NOTE: For the sake of this thread, I'll only be talking about the characters who are women by default. This is to maintain consistency with the female fighters ratio thread from a while back.
Also, I'd like to thank Primethius, Biestmann, Platy, & Clov for their help on this thread (I honestly couldn't have made this without them, Primethius & Biestmann even helped with the various titles). With that said, I hope you find this thread to be insightful.
UPDATE: As of now (I.E. Byleth has been revealed but not released), the female fighters percentage has gone down to 18.75% for the defaults (worse than Smash Wii U/3DS). But in positive news, the addition of Female Byleth as an alternate costume has brought the female fighters w/ alternate costumes percentage up to 32.5%. Within this percentage, Pokémon Trainer is counted as one character, which makes things less complicated when factoring in Red & Leaf.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a celebration of not only Nintendo games, but gaming as a whole. And in many of those regards, Smash Ultimate excels and then some. However, even as someone who loves the series to death, I'm not blind to its various faults (one of which was already covered by Primethius in his own thread). One of which is how Smash Ultimate's approach to women in the game. Considering the IPs that Sakurai & Bandai Namco has at their disposal (the war-chests known as Nintendo's stable of IPs as well as those of Capcom, Sega, Bandai Namco, Konami, & more), there's quite a bit of potential to be tapped into. But it's clear that, much like black/brown representation, this isn't taken into as much consideration as it should be (though I'd imagine that it's at least kinda considered, given Isabelle's Classic Mode run). As someone who loves the Smash series to death, here are a few things that I'd like to see improved with both Smash Ultimate (especially if character DLC support extends past the Fighters Pass) & future Smash games.
As of when this thread was made, Smash Ultimate's female fighter ratio currently sits at 18.75% for characters who are female by default. By this I mean that while Inkling & Wii Fit Trainer count, the likes of Robin, Corrin, & Byleth don't (I'll get to that later set of characters, especially with regards to Corrin & Byleth). The problem with this is that, even though the number of female fighters in the roster is pretty high, the ratio is the 3rd worst percentage of any modern fighting game (worse than Smash Wii U/3DS, even). The only games that have worse percentages than Smash Ultimate are Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite (a game marred with corporate meddling from Marvel Entertainment) & Dragon Ball FighterZ (a game based on a franchise that lacked in women to begin with, at least until very recently). To better illustrate my point, Biestmann was nice enough to help create the framework for the graphs below showing the breakdown for the roster with regards to gender (which I had to re-create in Excel).
NOTE: The "Other" section refers to characters who don't have a specific gender in their source game (Mewtwo) or don't have their gender specified in Smash (Jigglypuff, Incineroar, Lucario, Pichu, Greninja, Charizard, & Piranha Plant). Special thanks to Biestmann for creating the template for both of these graphs, Clov for helping us get the "Other" section correct, & Platy for helping with color selection for the graphs.
At least with the lack of black/brown characters, an argument could be made that Nintendo just doesn't have a ton of characters for Sakurai to pull from on that front. But with regards to the female fighters, there's almost no excuse considering the plethora of fan-favorites that Nintendo could pull from (Ex: Dixie Kong, Elma, Lyn, etc.). Though as mentioned in the first note section, Smash Ultimate's percentage becomes more acceptable when you factor in alternate costumes, which goes into my next point.
While Sakurai isn't the first to screw this up, that doesn't mean that he can't set a good example going forward. He can even keep the rocket boots, just make them into regular shoes rather than heels. As for the presentation aspect, that's where Palutena comes in. And unfortunately, she has a couple of issues.
NOTE: While the taunt gif is from Smash Wii U/3DS, said taunt went unchanged in Smash Ultimate.
