What if Super Smash Bros. Melee had only eight months to develop instead of eleven? The video walks through the cuts: fewer characters like Jigglypuff and Game & Watch, missing stages like Final Destination, and no alternate music tracks. A look at what Nintendo would have sacrificed for time.
Sakurai and Team had 3 months less of development. Not only would this put the game's development cycle at a total of 8 months, but would mean a lot of cuts and changes would need to happen. Well, here's an earlier version of the title screen that doesn't include any credits for Intelligent Systems, since presumably the Fire Emblem characters would be cut. And here's a much smaller character selection screen. Assuming these final months were shaved off, there would barely be enough time to complete the 16-character roster target they had set up for themselves, and this would be the result. And actually, this is 17 characters if you include Sheik. There would be no clone characters, and Sakurai would prioritize unique movesets of the most popular characters from the Smash 2 poll. Ness would be replaced with Lucas, as it was an early consideration. Jigglypuff would be removed as she was Smash 64's joke character, and they'd probably want to prioritize newcomers like Peach, Bowser, Zelda, Ice Climbers, and Mewtwo, even though porting a Smash 64 character would be less work. Along those same lines, characters like Game Watch would have to be cut completely. The stages would be trimmed down also, with some alterations. You'll notice the backstages for Pokémon Stadium and Mute City, etc., like Fourside, Brinstar Depths, Poké Floats, Big Blue, etc. would be missing from the list, as well as any of the special stages like Final Destination and Battlefield, or any of the Retro Pass stages from the '64 title. And since Game Watch wouldn't be included, Flat Zone would also be omitted. Early Brinstar didn't have a Chozo in the background, Fountain of Dreams only had 2 platforms instead of 3, Topi would remain the seal versions as they didn't have time to notice the regional differences in Ice Climber to create unique characters for the North America region. And Pokémon Stadium wouldn't have any transformations whatsoever. It would just feature the big screen in the background as its main gimmick. Great Bay would have characters walk inside and on top of the lab. Yoshi's Island would be a lot wider and have rotating blocks, while Yoshi's story would look quite different also, with more platforms and walk-off sections. Temple would have an elevator that's seen in the special movie and a different musical composition. Onett would be largely the same but would have a different arrangement of the B&Friends theme. Of course, there would be no time for alternative music themes, but a modest sound test would be featured like in Smash 64. So there you have it, a cursed timeline in which Melee's development cycle was even more truncated than it ended up being in reality. The good news is though, for every cursed timeline, there's a blessed timeline. And I cannot wait to show you that concept real soon. But in the meantime, if you like Melee designs, I have a merch store now. So I recommend going to the link in the description, checking out what you like, picking out a favorite, and just seeing what's out there. Thank you so much for watching this video, and I'll catch you guys on the next one.
