By Eric Visser
Super Smash Bros. is ending updates and additions to the roster with the last fighter Sora from Kingdom Hearts series.
The change happens Oct. 18, 2021.
According to Nintendo’s Oct. 5 news release, “Ever since the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate game launched for the Nintendo Switch system in 2018, players have put more than 2.2 billion hours into the game’s many modes, composed of 11.7 billion offline matches and 7.8 billion online multiplayer battles.”
“The all-star game has also welcomed numerous additional fighters, stages and pieces of legendary music from all throughout video-game history as part of the robust Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Fighters Pass DLC. On Oct. 18, standing next to fighters like Mario, Zelda, PAC-MAN, Sonic, Snake and Cloud, the next beloved hero from the world of video games takes his place as the final addition to this historic lineup.”
Sora is the chosen fighter.
In 2015, during the height of the fourth Super Smash Bros, Masahiro Sakurai, the director of the Super Smash Bros. series, released a poll called the “Smash Bros. Fighter Ballot”. In this poll, he wanted to know who the audience was dying to have on the roster. The top choice was Sora but Nintendo did not reveal it right away for fear of players’ responses.
Sora is owned by two companies, Square Enix and Disney. Typically, Disney is vicious about protecting intellectual property and its characters namely Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy. If companies or people try to use these characters without express permission, lawsuits ensue.
In this moment, Sora coming to Smash is a monumental moment in gaming history because Disney is allowing it.
College of Southern Nevada student Ethan Hong said, “It’s impressive that Nintendo got legal rights to put Sora in Smash in the first place. It is Disney that owns the character and it is usually very strict about letting its characters be used for other IPs hence why Donald and Goofy were removed from the stained-glass art from Sora’s stage.”
Kingdom Hearts is a series that mixes both Final Fantasy characters and Disney characters into one giant universe. This series is led by none other than Sora, an original character made specifically for this game to represent Final Fantasy and Disney. He’s a combination of the Magic of Disney with the stylized characterization of a Final Fantasy character making him the perfect crossover character.
Many gamers thought that since Sora is a crossover character, why not put him in one of the biggest videogames of all time: Super Smash Bros.
As CSN student David Upchurch said, Sora is the epitome of crossover since he was created this. It only makes sense to put him into the game because Smash Bros. crosses over to multiple video games.
Most gamers are happy with the character that Sakurai picked, but others not so much.
CSN student Juan Diaz thought that Edward from the acclaimed TV series “Fullmetal Alchemist” should have been chosen instead.
Another CSN student Ethan Steehler stated that Shaggy from the classic series “Scooby-Doo” is better because Sora does not fit within a Nintendo game. Disney and Nintendo don’t mesh very well.
Sakurai stated in a tweet, “This will also be my final fighter presentation. It’ll be sad to say farewell but I hope you all enjoy it.”
Many fans took it to mean that this might be the last Smash game but not the case for Nintendo fan Alex Kostanian. “I don’t think that this will be the last Smash. While I do think that it will be a long time before the next Smash comes out. I do think that there will eventually be another Smash Bros. sometime in the future. Smash is a big and popular franchise so I don’t think that Nintendo will ever let it die.”
Coyote Student News at the College of Southern Nevada 