Super Smash Bros. Director Explains Why Ridley Isn't Playable

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Ah Taco News! Let me count the ways I love you! One!...

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And that's its.

 

[vid87]

I don't know, I think in terms of scale he really would have to be massive, like Giga Bowser. In that sense though maybe he could've been a Final Smash or controllable Trophy.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

SNIP

Actually Charizard is really small. He's only 1.70m and in the anime he keeps changing his size to fit the situations.
Bowser changes his size from Mario game to Mario game. He has no canon size.
Ganondorf kept his proportions, he was just re-sized. While Olimar and the Pikmin were re-sized, they still look exactly the same. When playing Pikmin, you could even argue that it's just a normal dude in a giant world.

Now, I'm indifferent for Ridley but I do believe that he would look awkward if he was just re-sized. He would have to be redesigned as well. I remember seeing an image of a Brawl mode where they added Ridley. The big version was damn huge, the regular sized version looked awkward as fuck. Ridley crawls on all 4 when he doesn't fly so he was damn long.

Most people think Charizard is huge but Ash is just a rather non-masculine dwarf.

 

[Trishbot]

Ridley, on the other hand, with the exception of 1 game due to hardware limitations, has always been a giant, beastly, scary, dragon-pirate. And from what I've been told, even in that one game, that limitation was later fixed in a re-release. Plus, there's the fact that... well, here, I'll just copy paste this post from another forum I frequent.

It wasn't hardware limitations. It was simply a design choice. We had PLENTY of massive bosses on the NES.

And Ridley's size, even in all those other games, has varied constantly. Thankfully, someone already did the work showing how Ridley has only grown in size over the years.

I mean, hell, if it bothers them THAT much, just call him "NES Ridley" then like we have "Toon Link".

Actually Charizard is really small. He's only 1.70m and in the anime he keeps changing his size to fit the situations.
Bowser changes his size from Mario game to Mario game. He has no canon size.
Ganondorf kept his proportions, he was just re-sized. While Olimar and the Pikmin were re-sized, they still look exactly the same. When playing Pikmin, you could even argue that it's just a normal dude in a giant world.

Now, I'm indifferent for Ridley but I do believe that he would look awkward if he was just re-sized. He would have to be redesigned as well. I remember seeing an image of a Brawl mode where they added Ridley. The big version was damn huge, the regular sized version looked awkward as fuck. Ridley crawls on all 4 when he doesn't fly so he was damn long.

Most people think Charizard is huge but Ash is just a rather non-masculine dwarf.

I think he'd look just fine.

That's still imposing, and he's the same size as Bowser.

Besides, even Ridley has no "canon" size (they keep making him bigger and bigger every single game, for instance).

And Charizard is supposedly 5'7" on average. That's the size of average adult man. Factor in the wingspan, though, and he's massive (which is why in Smash he keeps the wings tucked in and never fully spreads them).

 

[xPixelatedx]

I'm not sure I buy it. I mean, Bowser has been this big before:

So... still don't buy it. Just shrink him down. I don't see how this isn't practical:

And Ridley's size, even in all those other games, has varied constantly. Thankfully, someone already did the work showing how Ridley has only grown in size over the years.

I mean, hell, if it bothers them THAT much, just call him "NES Ridley" then like we have "Toon Link".

THANK YOU for saying this so soon in the comments so it gets seen by the most people. I mean, it's clearly obvious hes just making excuses. He just didn't want to do it, and that's fair I guess, but he's trying to be diplomatic about it since Ridley was the #1 character fans wanted. But he can't explain it the way he did without people pointing out the same logic applies to bowers just as easily.

 

[Maze1125]

Lol, the exact same things were said by each side when Ridley wasn't playable in Brawl.

 

[BrainWalker]

My favorite thing about this statement is that it won't, and frankly couldn't resolve the debate.

As a huge Metroid fan who would love the series to get some more representation in Smash, I would be totally down with Ridley making it into the playable roster, but I actually think Awkward Zombie makes a fairly compelling argument:

I'd have to agree. But also there's this:

Spoiler: Awkward indeed

It's not that Ridley is too big, physically. Characters can be resized. Olimar and Bowser say hello. I think the more important issue is that he is too "big," thematically. From the author's post-comic blurb: "Ridley is kind of the only Nintendo villain who's ever done anything really awful -- Bowser's a jerk and Ganondorf tends to make everyone anxious for a while, but both are still probably easily forgiven."

 

[loa]

So can charizard fly indefinitely? Did they keep its size?
No? Bullshit it is then.

 

[Dango]

Then just make him small. You did it with charizard you can do it with another dumb dragon thing.

