After showing off the fact that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate would contain every single fighter from every past game, it seemed like perhaps there wasn’t all that much more to debut. But that was not the case, as Nintendo had a Direct today that they jammed full of information, including a number of reveals.
We’ll start with the most pressing additions, five new characters, two of which are truly new, three of which are “echo fighters,” which are clones of existing fighters, but with new looks and animations. So we have:
Simon Belmont: This was leaked yesterday thanks to Nintendo itself, but the Castlevania fighter is coming to Smash at last. He has his signature whip, which has a longer reach than any other base attack in the game, and special moves that involve his axe, cross and holy water.
Richter Belmont: Simon’s descendant is also his echo fighter. The Castlevania connection runs deeper than these two though, as there’s an entirely new stage, Dracula’s Castle, plagued by bosses from the series, including Dracula himself who only shows up under certain mystery conditions. Alucard appears as an assist trophy as well.
Chrom: This hotly requested fighter is coming to the game as an Echo of Roy I believe, not Ike like I originally thought.
Dark Samus: Another fan request, you might be able to guess who this is an echo of.
King K. Rool: The DK villain was saved as a final reveal for the very end in a short cinematic trailer. His animation looked…a tiny bit unfinished in his gameplay spot, but he seems like a good addition.
Elsewhere, Nintendo revealed that there are going to be 103 total stages in Smash Bros. Ultimate, more than any other game by far. Some older stages have been redesigned and updated, others have been left looking ancient on purpose like the N64 ones. There are also 800 music tracks in this game, sorted by series, and you can essentially listen to them like an iPod on your Switch on the go.
Nintendo showed off a 3v3 and 5v5 elimination mode, Squad Strikes, where players pick a set number of fighters and go through new ones as others are eliminated. Also, Classic Mode is the old school single player mode brought back where players will fight AI on specific stages under certain conditions. But it’s not a full “story” mode. Finally, there’s one new major mode that Nintendo actually blurred out onscreen and didn’t want to show off yet.
The event closed with some new assist trophies which included Krystal, Knuckles, Gray Fox and Shovel Knight, the last of which I know many people were hoping would be an actual fighter. They also reveal that Rathalos from Monster Hunter is showing up as both an assist trophy and an in-game boss. Then they closed with the K. Rool reveal I mentioned earlier.
A great show and a lot of information to process. I will be amazed if Nintendo can ever top this game with the sheer amount of stuff they’ve jammed inside it. Will it be balanced? Who knows, but it will certainly be fun. We’ll find out more this holiday.
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