Feature: A Week of Super Smash Bros. Wii U and 3DS Screens - Issue Thirty Nine

It's nice what they did to the fighting stance of the characters, now the photos will be greater than before. I wonder what was so tedious though.

Ike's new look is pretty nice.

Love it!!!...I always hated the fact that your color would change if you wanted team battles....Sweet!!!

Obviously more people would pick the Ike screenshots

Surprised to see Ike, given how popular FE:Awakening has become.

No offence, but I never really liked Ike in SSBB. Will probaly change in SSB3DS. He looks great.

Ike posing for me. He looks baddonkey. Glad he's back. Altough I do appreciate red Greninja, I just wished Sakurai showed the shiny color instead, it's probably my favorite shiny Pokémon.

And I appreciate even more that the colors don't change anymore on team matches. That always annoyed me.

@Mega719 As what tends to happen with screenshots from character reveals, ha... :x

Although have to say that the picture of him with the Villager is cute.

Greninja's tongue changes orientation in the 3rd picture (think Goku's hair). I wonder how that would look in motion. Does his tongue un-coil and then immediately re-coil the opposite way really, really fast every time he changes direction?

All of the pics were pretty good for that week. I, personally, thought the Bowser re-colour was cool to see so I voted for that.

It' s just me or the image quality in the 3ds version screens is just terrible?

E3 Cannot come soon enough. Two more weeks!

I voted Olimar for the humor.

@JonathanX The image is stretched, and since the 3DS resolution isnt so high, it doesn't look so good in its screenshots on PC and TV's etc.

I'm really diggin the color variants here. That red Greninja, grey Bowser and blue Kirby all look great!

Does always showing the front of the characters mean characters w/ swords like Ike and Link will be either right handed or left handed depending on which way they're facing? Wish he would have used one of those rather than Bowser or Kirby in the 2nd pic.

Voted for team color outlines on the 3DS. Don't like the black too much but team colors are functional.

We like Ike! (Or I do at least)

@rjejr - The mirroring effect only applies to some characters. Not everyone gets this effect, so weapon wielders will most likely not get this treatment.

OH MY GOSH! How did I miss that shor of the team outlines in the 3DS version?! This is big news!! Now I can be any color I want but still be on any team!

Ike's debut wins IMO.

@NintendoMonkey@noctowl Thanks for replying my comment

Is it just me, or is it hard to see the characters in the screenshot with Fire Mario? It's just that the backgrounds are so detailed, and you have this skinny character in the front. It's kind of hard to tell what you're looking at.

The 3DS one. Although the "1P", "2P", "3P" and "4P" are leaving me worried. Hopefully the portable Smash won't "pull a Mario Kart 7" and allow players to play custom smashes against CPU-controlled opponents.

Defo the 3DS pic with the best characters in Gerudo Valley

Come to think of it, by now each generation's "Pikachu-esque equivalent" (Marill the only water Pokémon, and then Plusle, Minun, Pachirisu, Emolga and Dedenne) can be a viable choice for an alternate palette of Pikachu. We'll see!

Not seven more months of hype.

I just gotta pick the 3DS team battle screenshot. Ever since the first game I've always wanted to simply play teams with the right colors, but would always get stuck with a stupid color I didn't want unless I'd pick a certain character. Now I can have true Mario & Link vs Bowser & Ganondorf battles and whatnot!

Still hoping Chrom or Lucina make the cut.

Giga mac vs olimar for sure!

I was tempted to pick the 3DS screenshot, but I went with Ike since he's my favorite character!

I don't understand why they went through the apparent tedium to make mirrored "sprites" a thing again. To me, it looks strange, and I thought the different views with different character orientation in the past was done on purpose (and to good effect). I'm glad characters who'd be more adversely affected won't be given this treatment (presumably). Red Greninja's lookin' fine.

@AlexSora89 Dude.... I was thinking of that also..... maybe the only one that works is pachirisu because it has a tail and doesnt have another type (fairy, flying, ect) and minum and plusle dont have a tail.

@Ttimer:
I was talking about alternate colors, and nothing more. Giving Pikachu a full Marill costume wouldn't make sense because, you know, water... same for Emolga, of course (Electric/Flying).

I chose the Assit Tropy.

The visuals has been looking much better lately.