 

[Dark Knifer]

I think everyone's explained why this argument doesn't work but even if you don't put him in could dark samus be playable at least? She's technically been in more games then every kid icarus character and she already has a different non-clone moveset to use.

Least she was an assist trophy I guess.

 

[weirdee]

About flying:

Charizard: isn't flying all the time in the game. None of them are. If they were, they couldn't get hit by melee from Pokemon incapable of flying or even jumping.

Pit: relies on Palutena to grant him extended flight. Palutena isn't going to be helping him when she's beating his face in.

Dark Pit: only had the power of flight when he absorbed Pandora. Pandora escapes later (AMG SPOILER okay yeah whatever), so he loses the ability to do it himself, although he can still be assisted by a god for this, but that isn't happening in Smash.

Meta Knight: basically for the same reason Kirby can't fly forever. So yeah, there you go.

I would add that Bowser Jr's clowncopter can't hover at a height farther than three inches off the ground, which is more of an example than the first three.

 

[Brian Tams]

You guys that are saying they should just "Make him small like they made Charizard small" do understand that a Charizard is canonically only five feet tall, right?

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Charizard_%28Pok%C3%A9mon%29

 

[Olas]

And Ridley's size, even in all those other games, has varied constantly. Thankfully, someone already did the work showing how Ridley has only grown in size over the years.

I mean, hell, if it bothers them THAT much, just call him "NES Ridley" then like we have "Toon Link".

Thanks for this. I'd never really thought of Ridley as being a really big enemy, compared to most other bosses in Metroid games he's actually on the small side. Most of his span comes from his gangliness. If Ridley crouches a bit, folds up his wings, and doesn't extend his tail too much, he's not too unreasonably spacious.

Metroid is a problematic series for a game like Smash because it's main cast of characters is basically 1 person, and the enemies tend to be either low level or very large, and change from game to game. Ridley's a rarity in that he keeps reappearing for increasing contrived reasons. I can think of a few other candidates though.

- Dark Samus
- The Baby Metroid (or just a Metroid, its the title of the series after all)
- Rundas from Prime 3 (or any other bounty hunter, but Rundas is the best)

 

[SilverUchiha]

I'd have to agree. But also there's this:

Spoiler: Awkward indeed

*slow claps* Awesome.

OT: I get the explanation. But two things. One: Ridley's size is somewhat inconsistent. Two: With the mods I've seen for Brawl that show a smaller Ridley, yeah, sure, he looks a little less intimidating,but so what? It's still a playable Ridley and I'd take that no matter what they had to do to make him work.

As a Metroid fan I'd take offense to that personally. For once I agree with Sakurai in that the portrayal of the character ought to be done right. And on that topic... WHY DOES GANONDORF STILL NOT HAVE HIS SWORD!? T_T

Offense at me or the comic? If me, I'm not inaccurate with my claim on Ridley's size. In Metroid the first he was only a couple pixels taller than Samus. In Metroid Prime, Meta Ridley didn't appear that much bigger than Samus. The only game where I felt his size was tremendous was in Metroid Other M... and I still think that game is shit.

And Ganondorf does have his sword in Smash 4 as an alt special. Yes, it's not the same as a full moveset. But I'm fine with this as we don't need another sword-user in the game. Now if they wanted to go with his Hyrule Warriors skillset in future installments, that would be radical.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

You guys that are saying they should just "Make him small like they made Charizard small" do understand that a Charizard is canonically only five feet tall, right?

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Charizard_%28Pok%C3%A9mon%29

5' 7" is closer to six feet than it is five feet, however Justin Beiber is 5' 9", Taylor Swift is 5' 10".

The largest Pokemon, Wailord is only 47'07" (14.5 m), 877.4 lbs.(398.0 kg), which is big, no doubt, but actual blue whales have been estimated around 98' (30 m), 177 tonnes


I hope eventually they re-figure the sizing of some Pokemon, because a Charizard that is 5' 7" is adorable, but a Charizard that is 21 ft (the length of a Ram pickup truck) is frightening.

 

[sageoftruth]

Makes sense to me. A character that can fly all the time would be seriously broken in a Smash Brothers game.

It would make for an amusing hack though. I'm picturing a Ridley fighter killing himself by flying off the top of the screen.

 

[Souplex]

Ridley's size has varied throughout the series. They could totally pull off a Bowser sized Ridley.
As for the flying argument, there are multiple characters with wings in Smash. They have extra jumps.
In terms of accuracy, look at Gannondorf and Captain Falcon. 'Nuff said. (Plus of all the Robin appearances they have, none of them are right)