NDA is finally over on Smash Ultimate, so its safe to talk about some early changes from pre & post launch. Let’s start.
>Link: Link was originally his Twilight Princess incarnation before the switch to BOTW. He’s the last character to have his model completely changed, and uses a modified BOTW model as a base.
>Ganondorf: He still used his old Smash Attacks until late 2017. When asked why a lot of people wanted it, we just said “it’d be pretty cool”. In the end they agreed.
>Pokémon Trainer: There was actually an option to individually select the Pokémon without the swap mechanic. However, there was no replacement down b except for Charizard. The idea was scrapped due to wanting to keep the three together.
>Ken: Ken was actually considered separate from Ryu until the very end of development. He was one of the first characters picked. He only got the notation of being an Echo after the name was pitched. He would’ve been before Incineroar on the CSS.
>Chrom & Dark Samus: Chrom is the very last character added to the game. In playtests, he still even used Roy’s recovery, just without the fire. Dark Samus was added as one of the last Echoes as well, and it used to walk like Samus.
>Assists: There were actually placeholders for Bomberman and Akira in the debug menu under fighters instead of the Assist Trophy commands, but they were never playable. Talk flew around that they were in the works as characters, but for one reason or another, neither made it.
>This is funny, but Incineroar used an edited version of DK’s model for a bit in early early testing. Everyone thought the Alolan Whip on DK was hilarious.
>Piranha Plant: The Plant was base, and the testing team thought he was hilarious and fun. His animations were the biggest issue though, being buggy until around November.
>Capcom: There were rumblings of a fourth Capcom character, but no one actually knew who it was. People heard Jill Valentine and Monster Hunter the most.
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>Yoshi: Yoshi’s original Final Smash change was actually a suped up version of the Super Dragon, but was changed to the Melee opening at the request of the us. The devs loved the idea.
>Luigi: Everyone saw the new Poltergust and knew. We weren’t told about Luigi’s Mansion 3, but we knew seeing it. They were adamant we couldn’t say a word.
>Ridley: The glide animations was actually usable in the dev build. Meta Knight, The Pits & Charizard weren’t able to use them, but Ridley was. It was taken out shortly after.
>Isaac: Isaac was never going to be a character. In fact, after the final Direct pre launch, Nintendo was shocked at the amount of demand there was for him. The American branch specifically got a lot of angry calls.
Shadow: Same as the above. SEGA seems to only have been contacted regarding playable Sonic, Bayonetta & Akira.
>Byleth: Here’s an interesting one that’ll definitely piss everyone off. Byleth was a base roster character. Production on Byleth halted when Three Houses was delayed. He initially was just using the Sword of the Creator and used Marth in testing. The only original remnants that made it through was his his dash attack.
>Bonus Stage: The race to the finish in Classic Mode was actually going to have more variants, as it was datamined. They would change based on difficulty. The default in the base game is what was considered “Easy”.
>Training Mode: A lot of the features added were actually dev debug tools. It was added to the main game at the request of the team, to help new players understand the mechanics more.
>Mii Costumes: Every costume that was previously in Smash 4’s DLC was accessible to us, but they were DLC due to contractual obligation by the third party companies.
>Joker: We didn’t know about him at all. His codename wasn’t even in our builds. We were all as surprised as national audiences were on launch night.
Was sega aware that people wanted a second sonic rep. Did they ever bring up a 2nd sonic rep to Nintendo or is there some weird mandate that sega has banned any other sonic characters from majorly appearing in other titles that’s not theirs
We never really heard anything past Sonic being a hassle to change. If its any indication through Shadow, then Nintendo probably didn’t ask about other characters like Tails or Eggman.
>Joker: We didn’t know about him at all. His codename wasn’t even in our builds. We were all as surprised as national audiences were on launch night.
this is joe isn't it
I knew Joe seemed different!
>Byleth
you overreached
>shadow
REEERAAAAHH Idiots!
meds
I got the red pill yesterday, don't worry
>Daisy: Daisy actually had Peach’s Melee-For animations, but considering how similar they were, they were ultimately just changed to mimic Ultimate Peach 1:1.
>Cut Stage: The only stage that we played in the build but was scrapped was Mute City Melee. It was a 1:1 rip from the game, and the devs felt like it overlapped too much with what we had already had. Sorry guys.
>Pac-Maze: This wasn’t in any build. We did ask why it wasn’t in, it was only the Ghosts. The testing team really did not like Pac-Land.
>Master Hand Mode: The section in World of Light was actually going to be replayable in single player, but it was never integrated. The team loved it though. Just basic time/score attack.
>Before you ask, yes, a lot of our feedback about other character changes were reviewed. The most infamous one was actually Sonic. They wouldn’t budge on it, not because of Sakurai or the devs, but SEGA themselves. We really pushed hard for attacks from Battle and the Boost, but their hands were tied.
>There was actually a rather funny exchange between us and the devs. When we saw the three Links, someone on the team proposed Dark Link as a separate character. Our rep found it really amusing and said “next time”.
>Cut Colors: Fire Mario was the biggest loss. We actually did use it until early 2018. We tried convincing the team about adding more color spots, but they told us they couldn’t for one reason or another. Came down to needing 3rd Party approval for their characters, since they wanted everyone to have the same amount.
Fire Mario was effectively erased for some reason, it didn't even appear in Odyssey.
It came down to Fire Mario & Mario’s Wario color looking to visually similar to Tuxedo & Builder colors. People didn’t mind Builder, but we were sad seeing Fire Mario go.
>referencing the Switch games ruined my favorite 64 Smash character (Link) and got my favorite Mario alt removed
Thanks I hate it
If the NDA is over, why post this anonymously with no evidence?
