Glen-i

I've been meaning to ask. Did the Direct tell us how the Mario stuff will be distributed?

It depends, were you laughing at the utter awfulness of it all, or did its attempt at humour actually land with you?

@Jonnas, I only have one very important question... Did you get the Broom Closet Ending? The Broom Closet Ending was my favourite!

Today, I make a rare trip to this thread to tell you all of a TV habit I've been following for the past 2 weeks thanks to lockdown. Normally, my TV schedule consists of leaving it on in the background whenever I play my Switch in handheld mode, but a while back, I was absentmindedly looking through my options when I saw that CBBC were showing Danger Mouse. Yeah, that really old cartoon that I discovered when I was a teenager. It's way older than I am though. Couldn't imagine that this was a regular thing, so I took the opportunity to watch it. It... wasn't what I was expecting... You see, I kinda forgot that they recently rebooted Danger Mouse. But you know what? I really enjoyed it! Genuinely had some laugh out loud moments ("Danger Mouse doesn't know the meaning of fear!" "Fee-arr? Is that French?") Pretty great voice acting choices as well, Alexander Armstrong, Stephen Fry and it's narrated by that guy who narrates 'Come Dine With Me'. So yeah, been routinely tuning in to CBBC to watch episodes of Danger Mouse. I'm 31 years old. My only issue is that CBBC never shows their programmes at the time they schedule because they keep chatting to random kids for too long! Times like this, I wish I had a decent connection so I could use iPlayer. If you lot do, you should give it a watch.

DAMN YOU, MORNING TIREDNESS!

I'm so tempted to make a joke about Sony copying Nintendo! But it's the morning and I can't think of anything remotely witty...

Whoever has the absolute cajones to wear that Goemon abomination deserves nothing but respect! And a better fashion sense.

The mechanics might not be as on the nose as Smash Remix, but Wario's Dash attack was changed to a shoulder barge.

Been a while since I tackled some 9.9's. Finally took the plunge on the latest two characters. Nailed the Sephiroth route on my first attempt! This Classic route is definitely one of my favourites, but it did come with a sour aftertaste knowing that a proper Boss Rush mode is so tantalisingly close! Let's not talk about how badly my Steve attempts went though. That route is a nightmare!

Toxtricity looks better when it's not shiny though... I'll give it a miss.

Man, I'm old...

Worth noting that Marth and Roy were almost cut from the Western release of Melee because everyone here would be like "Wait, who?" Lucas had the same issue for Smash Brawl, but they kept him in and now people won't stop asking for Mother 3. Those are prime examples of the power of the Smash effect. Even if it was a massive fluke. You know full well that WarioWare is already in there, and that Chibi-Robo isn't even remotely relevant. It is, but remember, characters like Duck Hunt Duo and Shulk were relatively niche picks for Smash 4 that were balanced out by more well-known choices such as Rosalina, Lucina and Greninja. It didn't matter if you didn't recognise someone, because there were bound to be others you did. But with the dawn of DLC additions, each of those characters now exist in their own kind of vacuum. When you purchase a new Smash Bros. game, you do so knowing that there's a large selection of new characters to try out and discover. But when you're buying a challenger pack, you're paying for that specific character and they don't have other characters they can fall back on if it falls flat. Some people have mentioned something along the lines of "Character X is a waste of a slot". Ignoring the fact that's a silly argument because slots don't exist and all the characters have already been decided upon before this pass was even revealed, this kind of mentality is reinforced because of the knowledge that as of now, there's 2 more characters left. This DLC pack needs to sell itself on it's own merits, it doesn't have the actual game to lean on, because they're sold separately, so big new IP's like Minecraft and Dragon Quest are choices that will sell more than niche picks such as Dillon and Chibi-Robo. Nintendo IP's do have more leniency because they don't need to pay for using their own characters, but money is still the driving factor, so using big successful Switch games like Xenoblade 2, FE: Three Houses and ARMS is the smart thing to do. It sucks, but it does make a lot of sense. Honestly, Ring Fit Adventure is the only Ninty IP I see having a shot in this pass. It all depends on how early it's success became apparent. (The recent spirit event does not fill me with hope there...) Anything less relevant and you're better off hoping for them to be included in the next entry. (Or a re-release of Ultimate)

Horrible, disgraceful mobile version of Chrono Trigger it is then! With extra loading for that authentic PS1 experience!

Unless it's Virtue's Last Reward.

So basically, Metroid Prime 4's development issues killed K. Rool's glorious return in a third DKC returns style game?

Careful now, some intended prequels assume the player knows details about the first game. You might end up spoiling yourself.

See, that's all well and good, but then you realise that Joy-Cons are your method of swinging and it all falls apart because my Joy-Cons are buggered because of that damn stick drift. Which means I don't really want to buy this version. My favourite Zelda game alongside Majora's Mask and I just don't want it.

Well, I mean, a character I'd want more than 95% of the current roster is a stupidly high bar for any character to clear. I will literally shiv Pikachu out of existence if I had to, Pichu's way better anyway. But you do have a point, in the majority of cases, a character from a fresh IP is way more exciting. The problem with that is, as far as Nintendo is concerned, what's left? ARMS, Ring Fit Adventure and Rhythm Heaven are the only IP's that are even remotely relevant and big these days. And it's DLC, so there's much more of an incentive to choose someone that will sell. Most Nintendo IP's that lack a character are even less known than Dillon's Rolling Western. The sad truth is that the only realistic chance for these more obscure IP's to get into Smash is in the base roster of a new game. Their unpopularity can be safely ignored because there'll no doubt be other bigger hitters alongside them.

Artwork done by the designer of Pyra and Mythra. Even they are using the Smash redesigns! It's been a while since we've seen this kind of thing. (Mario looking kinda funky though)

I wonder if he'd be singing the same tune if Fi got in...

Xenoblade 2 is the best selling game in the series. It was weird that it only had some spirits and 2 music rips, to be frank. And hey, at least they squeezed 2 characters into one slot. Which means we have 7 fighters in this pass instead of 6.

That's anime swordswomen to you. 2 characters for the price of one, and people still moan. No might about it. There are still 2 fighters to go. Think of how Zelda/Sheik worked in Smash Melee. Same thing. No guarantee that there'll be a third Fighter's Pass, @LazyBoy

I'm kinda concerned how they're gonna handle the Ghirahim fights with a stick...

Well, this is awkward... (Forgive the rubbish formatting and lack of mentions, I'm limited to my phone and it's too awkward to implement them) Pyra (Not Rex) correctly predicted by: @Dcubed Mythra (Not Rex) correctly predicted by: No-one Yes, they count as two separate characters. They're number 79 and 80 on the Smash site. Kinda like how Pokémon Trainer counts as three fighters. Who would've thought we'd get 7 characters in this pass? BTW, that means Smash Ultimate will have 30 characters that weren't in Smash 4 now! And that means everyone loses a point from the roster size penalty! A lot of people mentioned Pyra/Mythra as being part of a possible Rex moveset (including me), but that's not good enough. Only people who put them down as the actual character count. Special shout out to @Julius for this though. That's a big "Oof" right there. Sorry, I can't update the scores on my phone. Just look at the Steve post and subtract a point from everyone except Dcubed and that's the score so far.

Mario Golf: Poor Golf Course Etiquette looks great! Also, Bowser in golfing clothes just looks wrong. Then again, Bowser in clothes tends to look wrong anyway.