y'all still saying this dumb shit? look at any other fighting game not named smash
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89 Characters & Not a Single Black Character: The Anti-Blackness of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- Thread starter Neoxon
- Start date
Twintelle really was a perfect option. Which is also frustrating in that we're discussing a roster of 89 characters and trying to suggest how one could have been added. When it should have been many more. The fact that it ended up with none is practically absurd.
Intentional or not, it's an absolute embarrassment and completely idiotic.
It's both a damning statement of the state of modern video games and a massive failing of Smash Bros specifically
It's both a damning statement of the state of modern video games and a massive failing of Smash Bros specifically
Smash is supposed to be a celebration of the videogame industry sooooooo......
Yet everyone is improving. Go ahead and look at most games coming out these days. Most of them do attempt to improve and be diverse.
Heck even Nintendo is doing it to a lesser extent. Smash going this long without black characters is ABSOLUTELY a Smash problem.
...
Are you sure you want to use Mike Tyson as an example?
We can be critical (and we SHOULD be critical) without overreaching with the accusations of motive - no, it doesn't have to be intentional. Being unintentional doesn't excuse the lack of representation, but I think it's more productive to the conversation than to assume that the developers are going out of their way to exclude people of certain races.
I don't think its overreaching to suggest that creating a roster of 89 characters and ending up with zero that are Black points to a degree of intent.
Just an example of a character hell pick from a few of the black boxers from punch out Beyond him.
It's an issue with notoriety. In general Nintendo doesn't have any major black characters in their first party franchises (which is another topic). Doc Louis is probably their most famous one followed by Mr. Sandman, but it's easy to see why they weren't added (non-playable side characters from small franchise which only has 1 rep). Anyone else would be a stretch realistically
At that point you're looking at 3rd Party characters, they tend pick famous franchise mascots (Snake, Sonic, Sora, Kazuya, Ryu/Ken, Steve, etc) or MCs from recent entries (Joker, Hero), so you'd need a black character to fit that criteria. Possible, but they're few and far between, especially in Japan.
I really don't think it was intentional racism on Sakurai's/Nintendo's fault (nobody ever consciously thought "We're not having any black characters in our game!"), more just a byproduct of picking major/historical characters. The lack of black characters on that front is another topic, but I don't think it's fair to call Sakurai a racist
At that point you're looking at 3rd Party characters, they tend pick famous franchise mascots (Snake, Sonic, Sora, Kazuya, Ryu/Ken, Steve, etc) or MCs from recent entries (Joker, Hero), so you'd need a black character to fit that criteria. Possible, but they're few and far between, especially in Japan.
I really don't think it was intentional racism on Sakurai's/Nintendo's fault (nobody ever consciously thought "We're not having any black characters in our game!"), more just a byproduct of picking major/historical characters. The lack of black characters on that front is another topic, but I don't think it's fair to call Sakurai a racist
At minimum, I think they have been intentionally blind to criticism in a "we don't see color" kind of way. And I don't think that's much better.
Mike Tyson was so toxic that they had to literally remove him from his "own" game, lol.
OP
OP
They added Richter and Simon, both characters that could have been one with different skins, yet you got people telling us that there wasn't a chance.
Like you said, Twintelle should have gotten in, along with Min Min. No reason to excuse it by saying "well, they do one character per series).
Really frustrating and I wish people would stop giving us dumb excuses as defence of Smash.
Smash Ultimate to me isn't a celebration of video games, it's just a marketing machine. It can and should do better on this front, but I realized it never actually cared to.
When even freaking Dog Hunt and Ice Climbers got in you know there is a freaking problem.
Heck why is there 3 Samus? Why is there multiple versions of Mario?
Heck why is there 3 Samus? Why is there multiple versions of Mario?
OP
OP
And while the industry is trying to show clear signs of improvement, Smash is standing still. Read the OP, I already covered this argument.
Seriously and the game would have been better for having 2 ARMS reps that are also women of color.
Completely. There are two scenarios — they never considered any black characters, or they did and they chose in favour of others — and neither of them is an acceptable result for a game with close to 90 characters in it.
C'mon. Of the 1000s upon 1000s of characters that could have been chosen, they chose only 89 of them. There are plenty of criteria/priorities they could have used that would have resulted in no black characters being included. Does that excuse it? Absolutely fucking not. But we can rightly criticize that without assuming that those criteria/priorities include a racist intent.
Heck, we later for Pyra and Mythra together. So you can't even say they do One Character per series for the DLCs.
Totally agree, there's no excuse for there being no black characters. But that doesn't mean that we arrived at this point because the decision makers are racist.
Is why i get so confused at people saying "they could choose one from StreetFighter or Final Fantasy", there is no way they were going to skip on more popular characters
Punch Out issue is that it's niche as hell to get another character
He was removed because he was accused of domestic violence...
Why should anyone give them the benefit of the doubt though? Because they make good games? 90 character and zero of color sort of burns that benefit of the doubt in a lot of people's minds, you understand this, no?
That's what I was inferring, I should have made that more clear.
Wait which Castlevania leads could they have gone with instead?
Which of the DLC characters are "obscure"?
Marina is a far more glaring oversight as she has no mechanical or design issues that make her difficult to implement
bruh use google. Its false its been false.
They also could have added both and just chosen to have one less white or light skinned male character
Same goes for Marina and Urbosa, honestly it's ridiculous that these 3 are not in the game, there's room for them and characters like Min-Min.
Kinda hard not to think there's racist intent when this type of exclusion happens all the time outside of Smash (videos game even), in which there is racist intent.
Yes I understand that. But for me, if you're trying to be "correct" in this discussion, then stick to the things you're correct about: yes, they fucked up by not including black characters. No, there is no excuse. Yes, they should be held accountable and/or pressured to do better in the future. All of that is correct, and people should have their voices raised about that stuff.
But assuming that the devs are racist is speculation. Don't muddy the message by adding speculation to the argument.
Was talking about the game as a whole not DLC.
Not even one character was added in the DLC or the main game.
You had multiple versions of characters yet not one single black character.
Would you be affording this same benefit of the doubt to any other company in a similar situation? Like if this was a Hollywood movie with a cast of 90 people and there were zero black or brown actors involved, what would you think? And would you be wrong to think that? The "speculation" is absolutely fair.
I think it's a thing of Sakurai/Nintendo focusing more on which Arms character they liked the best/was most popular, as opposed to choosing someone based on skin color. Whether that's the right mindset or not is up to you.
I dont think you should be dying on a hill of this being intentional racism or not.
Its racism regardless of you trying to eek out if its intentionally malicious or not. If you arent anti-racist and actually pushing for diversity its just as bad as doing nothing at all and/or being out and loud racist.
Its intentional in the fact they made zero effort to even have one character there Regardless if you think its malicious or ignorance.
Stupid question, because I know nothing about Splatoon: I see that Marina is her own character with a personality, but the Splatoon representative in Smash is named "Inkling" with various alternative skins. Are these characters just generic & not real characters in the games themselves?
This is how I see it as well. The main culprit at the end is the videogame industry and us fans wo bought games for many many years without calling companies for their lack of diversity.
It seems things are changing a bit, but that will take time.
I am puzzle to think of a single representative from Latin America who is not a Narco, an old cliche, or Blanka. Sombra maybe?
Gotta go what sells. White people with swords. Fucking terrible.