley - Rick (Minus 1) Hah! 7 people, all guessing Decidueye. I wonder what idiot convinced them that was a good idea... Stupid Ivysaur... But here we go, the final results! 14th= Artmediocre, RedShell, bob, Ashley - Minus 30 points 13th - Aperson - Minus 28 points 10th= Nicktendo, Jonnas, mandalore - Minus 27 points (0 stages) 9th - Nintendo Fan - Minus 27 points (1 stage) 8th - Vileplume2000 - Minus 26 points 7th - Dcubed - Minus 25 points 6th - S.C.G - Minus 24 points (1 stage) 5th - Glen-i - Minus 24 points (2 stages) 4th - Ugh First Aid - Minus 21 points (0 stages) Sorry @Jonnas, you guessed way more than 3 stages for the tie breaker, so you're disqualified from that aspect. It was a close fought battle in the top 4! Almost non-existant gaps all round! In 3rd place, we have @markderoos, with minus 21 points and 1 stage prediction! His most spectacular prediciton was easily Banjo & Kazooie. See what blind faith can sometimes get you? Majestic! In 2nd place, we have @Julius, with Minus 20 points! He also guessed Banjo & Kazooie, but was just that little more accurate with his other guesses. Even if 5 of them turned out to be Assist Trophies. You should celebrate by actually playing Banjo-Kazooie when it gets released on NSO, you philistine! But the ultimate Human/Genius is @Fused King, with Minus 19 points! Unlike the other two, he didn't predict Banjo & Kazooie. Does that mean he truly won in the grand scheme of things? Yes, he did. Because he got more points then everyone else. And that's how you win. Boy, that went on a lot longer then anyone dared to imagine, huh? But we've arrived at the end of Ultimate's roster. 30 characters that weren't in the previous game. We've laughed, we've cried, we got angry at another Fire Emblem character even though it was painfully obvious it was going to happen and you really should've grabbed that easy point! But no matter how you feel about how off-base you were, there's no denying that Smash now has the greatest fighting game roster of all time, and I'm sure some of us will be Smashing each other's face in for years to come. Like me, tonight, at 8pm.

Hard to be too sad about this. Very problematic person. Crazy talented, though. I have a prickling feeling that future games aren't going to be able to use that iconic theme. It wouldn't surprise me if Sugiyama planned for that in some capacity that would stop Square Enix from even remixing it. He didn't even trust the Smash team with his songs, and then lumped them with MIDI's. He was way too over-protective with his compositions.

They're kinda nothing alike, so...

Well, this is awkward... Didn't expect it to be two sessions away... Uhhhh, so let's just do Time tonight, OK? 8pm.

Excellent post, @Sprout Thinking back on it all, the complete lack of a new Capcom franchise getting a playable character is probably the most surprising omission amongst Ultimate's newcomers. Now granted, Monster Hunter did get the hilarious Rathalos boss fight and assist trophy, but when that Mii costume made a return, it really did feel like the stars may have been starting to align up for the other blue bomber. All the bigger Capcom franchises had been taken out of the running (Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series!). I actually kinda feel a little bad about my standing on why Phoenix was the most likely Capcom candidate now. Now don't get me wrong. I stand by my argument that Ace Attorney was the biggest Capcom IP left in the running at that point. But maybe I shouldn't have pointed that out quite as much as I did. If it makes you feel any better, I'm a little sad that the 8th generation of Pokémon is likely to get skipped over now. Sword/Shield has some amazing designs that I would have loved to see in Smash! Unless they would've picked Cinderace, in that case, screw 8th Gen! On your point about the obvious lack of Disney. You say it's not on Smash, but I wonder how much of that is actually true? There's defo clear signs of Disney putting it's foot down. (The music including no remixes and it being almost all KH1 music is the biggest sign of that). I wouldn't be surprised if Ninty and Sakurai's negotiation team offered one of those temporary spirit things for Melody of Memory and Disney took the inch and ran a mile by demanding a music track instead. But I'm not entirely sure it's on Disney that Donald and his hilarious voice are missing in action. Sakurai has made his stance clear on characters like Iron Man. To him, Smash is about celebrating video games and video games only. So I think it's possible he just never bothered asking, because he never wanted Mickey and his friends showing up and blurring the video game/other media line. Of course, I have no actual definitive proof of this, just a gut feeling based on previous statements. Man, I would have loved to see those negotiations though. On the 50 pound Dearly Beloved topic. Now, I have happily dropped a couple of quid on a Mii costume purely for the music multiple times (Shantae, Undertale and Cuphead totally deserve it), but even I have to draw the line at buying a whole game for one track! A shame too, because the original Dearly Beloved would not fit Smash at all! But the swing version definitely would work for Smash... That said, I bought Melody of Memory ages ago, it's a fun game, and I would recommend it if you like Rhythm games. And while I have misgivings about locking a track behind an entire game, a little part of me wishes PMD: Rescue Team DX could get some songs in there through a similar method. EDIT: I forgot that the Kingdom Hearts 2 forms involve Sora doing a fusion thing with Donald/Goofy. Clever! OK, LAST EDIT, I PROMISE:

