Majestic Twelve: Worst Fighters of Smash Bros.

Smash Bros 3DS launches tomorrow for us Americans and to celebrate, we’re continuing out Majestic Twelve Tribute to the franchise with the WORST characters of the series. Much like our last post, this isn’t solely based on competitive play, but what characters I personally find fun, unique, or interesting (or in this case, a lack of these three traits). With that said, let’s see what the worst characters from the series to date:

#12 – Luigi (N64) – Luigi is a character I kind of feel sorry for. He’s not really bad, just uninspired. Before “clone-characters” became that big a deal, he was the original clone character who had a good bulk of Mario’s moves, albeit weaker. Luigi would eventually grow to distance himself from this brother and sport a more specialized moveset, especially when Brawl comes around. But the fact it took so long to even get a little difference from his brother is disappointing. Luigi is capable of being so much more, especially now that he has TWO Luigi’s Mansion titles under his belt with hopefully more along the way. And, no, this isn’t me being a bitter Waluigi fan. I genuinely think Luigi is capable of being a stellar character but Nintendo needs to step up their game to make him better.

#11 – Ice Climbers (Melee) – In some ways, I like the Ice Climbers. They’re unique in a way that no other character has truly captured (Rosalina will be close in the new Smash 4). But aside from her, no other character consists of two individuals fighting together. That being said, this uniqueness has several weaknesses. For starters, you need both Ice Climbers alive at all times to make full use of the character, otherwise half your attacks lose a bulk of effectiveness and you can’t recover nearly as far. Second, even with both, sometimes the AI of your partner will get tripped up and not do what she needs to be doing to make your combo or plan of attack as successful or damaging as you’d like it to be. I get there are players who have figured the ins and outs of this AI and the quirks of the character enough to make playing as the Ice Climbers good. I am just not one of those people.

#10 – Meta Knight (Brawl) – Another decision that’s somewhat personal. Meta Knight is on here for a lot of obvious reasons. He’s very spam heavy, especially with novice players or a skilled player that just wants to be a dick, making fighting Meta Knight not as fun as fighting other characters. Additionally, he’s also banned in many tournaments for being “too good”. This adds another layer of frustration when fighting Meta Knight against anyone with any degree of skill because, again, it just isn’t as fun when they’re always winning because the character functions just that much better. Thankfully, he’ll be nerfed a bit in Smash 4 and may find his way off this list if that’s the case. And I hope so because I do like the character Meta Knight. As a Smash Fighter, he just frustrates me.

#09 – Dr. Mario (Melee) – A controversial pick, I’m sure, as many people simply love Dr. Mario and there are facts to prove that he is functionally better than the basic Mario. And while you can throw those facts and threaten me all you want, it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t get why Dr. Mario is even really a character. This isn’t an anti-clone thing. This is just simple logic. Dr. Mario IS Mario. It’s as simple as just putting a coat on him and removing his hat. Dr. Mario should have been (from the very get-go) just an alternate costume for the character that modulates his abilities slightly like they already do. Instead, we’ve got a literal clone of Mario posing as a doctor on the battlefield and that’s just never made any sense to me. If you like him, fine. But I just never really saw the point in him.

#08 – Diddy Kong (Brawl) – Again, another character that, on paper, I was happy to have in the game because he seemed like a fun and long-overdue edition to the game. Problems? First, the banana peels. Not being a fan of tripping, the moment these bananas slip onto the stage, it brings out the worst in that mechanic, especially with how long the banana peels seem to last (in Brawl at least). His recovery also isn’t that great either (but neither is DK’s so I guess that’s not as big a deal). My last issue is that while Diddy is great, it seems a shame we also couldn’t get a Dixie Kong alternate skin for Diddy Kong. Especially in Smash 4 when we have alternate Bowser Jr outfits for all the Koopa Kids or alternate captains over Olimar. Come on, Sakurai.

#07 – Toon Link (Brawl) – Not necessarily an anti-clone thing (again) but a confusing question. Why? We already had a Link clone in the ways of Young Link, and we were okay with him. Granted, he should have had more Majora’s Mask stuff with him (like transformations into his Goron, Deku, and Zora forms). But Young Link was just fine otherwise. Toon Link rolls in then and does almost nothing different except be more floaty… in a game that was all around more floaty. And, you know what, I have nothing against Toon Link as a concept. But given how the Zelda series works, I believe there should just be one Link the in game and it is the one that most represents the series at the time the Smash Bros entry is released. So for the original, Link from Ocarina of Time, which is what we got. From Melee, either Link from Majora’s Mask or Wind Waker. From Brawl, either Wind Waker or Twilight Princess. And for the new one, probably just Skyward Sword or the new WiiU one if there’s enough info on it. I can understand why they might not do this, but I’d rather a different Link every time based on the current main game rather than two of these little bastards running around yelling “Hya!”.

