We are a third of the way in to my special 12 Days of Christmas project and though this has been incredibly fun so far and despite the prep work I had done in advance for some of my blog topics, it is starting to become a challenge to put out something unique this many days in a row. In order to change things up a bit and make this project a little more manageable I thought it would be fun to try a multi-part series for a few entries. For today’s post, in honor of the recent release of a new game in one of my favorite Video Game series of all time, I am beginning a series on interesting and lesser known facts about all of the currently known characters for Super Smash Bros Ultimate. There are currently 78 known fighters that are confirmed to be in or coming to the game which means if I break this series up into 6 days, I can cover 13 interesting facts a day. With that introduction out of the way, lets start up the fact train with our first 13 fighters.
Mario: Starting off with arguably the most well known character in all of gaming, there are a ton of lesser known facts about Nintendo’s mascot and the worlds most famous plumber that I could go over, but I think the funnest one I have come across over the years is that if Mario was a real person, he would be by far one of the most qualified people for pretty much any job on the planet. Canonically, Mario has held over 100 jobs when counting all of his spin-off titles and appearances in other media. Everyone knows of Mario as a plumber, but few people probably realized that Mario is probably the most accomplished athlete in all of fiction. Just off the top of my head Mario has been a, golfer, race car driver, tennis player, baseball player, basketball player, soccer player, volleyball player, hockey player, dancer, swimmer, archer, jockey, runner, snowboarder, skier, and I bet a bunch more obscure ones that I cannot think of right now. That’s what happens when you have a spin-off game for almost every sport and the Mario & Sonic at the Olympics series is a thing.
Donkey Kong: It does not take a genius to know that Donkey Kong takes at least a little bit of inspiration from King Kong, but what you might not have known about DK is that Nintendo was once engaged in a fierce battle of potential copyright infringement with Universal Pictures, the owners of King Kong. If Nintendo had lost this case, not only would their rights to the Donkey Kong name have been gone, but the penalties and losses might have been so severe that the company might have collapsed. Nintendo needed a hero who could save their beloved ape and low and behold, one arose in the form of a lawyer named John Kirby. Thanks to the work of Kirby, Nintendo won the case and out of immense gratitude, decided to name one of their next characters in his honor. That character is none other than the pink puff ball himself, Kirby.
Link: If any Nintendo character could rival Mario in terms of widespread appeal, it would be the hero of the Legend of Zelda series, Link. Link’s name is a curious one, as this name was not originally thought of when the idea for the game was first created and only came into being while discussing eventual scrapped concepts for the game. In fact, according to series creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, the reason why Link is named Link is because originally the three pieces of the Triforce were supposed to be made out of microchips that connected the past and the future. The main hero was going to travel through time as the connection, the Link, between the past and the present hence the name. Though the concept of traveling through time was scrapped for the original game, this concept was later revisited for the game, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
Samus: Bounty Hunter, Samus Aran, is probably the best known female Nintendo protagonist out there and she has a variety of powers tucked away in her many suits. She has plasma beams, lasers, ice beams, a grapple beam, along with many other powers. One of her suit’s most iconic powers is the ability to transform into a small quick moving morph ball that greatly enhances Samus’ ability to move through tight spaces. What you may not have known is that in the original Metroid, the morph ball only came into existence due to animation limitations. At the time, the developers of Metroid could not figure out how to make an animation for Samus crawling work effectively. Instead of wasting time trying to brute force a decent looking crawl, the developers decided to just give the suit a form change that would shrink Samus into a form where she could easily travel through small gaps. Eventually Samus would gain a crawl in later games, but one of her most iconic powers was partially the result of laziness.
Yoshi: This will be a relatively quick one that a fair few of you may have heard of over the years, but our favorite little dinosaur’s name is not actually Yoshi. Yoshi’s full and proper name is T. Yoshisaur Munchakoopas. This fun fact has been out in the world for a while now, but this was always one of the weirdest facts I had ever heard about Mario’s favorite dino-pal. Incidentally, at the same time Yoshi’s true name was discovered, it was also revealed that the scientific name for Mario is (Homo Nintendonus). The hidden lore of the Mushroom Kingdom is quite fascinating isn’t it?
Kirby: Previously in the entry about Donkey Kong I explained how Kirby’s name is actually a tribute to John Kirby, the lawyer who had helped Nintendo keep the rights to Donkey Kong, but for those looking for another fun fact about the infant Star Warrior from Planet Pop Star, how about the fact that the iconic Pink Blob was almost Yellow. Shigeru Miyamoto and series creator, Masahiro Sakurai, once engaged in an epic struggle to determine whether the adorable blob known as Kirby would be colored Pink or Yellow. Suffice it to say, Sakurai won out and Kirby ended up Pink, but Yellow Kirby would later show up in future Kirby games as a reference to this moment in Nintendo history.