Many, many reasons why I despise this game. I went over them in my Throwback Thursday article, but the short version is: - The "Attack" and "Defense" stat actually denote Accuracy and Evasion. Not only is this grossly misleading, it also means Attack is completely useless because it only affects the standard attack, which is absolutely rubbish and should never be used. If you put the bonus points into attack, you've just wasted a precious level up. - Because the standard attack is pointless, you rely on Power Moves the entire game. Which makes it a real pain that no character will ever get more then 20 PP in this game. Even in the last dungeon, you'll burn through your entire reserves in one fight. This forces you to waste turns defending or waste all your items. - Currency is severely limited. They're finite in the overworld and you get none from winning fights. Which means you have to sell all the crap you no doubt need to keep your PP up. - Lots of RPG's have 1 or 2 party members that aren't very good. Sonic Chronicles has 8 out of 11 of its characters be rubbish. The 3 who are of any use include 1 who buggers off halfway through the game and 2 optional characters who are permanently missable. - The above point wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the sections that force you to split everyone up into 2 teams. This includes the final dungeon. The team that can't have Cream is going to have a really miserable time! - If your level is too high, the experience points you get from fights gets drastically reduced. I hate it when RPG's do this. - The depth of the overworld is non-existent, which makes some areas unnecessarily difficult to navigate. - The soundtrack is utterly woeful, which is absolutely blasphemous in a Sonic game.

You're damn right I'm posting the Smash selection of Kingdom Hearts songs here! I've got some criticisms here. The complete absence of any remixes and the heavy focus on the first game (No doubt Disney had a hand in that). But even with that in mind, it's a solid selection! Night of Fate is the only real dud, I'd say, the rest of the songs range from "pretty decent" to "Holy crap, Destati! Calm the eff down!" A good mix of upbeat, somber, and epic going on here. Dearly Beloved: Swing Edition is also a fave of mine, pity about it being locked behind owning Melody of Memory. Maybe you could get around it by having save data from the demo instead.

PSA for everyone trying to avoid all trailers of Dread! Smash Bros Ultimate is having a Spirit Event for Dread this weekend. Samus and E.M.M.I are two of the spirits, but there's a third one of something that wasn't in the initial reveal trailer. So if you don't care about collecting Spirits, it might be wise to just close your eyes if you boot up Smash, and mash A to get past the notification pop-up until you get to the main menu.

Hey, they made the rhythm game spin-off canon, don't see why Smash Ultimate can't get in on that confusing mess! Half expecting his Classic Mode to end with a sudden conversation with Yen Sid about light and darkness and how Galeem and Dharkon embody it! Also... I can see no faults with that argument. EDIT: @markderoos, there's a Metroid Dread Spirit Event coming this weekend. Fair warning though, there's one spirit of something that wasn't shown in the reveal trailer for Dread. So, if you've been avoiding every trailer after that initial one, like me, be careful of spoilers. You wouldn't want to let curiosity or OCD get the better of you, like me...