We couldn’t take photos of builds. After the Ken Leak, anything that could lead to visual documentation like phones were confiscated. Unfortunately, that’s how we took most notes at that point.
Were there any more stages changed/cut over the course of development?
No, everything in Ultimate that was there was planned from the start. New Donk was one of the last stages implemented however. The builds we played actually had different stages each time, about 30 or so to test out an array of variables with. Items, characters, modes, music, colors, etc. all had to be meticulously tested to ensure nothing broke the game.
I notice on that old Ken leak, Ivysaur doesn't have a trainer nearby
was there anything to that?
No, that was actually from one of the later builds. Trainer was just off screen.
I almost forgot to mention this as well, but around the game’s pre launch cycle, everyone was caught off guard by Dante suddenly shooting up in popularity. Obviously we couldn’t dispute the claims of his inclusion, but it got people talking around the DMCV leaks. The rep we had with us actually mentioned how shocked everyone in the dev team was about the sudden rise in popularity. Once DLC started (after Plant), most of us were let go. But if there’s anything I can tell you about that Mii Costume, its that its best to keep an eye out for next time. They’re listening.
aren't we going to the tesseract?
on the topic of what you said about Ken, it lines up similarly to speculation I had with a friend that the Ryu DLC deal in Sm4sh was also them getting the rights to Ken
seeing how the only other content in Ryu's Sm4sh DLC pack were different versions of Ken's theme and a Ken trophy
The idea he was around before they even considered echo fighters makes a lot of sense to me
yeah sure i believe you op, no sarcasm
cool thread
High rise jeans were a mistake
Any word on Smash 6?
If there is one, chances are it probably started awhile ago.
What was with the lack of Mario rog music from the paper Mario series and the Mario and Luigi series. There’s so little tracks from both sides and none of the good tracks outside of in the final never made it in.
Also was Nintendo against using paper Mario or Mario & Luigi reps. If so, why
I don’t know. It wasn’t really something the testing team thought about much. Nintendo owns the music for Mario & Luigi however, so its a mystery.
WHY DID YOU NERF MAC'S AIR SIDE-B????
>People heard Jill Valentine and Monster Hunter the most
DMCbros, not like this...
Funnily enough, when the Resident Evil spirit event happened, a lot of us were shocked because of those circulating rumors. When the Monster Hunter armor finally came back, we figured it was all probably baseless by that point.
We still don’t know if that 4th Capcom character held weight, but considering how popular Dante became, I wouldn’t worry too much in the way of competition in the next game.
>tfw have to go on Ganker to get an update from your supervisor
What's funny is Kae added me out of nowhere when I didn't even remember him. It makes a LOT more sense now. Let myself be a cautionary tale not to add random friends on Steam!
What?
There were three of us?
Howdy partner.
So, what, you guy(s) are QA or with BamCo? Regardless, all of this sounds believable.
What were the internal reactions to the fake Grinch and Doomguy leaks?
Mix of both Treehouse and Bandai Namco guys, although the latter were more involved directly with development.
Funnily enough, we weren’t sure of the Cacodemon & Mallow leaks ourselves, since most of us got let go by that point. Cosmic how Doom Slayer made the lineup however.
Makes sense. I get the impression that the development team is pretty gung-ho about getting 3rd party IPs into the games, but it's often the bureaucracy of it that ends up either dissuading or directly preventing them from doing so.
Were there any concerns about certain characters being poorly balanced at release? I'm surprised that ROB and Pikachu were never nerfed despite being very obviously powerful base roster fighters.
There were some things that slipped through the cracks. Funnily enough, we didn’t see Pikachu as a problem. It was mostly making sure certain moves wouldn’t break the game and functioned properly. Character specific nerfs and buffs came a bit after. A lot of us regret not buffing Ganondorf.
>It was mostly making sure certain moves wouldn’t break the game and functioned properly
I still miss Wectoring
How far in advance were the DLC characters planned?
You said that Byleth was originally base roster, so was FP1just going to have 4 fighters? Did the success of FP1 affect FP2 at all?
Like I said before, we didn’t see Joker in our build at all. Once the game went gold, it seems he started early development by late November. Params for Hero were also at launch, so we found out about the same time as you all did. Byleth is the only one we knew that was probably going to happen if he wasn’t scrapped.
Were you testing Pyra/Mythra too?
>Chrom is the very last character added to the game
Gonna call bull on this, the internal list of spirits has Chrom in the initial lineup between Roy and Ike (indicating that he was planned to be an echo fighter at that point) whereas Richter is listed in the non-playable Castlevania spirits, implying he wasn't at that point.
Richter was originally just a costume for Simon in a similar vein to the Koopalings, but changed to an Echo around the same time Ken was. His idles, taunts and holy water were the justification for the change.
Why are there a lot of Mii costumes not dyeable? I can understand those owned by third parties, but what about the ones owned by Nintendo?
Possibly texture work. Seems after Bomberman’s Mii, they might have started to experiment with that more.
>Charizard almost got to keep his rock-smash, other two almost got the same
For frick's sake I just wanted them to be good.
This wasn’t something that lasted long. Rock Smash was just a remnant of the transition from the previous game. It was merely for testing purposes in the end.
Was Chun LI in at some point?
Was Waluigi ever considered?
Why was the Online so terrible?
Was a third fighter pass ever considered?
No, no, it came down to the infrastructure of Smash itself, and once again, past knowing Byleth was an eventuality, we knew nothing of the DLC plans.
Did you ever at least meet any of the Japanese staff in person or was it all outsourced work?
Any stories about Banjo, Microsoft or Geno?
Sure, I believe it. None of this sounds far fetched. Who is "us" though?
Why make shit up?
I can’t think of anything more sad than someone wasting their time making up something about a video game and proceeds to write this shit.