The most ICONIC character designs | Super Smash Bros. Melee

In my opinion, Super Smash Bros. Melee's roster represents the most iconic version of each character. Let me explain. Let's consider each fighter on the roster and then each game series represented. If we think about the core games where that character has appeared, I would argue their strongest, most iconic versions of themselves were represented here in Melee on GameCube in 2001. And then in some cases never again in a future Smash game. Let's use Link as an example. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time stands out not just among the Zelda series but by gaming as a whole, considered by some to be the best game of all time. It's this Link we get in Melee and Smash 64 too, for that matter. That carries over to Zelda, Young Link, and Ganondorf as well. You can argue that this ages the game, and in a way it does, but my point is that's okay because the '90s era of Nintendo produced some of the most iconic games and character designs ever that are respected in a timeless sort of way. To illustrate my point further, by the time Brawl came out, they went with the Twilight Princess character designs, which are great in their own right, but they also date the game in a particular way. When you see that cast of characters, you kind of go, "Oh yeah, that was the latest Zelda game that had come out at that time." Then when you see Toon Link forced into that art style, you think, "This can't be right." We can do exactly the same thing with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, putting a finer point on things by using the Breath of the Wild design for Link, notably one of the few times Link has ever been represented without his iconic green tunic. They even modified his down B to fit with the Breath of the Wild-specific item. This will certainly age Ultimate in the future. We can also use the Star Fox cast as a case study. Star Fox 64, widely considered the best Star Fox game even to this day, was the game upon which Fox and Falco were based in Melee. In Brawl, their character designs are closer to their appearances from Star Fox Assault, which of course is another great game but tends to still live in the shadow of the GOAT, Star Fox 64. 64. We can also talk about the Super Mario series and Mario-adjacent series like Yoshi and DK. Like Ocarina of Time, a game that needs no introduction is Super Mario 64, and it's fair to say Mario being from Mario 64 easily passes as probably his most iconic, or at least one of his most iconic appearances. By proxy, Peach and Bowser fit into this as well. However, those characters aren't playable in this title, so let's look at a title where they are. For this, let's switch gears for a second and take a look at Mario Kart 64's character selection screen. For some reason, to me, this epitomizes the Super Mario character designs, including their voices. There are a few standouts that I want to discuss in this roster. First of all, there's Bowser. There's no mistake, this is Beast Bowser, not Bully Bowser. If you haven't seen it yet, I recommend watching RelaxAlax's video on this subject. In it, he draws a distinction between the more classic, scarier Bowser and the more modern, cutesy King of the Koopas. Here, Bowser sounds fearsome and is hunched forward like a monster, very much the way Sakurai saw the character from his childhood. This also applies to Donkey Kong. Here, he's sporting his iconic Rare design and makes actual monkey noises. [KONG SOUNDS] not the weird sounds he makes in the newer games. "Brrr! Ho ho ho ho!" And for the new Mario Kart game on Switch too, while it's going for a callback sort of to the more classic design, I think the Donkey Kong Country era games deserve the title of most iconic DK appearance. Yoshi is making the noises he makes from Super Mario World and Yoshi's Island. "Yippee!" Here his design is starting to take its more modern appearance, but still has a resemblance to his classic design. Here's a comparison image you may have seen floating around that's critical of Yoshi's modern design. What's really interesting about the Yoshi model in Melee is it's an uncanny combination of aspects of both his old design and his new design, but he's using his Yoshi's Story voice, so he's got a bit of an identity crisis here. Lastly, we have Luigi. Here he has a distinct voice from Mario, but this is only how he sounded in the West. "Yahoo!" If you played the Japanese version of Mario Kart 64, here's how he sounded. "Here we go!" In fact, in pretty much every region, Luigi went through a host of different voice actors during this era before finally settling on Charles Martinet across the board. And this is where things could start to be debated. Some of Luigi's most iconic moments are from his Luigi's Mansion games, especially where he began to develop and grow his own personality. And while I love these games, I honestly feel Luigi is most widely understood as the number 2 to Mario. If you think about the original Super Mario Bros. games, for instance, and even the original Mario Bros. arcade title, I feel Melee reinforces that feeling as well. The Pokémon characters are next. If we're at least basing iconic status by game sales, Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, and Gold, Silver, Crystal are the highest-selling games in the series. Although the Switch titles have technically outsold Gen 2, I don't know if anyone would consider those games more iconic than the original 2 generations. If you're still not convinced, here's another Pikachu art style evolution that's been criticized. I'm team Chubbychu all the way, and something about modern Jigglypuff design really rubs me the wrong way. For Samus, we got Super Metroid's design, considered by many to be the best Metroid game. Captain Falcon is chiefly F-Zero X Falcon here, and here's where everything starts to get a little hazier with my bold claim. Many consider F-Zero GX to be the best in the series, but interestingly, even in Brawl, we didn't get much of an F-Zero GX Falcon, more of a design that borrowed from each of his character designs. But because I like F-Zero X's Falcon's design a lot more than GX's, I'm going to selfishly stick with my thesis. And for Fire Emblem, that's a can of worms I'm not sure I'm willing to get into. I may just not have a case here since Awakening and more modern titles are considered the best or most iconic in the series, and in some cases came out decades after Melee's release. Then there are the characters that only have one game or only one type of appearance, like Mr. Game Watch, Ice Climbers, and Ness. These are sort of one-off cases, so we'll set them aside for now. For Kirby, well, he never changes, right? He's just Kirby. He might be the fighter with the least amount of character design changes between Smash games. This was highlighted in Brawl's opening teaser. Something I find interesting is when Sakurai added certain third-party characters to Smash, like Mega Man, Pac-Man, Sonic, and Banjo and Kazooie, he expressly chose not to use their latest designs but a version of them that was most widely recognized or iconic. Mega Man's design is from his original game Japanese artwork. Pac-Man is based on his original artwork as well. Sonic is based on the general more modern Sonic look, but thankfully not as close to the Sonic 2006 model as it could have gone. And Banjo and Kazooie are from their namesake title, not their blockier Nuts Bolts design. So Sakurai doesn't only just use a character's original design, and he almost never uses their latest designs. He picks what he considers to be the most iconic, and I strongly feel if I were in charge of designing a new Smash Bros roster and I was tasked with picking the version of each character, it would look very similar to Melee's. My last point will be a nod to an earlier topic point, the Zelda characters. I do find it interesting that with Ultimate, while Sakurai stuck with using Breath of the Wild Link, he opted for Ocarina of Time versions of both Young Link and Ganondorf. That means of the 6 Zelda fighters in the game, 2 of them feature the designs from Ocarina of Time. Pretty interesting. So what do you think? Am I full of crap? I'm willing to admit my own nostalgia may be clouding my judgment, but I still think the discussion is worth having and an interesting one. So please share your hot takes in the comments, and if you get value out of this video, please consider liking, subscribing, and sending this video to someone who you think might enjoy it. Thank you very much, and God bless.