Super Smash Bros. for Wii U screenshot (5/15/14)

Today’s screenshot gives us a look at a particularly odd Assist Trophy. I don’t think anybody could have seen this one coming:

The unexpected Assist Trophy, the TV-Game 15! Color TV-Game 15 is a home entertainment system that was released in 1977 in Japan before the release of Space Invaders. This is the oldest game to join the Smash Bros. series.

Sakurai even doubled down on explanations:

Normally, controllers for these types of games had knobs with variable resistors–these allowed the players to control in-game movement by how far they twisted the knobs. The TV-Game 15 used microswitches instead. We’ve worked a little too hard to reenact the behavior of the original, so the paddles always move in linear paths with the same, consistent speed. We pay attention to such peculiar details!