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Super Smash Bros. Direct - April 8 [11PM BST / 6PM EST]


Carbo

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And all of them are assist trophies. And nearly all of them have far more actual character to them than Pac-Man. You're not helping your counter-argument, mate.

 

And that's ignoring the fact that your counter-point is dangerously close to having absolutely nothing to do with the points you're arguing against.

How is Pac-Man "obscure" by any means? Ice Climbers, Little Mac, and Kid Icarus (at least when they first appeared in Smash) were far more Obscure.

 

The main problem I have with Pacman is that he's sort of the obvious "Namco mascot" character choicd, but his moveset potential...well, his moveset potential sucks donkey balls.

 

The original maze games, the only games he's truly known for, don't offer anything beyond basic movement and eating things.  And the platforming games that tried to flesh him out ended up just giving him knock offs of moves from actual platforming characters.  Moves like a chargeable rolling attack, the ability to bounce repeatedly, the ability to fly along trails of dots, and he even had a power up that turned him into metal.

 

As for his most recent stuff, it seems like the big gimmick is that he transforms and gains new powers by eating stuff.  And the cartoon lets him just fly.  It's like they're actively trying to turn Pac Man into the yellow Kirby that Miyamoto wanted.

 

I just can't help but think that Pac Man would be a waste of time as a character.

Captain Falcon, Fox McCloud, and Villager would like a word with you. I'm sure they could give Pac-Man a decent moveset. (Seriously, though, Pac-Man FLIES in the Ghostly Adventures? Granted, he does fly as Super Pac-Man in Pac-Man 2...)

 

 

That said, regardless, Pac-Man is definitely a character with little personality and honestly it'd be an annoying slot to fill in. They could give him a good moveset (Sakurai has worked with worse), but he's not all that interesting.

 

If they did try to pick a character from what is arguably their biggest franchise, I think that a good "second" option from Namco would be Lloyd Irving. Not only would he be far more interesting, he has personality, character, and an existing fighting style, but he'd also be a unique addition to Smash as he'd be the only double sword user.

 

Probably NOT going to happen, but Lloyd would be a better addition than Pac-Man. I still think that if a Namco character is in its Pac-Man, though.

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And all of them are assist trophies. And nearly all of them have far more actual character to them than Pac-Man. You're not helping your counter-argument, mate.

 

And that's ignoring the fact that your counter-point is dangerously close to having absolutely nothing to do with the points you're arguing against.

 

With all due respect, I disagree.

 

Characters such as Captain Falcon, Wii Fit Trainer etc are arguably more obscure and arguably didn't have much potential for a good moveset. Yet, the developers have made it work. I just think that Sakurai and Co have the skills to give anyone a good and interesting moveset if they so choose, and that their apparent lack of potential should not deter them.

 

EDIT: I should probably point out that I'm not that fussed about Pac-Man, but I certainly wouldn't say no.

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Pac-Man has plenty of sources where you can get ideas for attacks. Pac-In-Time, Pac-Man World, the original arcade game, Ghostly Adventures and I think Street Fighter x Tekken.

 

Thinking up a moveset hardly seems like a problem.

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If Mr Game and Watch can be a playable character in Brawl I'm sure something could be done with Pacman. At the very least I hope Pacman and the ghosts show up as assist trophies

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I'f I'm going to make my predictions for this Direct, then I guess I should give mine a try.

 

  • Yoshi, Meta Knight, Captain Falcon, Wario, and Pokemon Trainer returning.
  • Maybe a new character reveal.
  • More gameplay footage on the 3DS version.
  • New stages on both the Wii-U and 3DS revealed. (Hopefully one of those 3DS stages are for Mega Man and Sonic.)
  • Maybe showcasing some new moves and buffs on characters.
  • New items introduced.
  • Revealing some Final Smash moves for a couple of characters.

Although I shouldn't expect much, but this is my Smash Direct prediction.

