Super Smash Brothers Ultimate is the game that keeps on giving. If you have had the chance to pick up the game, you likely have put in well over twenty hours by now and who can blame you? There is something in this game for everyone whether you play for fun or for competition and it will only get bigger from here. The fun thing to consider is that while we will get plenty of mileage from the base game itself, we still have to consider that we have six more characters coming in 2019 to look forward to.
With the announcement of the Fighters Pass, many of us thought (and still do think) there will be a few Nintendo characters announced, like the next Fire Emblem protagonist, Waddle Dee or what have you. Some of us have considered third-party representation, but if Nintendo is the one picking and not Sakurai, they would likely pick their own characters. I mean, how creative can Nintendo get with their choices-
So after Joker’s reveal, the internet couldn’t help themselves by screaming, “You’ll never see it coming!” because that was the best way to describe the reveal of the first DLC character of the Fighter’s Pack. This will mean that we will get a playable Joker (with his ability to summon his Persona, Arsene), a range of wonderful musical pieces from Persona 5 and a stage from the game.
Opening the Floodgates
If you remember in the previous Smash Brother’s game, we got a few nice characters in the game. Characters like Ryu and Bayonetta were a nice surprise, but the reveal that caught everyone off guard was Cloud‘s inclusion into Smash Brothers, one of the most unexpected and groundbreaking out of all of them. Not only did you have one of the most well known RPG characters of all time in the biggest crossover game, but it marked the first time you had a character that didn’t have one of their prominent video games on a Nintendo Console (and no… spin-off appearances don’t count. Please leave Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories and the Rhythm game arguments at the door).
You think Nintendo will let Joker use a gun in Smash?
Now you could say that with us getting Final Fantasy 7 on the Switch next year, this isn’t really the case, but last I checked, Persona 5 has no plans on jumping to the switch either (and no, Persona Q2 doesn’t count either). Not that we should consider Sony and/or Microsoft exclusive characters to make an appearance suddenly (although I wouldn’t be against Banjo-Kazooie making dreams happen), but once more, the doors are wide open for Nintendo to take any series into account and add it into Smash. Reggie said how Joker is setting the benchmark of what we can expect to see from the other four DLC characters and how they will be “Brand New” to the series. As for who we can expect to see, that will be a topic for another day.
For now, let’s focus on Joker and speculate what we can see when he drops into Smash Ultimate. Also, for those of you who haven’t played Persona 5, there may be possible spoilers ahead.
What Stage will we see?
If you were to describe Persona 5 in one word, it would be, Style. From the art direction and music to the overall presentation, this game oozes style all over and keeps you invested from start to finish. As fun as the locations you get to travel to though, it is difficult to say which location you would set the Persona 5 stage in. You could pick a random location in “Modern-Day Tokyo,” it would be a safer bet to pick a location within the Metaverse.
From here, I could take a pick at one of three workable locations we could see become playable. We could go to Kamoshida’s Palace as it was the first location you go to in the game. Have knights wandering around and maybe some guy hitting explosive volleyballs at the stage. Another possible location could also be Mementos as it plays a major role within the game’s world. Who knows if you would have trains fly in to try and hit fighters, random personas, or even the Reaper, but it could be a fun location to throw down.
Mass Destruction in Smash Ultimate anyone?
And primarily: How many songs can you recall from those two games? We likely will have more than enough songs from Persona 5 to throw into Smash Brothers, but don’t tell me you don‘t want to hear Mass Destruction or Pursuing My True Self in there too. It isn’t like we need 10-20 songs from all three games, but it would be nice to have a few to go with the Persona 5 soundtrack to fight on. We all have our favourites and it would be great if this was made available somehow.
Could we see “Persona Spirits” in Smash Ultimate?
Out of all the questions I will ask in this entire editorial, this is probably the one I’m the most interested in getting answers to.
Maybe not this literal…
With the number of spirits we have in the game already, you can spend hours on end trying to unlock them all. While they can provide a fun challenge to collect, it makes me reflect on one thing. In Smash 4, after we got a DLC character, we sometimes got a trophy in conjunction with them such as getting a Ken Trophy when we got Ryu.
Now this is all speculation and for all we know, will not happen at all, but what if we were to get additional spirits in the game? It is crazy to consider, but suppose if Sakurai hid this and it was a “4th” part of the Fighter’s pack where you get something like 20-30 more spirit challenges to fight? This could mean that certain Persona 5 characters can make an appearance while adding in certain popular Personas too into the mix.
Take, for example, if you wanted the Morgana spirit, you would fight Incineroar, with some muscular swordsman as the persona and one condition is that Kapp’n comes in because Morgana can transform into a van? Maybe have Panther as ZSS with Bayonetta as her persona? Or how about Oracle as an Inkling or Queen’s Persona as Wario who favours using Side B? And it would be kind of obvious who Fox would be (even though part of me would love to see Vince from Art Academy be the hostile assist Trophy in this one).
If this were to happen, this could mean the other four characters might follow suit and can give us a better idea of who we could speculate as playable.
Conclusion:
I can’t help laugh at how perfect Nintendo’s timing was about all of this. Only they can get away with announcing downloadable content literally minutes away from the launch of their game and have people buzzing all about it. Much like how much time we’ve spent trying to figure out who will be in the main game of Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, the discussion now turns towards figuring out who the other four Downloadable Characters will be. It was a brilliant move to showcase Joker when no one had any idea that this was a possibility. Some of us were under the impression this was going to be the dancing game. Also if you thought Persona 5 was coming to Switch, you might have missed the “Rated E+10” part.
Seems fairly obvious what the FS will be. If you get the opponent to 100%, you’ll probably get “The Show’s Over” and that’s a KO.
The question now becomes: Where do we go from here? We still have four more fighters in the waiting and we haven’t even considered the possibility if there could be another fighter’s pack in Ultimate’s future. If we are to be so lucky as to see that happen, let us hope that Mr Sakurai takes that vacation he is long overdue for. The man has worked himself to the bone and with Nintendo throwing ideas directly at him; he will be a busy man in 2019. Until we find out who that 2nd person is, I wish to give Joker a solid congratulation on getting into the roster. It will be fun to speculate how his moves will work and his persona, but chances are that we will likely be a few months out before we see him coming.
The Show‘s Over
What do you think Joker’s inclusion into Smash Ultimate will bring? Are you looking forward to the first Fighter’s Pack? Leave your thoughts down below and be sure to follow us here at Culture of Gaming for more goodies on Smash Ultimate and other games on the Nintendo Switch.
