With over 600 different monsters in the Pokemon franchise, it is a wonder how Nintendo chooses which creatures become playable in the Super Smash Bros. series. Smash creator Masahiro Sakurai discussed this with NowGamer and gave us a look at the thought process behind how these decisions are made.
Sakurai explains that when choosing Pokemon for Super Smash Bros. games, the company analyzes such factors as which of them are currently in movies, what makes each one unique and more.
Below is what Masahiro said on the matter.
Well first of all, we talk with the Pokemon company. What’s the hot Pokemon? What Pokemon are in the movies right now? And really do a lot of research on that front.
For example, X and Y are coming out – of course, we haven’t done any market research because they’re not out yet, but we look at the animated series or movies and anything like that and again, find out which ones are going to be central to any of conversations in Pokemon going forward.
But it’s not just that – going back to just what we talked about, what’s unique about them? Where do they fit in with the rest of everything else? What do they have? It’s a combination of those things.
Sakurai also talked on the subject of bringing back all characters from the previous Smash installments. He states that there simply isn't enough time to recreate each character for the Wii U / 3DS games and that Nintendo will be putting as many fighters on the roster as possible.
I can answer that: no. We don’t have the time to fully recreate every single character who’s been in Smash Bros at this point.
Adding new characters is not a simple addition – it’s really multiplication. The amount of work, adding a character is multiplied and becomes bigger and bigger as you go. We can’t because of the amount of work it takes. However, I do believe I understand that each character has its own set of fans out there who really like that character.
So we’re not going to cut characters out of the way, we’re going to put in as many characters as we can, we really want to do that, because it's good for the fans and good for all of us. But in the event that we do have to cut some characters, I’d like to apologize in advance to those fans.
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If any characters do get cut it will probably end up being Lucario, Ike, Wolf, Toon Link, R.O.B., and the Pokemon Trainer