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Pac Man definitely has moveset potential. Every character does, and even when they don't, the devs can get really creative. Most people didn't expect to see Villager or Wii Fit Trainer but they look awesome. 

 

My problem with Pac Man isn't that there's nothing to work with, or that I don't like him. My problem is that I'd be completely indifferent to him because he's really, really boring. I like the original arcade Pac Man, and some of the other games, but the character is pretty much always just gonna be "the guy from dot-in-maze game" in my eyes. That's probably why every attempt to reinvent him and make him relevant again feels so awkward and forced to me. There's so little source material because Pac Man is a game where you're a basic shape, going around eating other basic shapes, and sometimes ghosts. This seems like a really weird concept for anything now, let alone a game, but they're pretty much chained to referencing it in every modern iteration of the series/shows because people only give a shit about Pac Man for his legacy, not his character. 

 

What does the Pac Man wiki have to say about his personality, cartoons excluded?

 

Pac-Man loves to eat. His regular meal includes Pac-Dots and fruit such as strawberries, green grapes, cherries, oranges, peaches, bananas, pears, apples, Power-Pellets and Ghosts. He also seems very good at mazes, due to his extensive time in them.

Wow. 

 

Part of me still kinda expects to see him though. I don't particularly mind, I just think he's really not interesting at all. 

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I think at least one new character is a sure thing.

 

Without a doubt in my mind, that's probably going to be the only major thing revealed, but still... you never know.

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How is Pac-Man "obscure" by any means? Ice Climbers, Little Mac, and Kid Icarus (at least when they first appeared in Smash) were far more Obscure.

Because my argument has literally nothing to do with obscurity. Pac Man is hardly obscure, but he is sure as hell not remotely relevant as a character. You pretty much agreed with my argument just by saying that, as a character, Pac Man has no personality.

 

With all due respect, I disagree.

 

Characters such as Captain Falcon, Wii Fit Trainer etc are arguably more obscure and arguably didn't have much potential for a good moveset. Yet, the developers have made it work. I just think that Sakurai and Co have the skills to give anyone a good and interesting moveset if they so choose, and that their apparent lack of potential should not deter them.

 

EDIT: I should probably point out that I'm not that fussed about Pac-Man, but I certainly wouldn't say no.

Once again, this has nothing to do with obscurity, or even movesets - Pac Man is just boring because he has no personality or original character traits aside from being a yellow circle that eats dots in a maze. Any attempt to tack on additional traits results in stuff that's just been, well, done before. It's gotten so bad that they've turned him into a Kirby ripoff!

 

Solly pretty much sums up how I feel about Pac Man. In short, Pac Man is simply one-dimensional as a character.

 

Nobody cares about Pac Man as a character. They only care about the original game and its legacy.

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Falcon and Miss Fit may not have had much material to go with for movesets, but I feel like they compensated for that by their franchises being the go-to examples in areas on how Nintendo itself operates as a business. 

 

F-Zero introduced the Mode 7 engine. In other words, F-Zero is the game that showed just what Nintendo could accomplish in terms of hardware that sets it apart from traditional consoles like the SEGA Genesis - an ideal that was shown again in the N64's Rumble Pak, the Wii, and the Wii U. In Smash, on top of quick moves to reflect F-Zero, Falcon has a show-offy personality, as if he himself has something to prove to stand out from the crowd. And, his Final Smash is the only one which is a cinematic cutscene - also possibly a nod to Mode 7's sheer different-ness.

 

As for Wii Fit Trainer, the impact is obvious. Wii Fit and Wii Sports were the two games that got another consumer base into games and started a worldwide phenomenon. It would be crazy not to give nods to either of the two games in Smash 4, and since the Mii kinda-sorta has Villager to use moves from, and Miss Fit is herself a static character that can't be changed in comparison, giving her fighter-status and a moveset filled with various workout techniques that casual exercisers utilize makes sense.

 

tl;dr: Mario, Pokemon, and Zelda may be out in the limelight and the front lines in gaming, but F-Zero and Wii Fit played a more behind-the-scenes and support role for the Nintendo businesss that also can't be neglected.

