The days ofSuper Smash Bros. UltimateDLCs have come to a close. On October 5th,Super Smash Bros. Ultimatedirector Masahiro Sakurai officially revealed the game’s last guest characters: Sora, the main protagonist of Square Enix and Disney’sKingdom Heartsseries. Sora is a fitting conclusion toSmash Ultimate’s DLC run because tons ofKingdom Heartsfans have spent years expressing their hope that he’d make the cut and joinSmash.After watching iconic figures join the latest game one by one,Kingdom Heartsfans may have thought that the sun was setting on Sora’s chances, but it turns out their support for Sora mattered after all. In fact, Sakurai said so.
While explaining Nintendo’s decision to put Sora inSmash Ultimate,Sakurai mentioned that Sora was the winner of aSmashballot that Nintendo ran in 2015 to determine the last DLC character for the fourthSmashgame. As old as that ballot was, it seems Nintendo held onto the data and used it to informits DLC choices forSmash Ultimate.ThoseSmashfans who got into the series throughUltimatemay not know about or remember theSmashballot, so it’s worth revisiting. It’s an interesting part ofSmashhistory that apparently affects the series today, and could continue to be impactful in the future.
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The History of the Smash Ballot
Super Smash Bros.for Nintendo 3DS and Wii Uwere the first games in the series to have DLC guest characters, expanding the playable roster after the launch of the game. The DLCs added some great characters,generatingSuper Smash Bros. Meleenostalgiavia Mewtwo and Roy and making exciting new additions such as Cloud Strife. For the last character, however, Nintendo wanted to hear what fans were interested in. In April 2015, it opened up a public poll on theSuper Smash Bros.website where players could enter any character they liked for several months. In the end, Nintendo would pick a winner among the candidates, then put them inSmash.
Although Masahiro Sakurai and the late Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata didn’t reveal the entirety of the poll’s results, they explained toSmashfans that Nintendo carefully weighed each character based on how realistically they could be licensed and designed forSmash.At the end of the ballot,the winner was PlatinumGames' Bayonetta, who was apparently the most requested character in Europe, as well as a leader in North America. In other words, while Bayonetta wasn’t necessarily the overall winner of theSmashballot, she was the most practical and realistic character out of all the top candidates, making her the idealSmashguest.
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For years afterward, fans were left to speculate who exactly had been the true numerical winner of theSmashballot. Now the mystery is solved. While introducing Sora as aSmash UltimateDLC, Sakurai confirmed that Sora was theSmashballot’s overall winner. It seems he just wasn’t practical to adapt forSmashin 2015, but luckily forKingdom Heartsfans, he was on the table forSmash Ultimate.It may have been six years sinceKingdom Heartsfans voiced their support for Sora, but those requests still counted in the end.
The Smash Ballot’s Final Contribution
As great as it is thatKingdom Heartsfans had their voices heard, however, this should probably be theSmashballot’s last impact on the series. The data may have been extremely valuable in 2015, but it’s starting to get a little outdated. There are all kinds of newer characters who would make fantastic guests, from Aloy to Zagreus, but there’s simply no data for their games in the originalSmashfighter ballot.If Nintendo makes anotherSmashgame, its guest choices should be based on newer data to ensure that the gaming industry’s freshest faces get some representation inSmashtoo. After all, the originalSmashfighter ballot just got the perfect sendoff: its true winner got his prize.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimateis available now for Nintendo Switch.
MORE:Square Enix is Smash Ultimate’s Big Winner, and It Deserves It