Fox: Fox McCloud, the leader of team Star Fox has been one of Smash Bros’ favorite fighters for quite a while. He also has one of the weirder origins of all Nintendo characters. When the game that would become Star Fox was in development, the concept was to create a game where you controlled a spaceship as it navigated through various gates, check points, and obstacles while firing at and destroying enemies in the path. The reason the main character became a fox was the designs for the gates in the game reminded Shigeru Miyamoto of the shrine gates outside the Inari (fox) Shrine. From that inspiration, it was later decided that the pilot of the space fighter would be an anthropomorphic fox named Fox.
Pikachu: Everyone knows Pikachu, the mascot for the world’s highest grossing media franchise in the world, Pokemon. This little electric rodent is so popular that he is even getting his own movie in 2019, Detective Pikachu. There are too many fun facts about Pikachu to count, but the one piece of trivia about the Electric Mouse Pokemon that I would want to share with everyone is how this iconic mascot, almost was not. Pikachu was not the first choice to be the Ash’s first Pokemon. In fact, it was Clefairy and not Pikachu that was supposed to end up being the mascot, but it was decided very late into the development of the first Pokemon games that Clefairy being a pink pixie looking creature might only appeal to girls. Pikachu was selected instead for its simple, yet cute design and its more gender neutral appeal. Fret not for poor Clefairy though as there is still a Manga out in the world that had a Clefairy and not Pikachu as the main character’s first Pokemon. That manga was a remnant of these early days for the franchise.
Luigi: Poor Luigi has walked in his older brother’s shadow for what seems to many to have been an eternity. Most people know that Luigi started out as a palette swap of Mario due to the limited colors available to early video game developers, and many others also know his name is actually a play on the Japanese word ‘ruigi’ meaning similar, but did you know there is something Luigi has on his big brother (besides his height), something that makes him wholly unique? If Mario is the king of jobs, Luigi is the king of nicknames. A quick sampling of all the names he has been called includes, “The Eternal Understudy,” “King of Second Bananas,” “Weegee,” “Mr. L,” and “Green Mario.”
Ness: Ness is the main protagonist of the second game in the Earthbound series and honestly I do not know nearly enough about this series or Ness as a character to give you all anything to extraordinary to chew on. One little fact that always sticks out to me because I figured it out myself as a kid after playing the original Super Smash Bros is about how Ness’ name is an anagram of SNES, the common name for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the system Ness’ game debuted on. It was only later that I learned that Ness’ predecessor was called Ninten, and that the main character names all had references similar to this one.
Captain Falcon: For the longest time, Captain Falcon was my favorite character in Super Smash Bros and I am definitely not alone in my admiration for the Captain. By this point, Falcon is known more as a mascot of Smash Bros than he is his own franchise, F-Zero, a series of futuristic high speed racing games. As Captain Falcon’s franchise was first and foremost about racing, it seems strange that he would have so many iconic signature moves like the Falcon Punch and Falcon Kick. Well my fun fact about the Captain is that these moves were completely fabricated for Super Smash Bros and in fact are all derived from the project that would eventually become Smash Bros. This project was called Dragon King: The Fighting Game and Captain Falcon was added to Smash Bros by reusing existing fighter data from Dragon King. It is no wonder Captain Falcon is essentially the Smash Mascot considering he is the spiritual successor of the project Smash would eventually become.
Jigglypuff: The other Pink Puff Ball of Smash, Jigglypuff is the last of the original 12 veteran characters from the original Super Smash Bros. A Pokemon whose popularity exploded because of the Pokemon Anime, Jigglypuff’s signature ability in Smash is derived from the recurring Jigglypuff character that is still showing up in the Anime to this day. Of course I am talking about the song of Jigglypuff that puts whoever listens to it to sleep. My Jigglypuff fun fact actually comes from the anime. As many people know, a recurring gag in the show is for Jigglypuff to pop in out of nowhere, sing its song, put everybody to sleep, and then draw markings all over everyone’s faces for falling asleep during her song. Well in one episode of the series, Jigglypuff sings her song to a Pokemon called Komala, a Koala Pokemon that perpetually spends its whole life asleep yet retains the ability to eat, move, and interact despite this. Jigglypuff finally meets her match because try as she might, she is unable to mark up Komala’s face, thus making Komala the only Pokemon in the series to avoid being marked up by Jigglypuff’s song.
Peach: Mario’s perennial love interest, Princess Peach, is the last character I am covering today, but that certainly does not make her the least important character of today. In fact, Peach might be one of the most powerful and influential characters in all of fiction if Forbes is anything to go by. A while ago, Princess Peach was listed on Forbes list of the richest fictional characters along with other famously rich characters like Scrooge McDuck, Batman, Smaug the Dragon, and Willie Wonka. According to Forbes, Peach’s net worth when taking the value of the Mushroom Kingdom into account would be over $1 Billion. It really makes you wonder how somebody that rich could not just hire some crazy body guards to protect her instead of always relying on her off again on again boyfriend to save her.