It’s a great thing to see so many characters brought back for the latest installment in the Smash Bros series, Smash Bros Ultimate. The new game brings with it the largest cast of characters in the history of this game series. While fans are super excited to see a lot of their favorites from past entries return, there are two character designs they are not pleased with. That would be the new looks for Snake and Samus. The first bone of contention was that Zero Suit Samus’… assets seem to have been greatly reduced in Ultimate compared to previous entries.
One fan compared her size to that of Super Smash Bros on the Wii U. We know Samus in her Zero Suit is supposed to be quite curvy and show off her body. Since Nintendo is going for a more family-friendly look for the Switch certain changes had to be made. Female video game characters for years have always had more defined (and somewhat unrealistic) body proportions and that’s just the way it’s been. It does seem more refreshing to see her scaled back a bit but you can understand why fans are upset when they are used to seeing her in a certain way. This shouldn’t be something that makes or breaks the game for you, however, that should be based on game mechanics and playability factors. It has also been suggested that because of Japanese localization some censorship had to occur.
Director of Super Smash Bros, Masahiro Sakurai did state that some characters would be getting changes in Ultimate such as more facial expressions, sound effects, and yes costume designs. Snake also lost of some his booty while wearing his famous stealth suit. Metal Gear fans like the Metroid fans were quite upset by this as well. Hideo Kojima who created the Metal Gear franchise always intended for his male characters to be easy on the eye. I mean let’s face it people judge these characters based on their looks, similar to how we judge actors and models in real life.
On June 23 on Twitter Snakes’ longtime voice actor David Hayter weighed in on the whole lack of booty issue:
Not sure who discovered this or why it's important, but here it is… pic.twitter.com/77GAUWf2G1
— VGF Gamers (@VGFGamers) June 22, 2018
Fans have also since taken to Twitter and Reddit to express their disappointment and even created some memes. We do have a long wait until Super Smash Bros Ultimate makes it debut on Switch (Dec 7, 2018). Maybe by then, fans will have forgotten about Samus’ lack of sexiness and Snake’s lack of booty and just focus on being excited about a new Smash game. We were waiting with bated breath for a while since the Switch came out last year for a new Smash game so maybe that should be the focus instead of two characters who got a toned down look. Let’s face it: it’s a new console for a new generation and it is trying to cater to two fan bases, new young fans and those who are longtime Nintendo fans. Give it a chance and who knows it may not be that big a deal once the game comes out.
