When Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was revealed with the core premise of “everyone [being] here”, we were warned upfront by series creator, and director, Masahiro Sakurai, that new character additions for the game may be fewer this time around, given the monumental effort already needed to get all the existing characters in.
However, since then, we’ve seen a fair few new characters added anyway— Ridley, Simon Belmont, Richter Belmont, Dark Samus, Chrom, King K.Rool, and Isabelle. That might be us nearing the end of the list of newcomers, however, because Sakurai noted in his weekly column in Famitsu (translated by Siliconera) that the pace of new character announcements will probably slow down from here on out.
“We announced Isabelle in the Nintendo Direct,” Sakurai wrote in his Weekly Famitsu column. “… however, it would be a mistake to think that the new character announcements will keep going [at this pace] until Smash Bros. releases. We may have been a little trigger-happy so we’ll be living modestly from here on out.”
Which is fair, we’re already at a ridiculous number of characters. All I can hope for is that Rex and Pyra, from Nintendo’s Xenoblade Chronicles 2, manage to make it in. I really like those characters, and I feel like reps from the most successful game in one of Nintendo’s best new IPs, are basically essential in a Smash game.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate launches for Nintendo Switch on December 7.