#06 – Fox (Brawl) – Yes, I know it seems contradictive to put Fox on both lists. But before you scroll down to the comments to say I’m a hypocrite, I want to point out the obvious fact to anyone who has played Smash Bros and the multiple games within the franchise. Brawl’s Fox McCloud clearly plays different in comparison to how he plays in earlier versions of the series. As I mentioned in my “Best Characters” post on Tuesday, Fox was severely nerfed in Brawl in a lot of ways. And while I never wasted my time trying to be a wavedashing L-cancelling expert in Melee, I had grown somewhat decent with Fox and liked playing as him. But when he was nerfed to a point where playing as him just sucked, yeah, I got reasonably upset by these changes. As such, Fox will be the unique character that has an entry on both lists because we have Fox in the earlier games and then we have post-lobotomization Brawl­-Fox.

#05 – Game & Watch (Melee) – Game & Watch is a character I’ll pick up now and again to do a round of Stupid Smash in which my mates and I just throw bacon at each other or constantly spam the random hammer to see who KO’s who first. In short, he’s a character none of us waste time playing seriously because he just isn’t that great to play. His movements are stiff and awkward. His attacks are all somewhat bizarre and unorthodox. He, visually, he’s just kind of meh. How he wasn’t cut sooner (or at all) is a shock to me, but he’s still kicking after three games with no signs of leaving yet.

#04 – ROB (Brawl) – Another character who I’m surprised wasn’t cut after Brawl, ROB is another character with awkward movements and his only claims to fame are rocket boosts and LASER BEAMS. My issue with ROB lies mostly in the laser beams, as in our group of friends, we have one that will constantly get far away and spam laser beams from a distance. His argument was always “that’s how you’re supposed to play him. He has ranged lasers, so you use them.” My opinion has always been that if you think there’s only one way to play the character well, then perhaps he’s just not that good or versatile of a character. Granted, we’re not professional smashers, but that doesn’t change the fact that I grew REALLY tired of ROB-Spam-Sandwiches really fast.

#03 – Pokemon Trainer – Ivysaur (Brawl) – Pokemon Trainer was a unique case in that, much like Zelda or even Samus, the Pokemon trainer had a “transformation” mechanic as well. This allowed you to “transform” into one of three different Pokemon. The conceit was they all functioned with a stamina mechanic that would make the Pokemon become weak or worn down during battles if you didn’t swap often enough (which never really seemed all that noticeable). You had Squirtle, Ivysaur, and Charizard as your three options for Pokemon. Squirtle was the weakest but fastest of the three. Charizard was the slowest, but most powerful and could fly. Ivysaur was the middle child and, as such, never really felt special in a lot of ways. Mods gave him SOME advantages, but none of which felt all that helpful or even consistent like his spores that would put people to sleep. Additionally, his recovery wasn’t as strong as the others and while he was a middle-size character, he always felt slower than the average middle-size character. Not to mention that, in comparison to Bulbasaur or Venusaur, Ivysaur always seemed like a somewhat lame evolution in this chain. But I guess the same is true for Wartortle… Charmeleon will always be cool though.

#02 – Lucas (Brawl) – I never liked Lucas. I didn’t like him when he acted like a total coward in Brawl’s story mode, Subspace Emissary. I didn’t like him in the fights when he had pretty much been a total clone of Ness. Again, not trying to beat the anti-clone drum, but Earthbound/Mother games are fairly big and diverse RPGs with lots of different types of attacks, PSI powers and abilities to use. It seems like an embarrassing fact to admit that you can only think of four or five useful moves from those games to use for the attacks for fighters from those games. The worst part is that most of the moves either Ness or Lucas use aren’t even moves THEY use in the game. Most of them belong to companions you meet during your adventures. So why couldn’t Nintendo or Sakurai pick moves that better represented Lucas or Ness? Especially because doing so for Lucas would have also de-cloned him and maybe even allowed ONE of them to have a halfway decent recovery move.

#01 – Pichu (Melee) – This one should have been fairly obvious. For as fast and interesting as he could be, the fact that Sakurai decided to make Pichu “true to form from the anime/Pokedex entires” by having the electric attacks actualy damge Pichu when he uses them is a decision that will always hurt this character. There are plenty of non-special attacks that utilize electric damage, and they’re all good, fast, and surprisingly powerful attacks for this little guy. But it doesn’t help a character who’s so small, frail, and lightweight is damaging himself and making it even easier for ANYONE to just knock him out with only a few hits. While the Pichu-evolution didn’t work out for Smash Bros, I have my fingers crossed we’ll at least get a shot of seeing Raichu sometime in the future (but probably not).

And that’s my list for the WORST characters of the Super Smash Bros series. Hope you enjoy the release of the new game tomorrow. I know I’ll be enjoying it along with the premier of Legend of Korra Book 4: Balance. No, there will not be another post for Legend of Korra until the season ends as we’ve had LOTS of posts about Legend of Korra this summer (somewhat unintentionally). Instead, we’re probably going to get a post set for another upcoming game later in October, Bayonetta 2. What will it be? I guess you’ll have to tune in to find out. See ya next time.