Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has had quite the journey. The last character ever released for the game was Kingdom Hearts’ Sora, culminating in a character select screen consisting of 86 characters in total.
Of course, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s cast of challengers came along mostly thanks to the game’s “Everyone Is Here” theme. With that in mind, it’s interesting to think how different the roster could’ve looked had Masahiro Sakurai made alternate decisions during the development of past titles in the series.
While overseeing the creation of Super Smash Bros. Melee, Sakurai decided that he wanted one of the character slots to be dedicated to someone we haven’t seen much of since the Nintendo Entertainment System (or “Famicom” in Japan). Essentially, what many fans call the “retro slot.”
“We wanted a single representative from the characters that originated from the Famicom! After that was decided, we made our pick by process of elimination.” — Masahiro Sakurai
Like Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Sakurai periodically updated a website that provided a sneak peek at the development process behind Super Smash Bros. Melee, though this website was exclusively in Japanese. At one point, he revealed the Ice Climbers as a surprising and unexpected pick.
Evidently, Sakurai had been asked quite frequently why he had chosen the Ice Climbers in the first place. Source Gaming has provided a translation of what was said.
“Did they really get revived in this form!? It’s the Ice Climbers of the street legends,” said Sakurai in his post.
“I often have people asking me, ‘Why did you choose the Ice Climbers?’ First off, we wanted a single representative from the characters that originated from the Famicom! After that was decided, we made our pick by process of elimination.”
“Also, in character selection, whether they have ‘things only that character can do’ is important.” — Masahiro Sakurai
Indeed, Ice Climber for the Nintendo Entertainment System was a game originally released back in 1985. By the time Super Smash Bros. Melee had been released, it had been about 16 years since we first saw the Ice Climbers.
However, there were a number of other candidates that could’ve taken the Ice Climbers’ retro slot. The developers eliminated the other choices due to various reasons, leaving them with the Ice Climbers as the best pick.
“Balloon Fight — seems like he wouldn’t be able to do anything after his balloons are popped,” said Sakurai. “Urban Champion — seems like he doesn’t have a lot of moves.”
Representatives from Clu Clu Land and Excitebike, but they were also eliminated.
“With the Ice Climbers, we thought it’s interesting to translate that game’s simultaneous 2-player play to having both characters move simultaneously here, so that’s how they joined in.” — Masahiro Sakurai
“Clu Clu Land — don’t know how she would fight,” continued Sakurai. “Excitebike — we’d need to make ramps for him to jump (that’s not really the issue).”
From here, Sakurai went into a more generalized reason why the Ice Climbers’ uniqueness made them the best fit for the roster of Super Smash Bros. Melee.
“Also, in character selection, whether they have ‘things only that character can do’ is important. With the Ice Climbers, we thought it’s interesting to translate that game’s simultaneous 2-player play to having both characters move simultaneously here, so that’s how they joined in,” declared Sakurai.
“If you fight the Ice Climbers, you’ll find them annoying. Having both of them at the same time will be powerful beyond imagination, but they don’t seem very powerful to the player controlling them, and it seems possible that the player will find themselves winning without really realizing it.”
Later on, the decision to include a two-in-one archetype with the Ice Climbers would prove to be problematic. Although the duo was originally planned to appear in Super Smash Bros. 4, they inevitably had to be cut.
While the Ice Climbers functioned as expected on the Wii U version of Super Smash Bros. 4, the technical limitations of the 3DS version were apparent when too many players were using the Ice Climbers at once. Ultimately, Sakurai didn’t want the rosters between the Wii U and 3DS versions of the game to be different, so the decision was made to scrap the Ice Climbers even though they had appeared in the previous two iterations in the franchise.
Of course, this isn’t to say that the decision was easy to make. Sakurai himself would later describe the character selection process as being stressful “almost to the brink of death” due to cuts.
“Because it’s not just a matter of me personally thinking this character or that character is going to be in the game; it’s that we also have the game balance, animation, graphics and sound to think about in order to make that character fully fleshed out in that universe. I have to think about all of that when I go through this decision-making process,” said Sakurai back then.
“Whether it’s a minor character or a character that is one of the most highly skilled and most played, if that character is removed from the game, the people who live for that character in Smash Bros. are going to have their feelings hurt.”
Ultimately, it would seem that this feeling might’ve served as the inspiration for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s “Everyone Is Here” theme. Apparently, when Sakurai first revealed this concept to the rest of the development team, he was met with dead silence.
During the first trailer that officially revealed that “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate” would be the title of the Super Smash Bros. entry on the Switch, it was the moment in which the Ice Climbers were revealed that provided fans with the first inclination that this was more than just an “enhanced port” of Super Smash Bros. 4 on the Wii U.
For now, we know that Sakurai is overseeing the development of Kirby Air Riders for the Switch 2. It’s still going to be a good while before the next entry in the Super Smash Bros. series.
There’s always a chance some of these scrapped character concepts could come up later in a future entry. We’ll just have to see how things play out from here.