 

 

 

Compare them to Pac-Man, whose only contribution to Nintendo as a company was to have a few games on its hardware here and there. Megaman fills that role already, and he's profoundly loved and remembered. If this game were a multi-platform fighting game that pitted all of gaming's mascots against each other, Pac-Man would be an obvious choice. But as this is a Nintendo fighting-game, guest-featuring 3rd party characters that had an enormous direct impact on Nintendo and how it operated, the yellow dude just isn't likely to be out there fighting.

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The main problem I have with Pacman is that he's sort of the obvious "Namco mascot" character choicd, but his moveset potential...well, his moveset potential sucks donkey balls.

Are we seriously still doing this. How many times do we need to point to Captain Falcon before the "he has no moves" argument goes away. Or how the Star Fox characters have their specials referencing their vehicles' abilities and their A attacks are entirely made up. Or how they built the Ice Climbers, one of the more unique character concepts in the series, out of nothing more than "there's 2 of them, they have hammers, they climb ice". Or how even Bowser only has maybe two moves that actually reference his game abilities (fire breath and butt stomp) and the rest were just made up.

Making an interesting Smash character is not just about grabbing a bunch of existing moves, it's about being creative with the iconic and memorable concepts of the character and their game. And, sometimes, it's just BSing something interesting. There's plenty that could be done with Pac Man if they tried.

Y'know, you want an interesting move for Pac Man, here's one. Side B throws a pellet. It doesn't do much damage, but it sticks around for a while. B is a bite attack. Normally it works a bit like Wario's. But if a pellet is out, he'll quickly dash towards it, damaging anyone in the way. It's a two-step technique that works as both an attack and a recovery move and is unlike any other character's abilities.

But as this is a Nintendo fighting-game, guest-featuring 3rd party characters that had an enormous direct impact on Nintendo and how it operated,

Like Snake.
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You can give anything a moveset with enough creativity. The whole moveset thing isn't the problem with Pac Man, though. It's that his character is as flat as a board, there's just literally nothing interesting about him that doesn't come from the mechanics of his original game, and every attempt to try and add actual character traits onto him is usually completely forced and unoriginal.

 

I mean, Christ, the characters from Thomas Was Alone are all more interesting than Pac Man, and they're all fucking rectangles.

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Yes and the Ice Climbers, G&W, and ROB are compelling, complex characters, which is why they were chosen to be included.

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Yes and the Ice Climbers, G&W, and ROB are compelling, complex characters, which is why they were chosen to be included.

Well, at least one can describe their characters/personalities in more than three short sentences. Which is more than the Wikipedia description that Solly provided.

 

Hell, just by looking at any of them, you could acquire actual information you can infer just by looking at them. Pac Man, you don't get shit aside from 'it's yellow' and 'it's shaped like a pie with a piece missing'.

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What personality did they even have before Smash.

How do you even manage a one-sentence description of their personalities.

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What personality did they even have before Smash.

How do you even manage a one-sentence description of their personalities.

Ice Climbers - Like Climbing Mountains. Don't like Polar Bears wearing shorts. Either brother and sister or lovers (Or both if you're kinky)

 

ROB -  Is a robot and picks up blocks.

 

G&W - Does a lot of different generic stuff.

 

None of them actually have/had personalities.

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What personality did they even have before Smash.

How do you even manage a one-sentence description of their personalities.

Well, to be fair, G&W wasn't so much a 'character' as he was a generic representation of the player in any role required of it. ROB was a peripheral meant to act as a 'toy' to be bundled with the NES in America. They didn't have 'personalities' because they weren't meant to.

 

And the Ice Climbers, well, for what little they had, you could sure get a lot more just from their original game than Pac Man's, such as... The pair have names (Popo and Nana), they may be siblings or a couple, they wear differently-coloured parkas, and they use wooden mallets as their primary weapon for some reason. They seem to be woefully under-prepared for any actual ice climbing, aside from clothes. A giant condor keeps stealing their food (especially eggplants), and they have to get it back. For some reason, they like clubbing the local wildlife, especially seals (what a couple of dicks). They also have a habit of attracting clothed polar bears who don't seem to like them very much.