@GoobleHonk woah, just 2 weeks left?

Greninja doubling up, DUH!

i like the idea of being able to choose what ever color u want in team battle

@absuplendous
I'm pretty sure they did it with every character.

The reason for doing it is pretty obvious. Characters look their very best in a frontal three-quarter shot, so seeing them from the back or stark profile as was often the case in Brawl can make the game lose clarity.

The tedium probably comes from making sure every animation blends well to the mirrored version of it, when the player turns a character around while on the ground, in the air, while dodging, so on, so forth.

I think it's worth it though. Generally, this game seems much better art directed than Brawl, and the ground gained in visual calrity will show in how well the game plays.

Ike + Female villager= Nintendo's version of a Big daddy and little sister????

I hope the add more awesome recolors. Oh and I hope they dont play dumb and they dont end up giving greninja his shiny color as an alternate coloration :/

@Pod The text accompanying the picture says "some characters" will be mirrored, so I take it to mean that not everybody will be. I think that two of the same character being viewed from different angles creates the illusion that they're not identical, which I appreciated; or maybe the mirror look just reminds me of a time when that sort of thing was necessary, and thus the implementation feels like a limitation. In any case, I do agree that the art direction is improved.

@Gridattack The "custom characters" everyone's buzzing about? I sure hope there's even a rudimentary form of palette customization.

RELEASE THE GAME ALREADY!!!

I strongly suspect the biggest character reveals for Smash Bros. Wii U have yet to be revealed (most likely during the week of E3), and at least some of them may well be licensed characters from other companies as Snake from the Metal Gear series was for Smash Bros. Brawl on the Wii. What a coup it would be for Nintendo and the Wii U if say, they managed to get an iconic face like Master Chief. Never say never; Nintendo and Microsoft's US headquarters are located very close to each other and similar rumors...though so far only rumors...of such collaboration have surfaced before. Of course that would require a reciprocation of some sort on Nintendo's part, which would be at least equally beneficial for the Xbox One. Before you dismiss even the remotest possibility for this or any other such licensed character in Wii U Smash Bros., consider that the Wii U's sales struggles to date might force Nintendo to take unprecedented steps to pull gamers into the fold...even utilizing competitors' properties and/or allowing some of their own to appear on competing platforms in a limited fashion. And frankly the Xbox One is facing a very similar lack of consumer adoption; both companies might consider such a crazy-sounding move mutually beneficial.

Other (admittedly more likely since they're from fellow Japanese developers) characters that could be revealed:

Vyse and Aika from Skies of Arcadia

Ryu from Ninja Gaiden

Street Fighter, Virtua Fighter, and/or Tekken series characters

Welkin and Alicia from Valkyria Chronicles (the Eidelweiss would be a Super Move).

Rudo, Nei, and other characters from Phantasy Star

Master Higgins from the Adventure Island series

Marvel characters from Marvel Vs. Capcom

Bonk from the Bonk's Adventure series

That should be enough to get the ball rolling. Anybody want to add some suggestions to this "Wish List" of (however remote the possibilities) candidates?

ike is pretty awesome, a bit slow but he is a bit faster than snake, i knew from the start that ike would make a return.

@AtlanteanMan interesting character choices and yes they are your opinions, some i would agree and some i half agree, ryu should be joined with either kasumi or ayane or both, but be like the ice climbers and you can choose either girl for a tag team and have the option of playing as either one solo

wow that 3DS screen shot looks like crap. This game should be fun. I was always wondering why we saw the back of their heads. glad they put in extra effort.

My favorite entry (besides Ike) is number 3. I like that they're paying so much attention to detail.

Ike, he was my favourite character to play as in Brawl and also led to me buying Fire Emblem Path of Radiance soon after which became one of my favourite games. Glad he's back and I'm hoping (although it's very unlikely) that Path of Radiance comes to Wii U VC to let people experience that great game without paying $100 for a used Gamecube copy.

It's gotta be Ike for me this week, hard to beat one of your favorite characters making the cut. Though the colored outlines for teams is a close second, I've always hated being forced into an ugly color palette for certain characters to play teams. Though it makes me wonder if they'll be doing anything similar for the Wii U version or not.

@noctowl I was hoping for Chrom but Ike is just as badass.