In an ideal world, but I'm afraid Facebook is so monopolistic as far as social media goes, small companies don't really have much of a choice...

The final character is still very fresh, so I'm gonna avoid mentioning people in this post to avoid spoiling it for people who haven't had the chance to see it yet. But, I have to acknowledge this absolutely shocking landmark in Smash. Sora correctly predicted by: No-one, I switched to Desktop mode for nothing! Real talk, I'm not surprised. Just goes to show how amazing it is that Ninty pulled off the Disney Deal at all! The miracle game ending with one more miraculous character is the most fitting way for Ultimate to finish, really. Now, I'm sure you're all eager to find out who won, but it's gonna have to wait until Thursday, when I'm not trying to do everything on my phone.

Ah, but that was your mistake. Sora's Disney, not Square. Man, it's gonna be surreal seeing Nintendo, Microsoft and Disney on the copyright list on the title screen.

Don't worry, I plan on telling @Dcubed my actual votes very soon, so I can't pull shenanigans by just choosing at the last minute. Anyway, discussion about trailers. Seems appropriate to start with the latest. Not gonna lie, seeing the flaming Smash logo go out and the cuts between various characters standing stock still hit me harder then I expected. It really has been a trip and a half, following Ultimate's journey, and the use of that Kingdom Hearts song really helped to extentuate the bittersweet trailer. Whether or not it's the best one, there's no denying the tone of the whole thing was really on point.

Don't worry, I'm working on it. But on my phone, and with iffy internet, so it might take a while.

If you played Kingdom Hearts, you'd know. It's actually called the "Kingdom Key" EDIT: If you don't like the "anime" aspect of him... Well, you're covered! The different facial expressions are such a nice touch! I thought I'd only ever choose the original outfit, but that one is really tempting. Would make a fun tag team with Cuphead Mii costume!

It's a club, dude. What kind of sword has a spherical edge? Also, it's Disney! DISNEY! In Smash! That's nuts! It's a landmark moment for the series rivaling Banjo, Snake and Steve! Some of you guys are on shrooms if you think that Sora isn't one of the biggest gets in Smash history! Anyway, he looks mad effective in keeping opponents off the stage. Which worries me, @Sprout is already good at that already! Almost everything about the character is really exciting, the extensive costumes (KH1 fits Smash the best, but old-school Disney style is very welcome), his animations, it all goes to show how lovingly crafted everyone in Smash is. But Sora definitely got some special treatment there. I'm actually kinda OK with the almost no Disney stuff. Honestly, I'm amazed they didn't swap out the Mickey Logo with a Smash one. But the main reason is because you don't want to open the "non-video game" character door. You don't want the Goku nutjobs to actually have a leg to stand on!

Let's face it, most of us were shocked it took until the second last character in this to get a second Namco rep! Anyway, less then 5 minutes. I have to watch it on my phone, so see you on the other side!

As soon as said game is actually officially revealed, then yeah.

Ah, @Sprout showed up? Now it's a character reveal! For what it's worth, @Cube. Steve is one of the most technically impressive characters in Smash history. The sheer amount of behind the scenes shenanigans going on with him serves to make him truly unique. This does come with the side effect of making him one of the more difficult characters to master thanks to the resource management. It might be worth joining in a N-E session and seeing how the other characters play if you can.

The little subplots that each town has are a real step up from the first game. A lot more interesting on that front. Chapter 3 was a particular favourite of mine.

Is this the first non-Nintendo theme for this game? Naturally, we now need Tetrimino armour in Monster Hunter Rise.

Annnnnnd, that's 2 "Cranky"s. Game over. I don't expect that to happen here. Next console port that includes the DLC? Sure. But it's not happening on the Switch. No matter what the character is, a little part of me is still hoping for a Boss Rush. It's an easy to implement mode that would add quite a bit to the single player aspect. (Co-op compatible, naturally) The bosses in Ultimate are great fun and it'd be nice to access them in a relatively quick way with any character.