Why Pikachu is in Super Smash Bros [Advent Calendar #9]

Channel:

Video Game Story Time

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Published on December 9, 2020 9:32:50 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5k0ghMzUsw

Game:

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018)

Duration: 1:53

18,268 views

1,184

Now, obviously, Pikachu is in Super Smash Bros because it's a Nintendo-adjacent franchise. Obviously. But asking "why is Pikachu in Smash" is simpler than asking why, say, Mario is in the game.

Okay, maybe not Mario. There's actually a video in that, might do it in a few days for another of these.

The point is, though, that Pikachu and Pokemon were almost left out of the game, and the inclusion of Pikachu (and Jigglypuff, obz) was more than a little controversial at the time. People at The Pokemon Company and Nintendo alike didn't love the idea of Mario hurting Pikachu (which is funny because they have no problem with him hurting Yoshi) or Pikachu using a gun (fun fact: we didn't draw Pikachu holding a gun in this video because doing so would make YouTube flag it for limited advertising and that in turn limits a video's promotion on the platform).

Masahiro Sakurai had to work hard to establish that Smash Bros is a sports game, rather than a fight to the death. I'm personally not sure how much I believe that, but hey, if it helped soften the blow when the first game came out, why not?

(It'd be great, then, if Nintendo actually treated Smash like a sport game and threw some weight behind its competitive eSports scene instead of shutting it down, but whattayagonnado?)

Hope you're enjoying this Advent period and/or the cold/warm month of December.

Lots of love,

BretonStripes (http://twitter.com/bretonstriped) and Kotor (http://twitter.com/kotorcomics)

Source: http://shmuplations.com/smashbros/

Music: "We Wish you a Merry Christmas" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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