 

Well, that wasn't so hard.

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I sorta feel as though this argument is a bit flawed, pac-man may not that much character to look at but neither do characters like mario, rob, and the ice climbers. I know third party characters aren't supposed to be used too much in these games but this really seems like a bias against the yellow guy.

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Well, to be fair, G&W wasn't so much a 'character' as he was a generic representation of the player in any role required of it. ROB was a peripheral meant to act as a 'toy' to be bundled with the NES in America. They didn't have 'personalities' because they weren't meant to.

And yet, despite not even being actual characters, they were included in Smash.

But for some reason Pac Man needs a novel's worth of characterization before he can be considered.

And the Ice Climbers, well, for what little they had, you could sure get a lot more just from their original game than Pac Man's, such as... The pair have names (Popo and Nana), they may be siblings or a couple, they wear differently-coloured parkas, and they use wooden mallets as their primary weapon for some reason. They seem to be woefully under-prepared for any actual ice climbing, aside from clothes. A giant condor keeps stealing their food (especially eggplants), and they have to get it back. For some reason, they like clubbing the local wildlife, especially seals (what a couple of dicks). They also have a habit of attracting clothed polar bears who don't seem to like them very much.

 

Well, that wasn't so hard.

Basically none of this has to do with their personality and is mostly either a physical description or part of the gameplay.
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Once again, this has nothing to do with obscurity, or even movesets - Pac Man is just boring because he has no personality or original character traits aside from being a yellow circle that eats dots in a maze. Any attempt to tack on additional traits results in stuff that's just been, well, done before. It's gotten so bad that they've turned him into a Kirby ripoff!

 

Solly pretty much sums up how I feel about Pac Man. In short, Pac Man is simply one-dimensional as a character.

 

Nobody cares about Pac Man as a character. They only care about the original game and its legacy.

 

I don't think these really matter when it comes to Smash. The game is filled with one-dimensional characters, with a couple being defined only by their original game and apparent legacy.

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It's not that having a personality is some kind of prerequisite for being a character. People have already brought up Ice Climbers, ROB and Game and Watch a few times. They're kinda based around the same concept.

 

But there's a novel charm to those characters because they really were just about dead and obscure, and nobody would've expected to see them in any real modern game, let alone Smash Bros. Pac Man's game production may have slowed but he never dropped off the face of the Earth. He's had sequels and spin-offs time and again, so the novelty of seeing him or having those old games referenced is completely dead by now. He's kind of boring.

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I just plain dont think Pac Man is interesting in terms of his design or character, granted neither is G&W altough he more falls more under what Solly said.

 

 

 

at the same time, I wouldnt be too upset about Pac Man's Inclusion since he is an Icon and deserving of a spot, so there you go.

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I am about to overload on SSB4 hype..!!

 

Also I'm going to laugh if Game & Watch has two outlines the 3DS version.

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I never thought of that.

Outlines on outlines??? Maybe they'll make it thicker on him? Or maybe when we set it with no outline, he will just be black with no outline. That would look weird. Lol

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It's not that having a personality is some kind of prerequisite for being a character. People have already brought up Ice Climbers, ROB and Game and Watch a few times. They're kinda based around the same concept.

 

But there's a novel charm to those characters because they really were just about dead and obscure, and nobody would've expected to see them in any real modern game, let alone Smash Bros. Pac Man's game production may have slowed but he never dropped off the face of the Earth. He's had sequels and spin-offs time and again, so the novelty of seeing him or having those old games referenced is completely dead by now. He's kind of boring.

 

Sonic, Mega Man and Snake are all still alive, relatively speaking. I'm not sure the novelty of Pac-Man would be diminished that much, but I can sorta see where you're coming from.

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