Sakurai on ending Smash Bros. DLC, wanting to appeal to all players

Mewtwo

Mewtwo was very popular and had many requests among the old fighters not appearing in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U/3DS. But it was hard to include him in the vanilla game. When adding DLC, we decided on Mewtwo to be the first as he’s a very effective returning fighter.

The concept for Mewtwo is “Strong but Nimble”. His weakness is that he takes lots of damage from a hit. And for his Final Smash, I think it can’t be depicted with Psychic moves. During his Psystrike which we have decided [to be Mewtwo’s Final Smash], we want it to have a shocking and relentless attack animation, like running thundershocks on opponent’s heads. There was a limit on that to keep it within CERO’s all-ages rating though, so we did our best within that limit.

We only included Mega Mewtwo Y here, because the power-oriented X version wouldn’t fit his Super Smash Bros. concept. It wouldn’t be really game-breaking if you could pummel with such raw power, but it’s just because Mewtwo in Super Smash Bros. isn’t really that kind of fighter.

Lucas

Lucas and Roy are the next most popular after Mewtwo. If we were to make a total of three characters return then obviously it would be these three. Lucas retains his characteristics from Super Smash Bros. Brawl. But he was originally underlayed from Ness, so from the beginning we made him as a derivative from Ness. To distinguish him from Ness, we made him to have strong single-hit attacks but with huge gaps.

His color variations had more T-shirts with motifs of the likes of Pony and Drago, but these weren’t Sakurai’s own design but rather ideas from other staffs. His final Final Smash was changed from Super Smash Bros. Brawl (dropping a single meteor) because of the limitations in the 3DS version. So they had to change it with dropping multiple meteors but with a single effect so it won’t feel different. And they also ended up changing its abilities.

Roy

As in Super Smash Bros. Melee, he’s a Fire Emblem character who’s stronger at close range. At that time Marth was a bit stronger than him, which is why we gave buffs to Roy here.

If Marth was mostly ported as-is from Melee with some parameter changes, Roy was instead given a huge overhaul in his motions, like giving him more moves with reverse grip which gives the impression that he’s strong at close range.

If we look at his design in Melee now, it does feel old (Sakurai laughs), so that’s why we needed to include a more modern interpretation. But we also had trouble in making the new design. [The original concept is that] he’s a fantasy-themed swordsman, but in the middle the design became more like a character from the Tales of series (laughs). Perhaps because the design modeler also has some experience with Tales of games (laughs). The original Fire Emblem staff also have more tendency towards ‘side story-like’ designs, so the designer hesitated at first. We need to keep the balance because if we overdo it people wouldn’t recognize him.

Considering that Super Smash Bros. Melee was released even before Fire Emblem: Binding Blade in Japan and Roy already appeared in Melee, if we don’t make Roy like his image in Melee, he would be unrecognizable, so we didn’t consider Binding Blade when making him. The full-moon slash for his final Final Smash was referred from the actual Fire Emblem game, but the rest of them are unique to Super Smash Bros.’s Roy. That’s why he’s more energetic than in the original Fire Emblem game. (laughs)

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