In the case of the taunt, while I understand that Palutena is a more playful kind of goddess, her doing a pole dance for one of her taunts feels out-of-place for her & just comes off as blatant sexualization. This is especially true for how Smash Wii U/3DS handled Palutena's reveal trailer which, while it didn't carry over to Ultimate, still plays into the aforementioned taunt. What makes it even weirder is that the Kid Icarus cast as a whole, Palutena included, was reimagined from the ground-up by Sakurai himself. It honestly makes me more disappointed than I normally would be, & I hope that Sakurai rights this wrong in future games (if he returns as the director). Going back to Zero Suit Samus, some of her animations are a bit questionable.
NOTE: While this animation was altered between Wii U/3DS & Ultimate, many of the problems from the original animation were carried over. I included the other Wii U/3DS gif as a point of reference.
I'd go into detail about what's wrong with this animation, but the gifs can pretty much explain everything for me. With that said, it should be noted that despite some of the particular missteps, Smash Ultimate is generally pretty good about how the ladies are handled from the standpoint of both design & presentation. Unlike some fighting games these days, Smash doesn't emphasize sex appeal with camera angles, & the E10+ rating of the game makes sure that things can't get too sexualized. My general point is that the positive changes made to the designs of Zero Suit Samus & even Female Corrin are something I'd like to see across the board (when necessary, of course), and that Sakurai & Bandai Namco should be more conscious about stuff like that as well as maintaining Sakurai's famously-high standard in terms of adhering to how the characters are in their source games from a presentation standpoint.
All of this goes back to what I said a few sections ago about Nintendo & Sakurai not taking stuff like representation of women & people of color into consideration when it comes to Smash's roster. I understand that the game is a celebration of gaming history, but it should also stand as a shining example of what gaming is & what it could be. It's part of the reason why I do these threads. It's not to rake these games over the coals, but because I love the franchises my threads focus on & want to see them do better as well as illustrate when they do things right. A common complaint I get when bringing up this topic is that "there shouldn't be forced diversity" or "gameplay should be the main factor". This is Sakurai we're talking about, the same guy who made Piranha Plant interesting. I'm sure he could make a cool moveset for various women & people of color. And either way, options exist for both (especially for women) that would bring a lot to the table. And because of that & the fact that I want this game to serve as that shining example, I as well as the other members of the Women in Smash Thread Team suggested 3 women who Nintendo & Sakurai could add to Smash Ultimate via DLC and 3 women who Sakurai could add to the next Smash game many years from now (unless there's another director, then the question is directed to them). The only limits with our requests is that these female fighters had to have originated from a video game (with one exception for one of Platy's requests, though it's a deep cut into Nintendo's history) & have been on a Nintendo console at least once (the latter is more of a courtesy than anything else). With that said, here are our personal requests...
NOTE: Primethius doesn't have a preference as to his request being added as DLC or in a future Smash title.
NOTE: Like Primethius, Biestmann doesn't have a preference as to the following being added as DLC or in a future Smash title.
NOTE: A.By is the newest member of our team. And as such, I wanted to give her the opportunity to give her picks.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter, so feel free to make your opinions on the top heard. And once again, I'd like to thank the Women in Smash Thread Team for making this thread possible. You all are amazing & I can't thank any of you enough for helping me with this thread.
Also, I'd like to thank Primethius, Biestmann, Platy, & Clov for their help on this thread (I honestly couldn't have made this without them, Primethius & Biestmann even helped with the various titles). With that said, I hope you find this thread to be insightful.
UPDATE: As of now (I.E. Byleth has been revealed but not released), the female fighters percentage has gone down to 18.75% for the defaults (worse than Smash Wii U/3DS). But in positive news, the addition of Female Byleth as an alternate costume has brought the female fighters w/ alternate costumes percentage up to 32.5%. Within this percentage, Pokémon Trainer is counted as one character, which makes things less complicated when factoring in Red & Leaf.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a celebration of not only Nintendo games, but gaming as a whole. And in many of those regards, Smash Ultimate excels and then some. However, even as someone who loves the series to death, I'm not blind to its various faults (one of which was already covered by Primethius in his own thread). One of which is how Smash Ultimate's approach to women in the game. Considering the IPs that Sakurai & Bandai Namco has at their disposal (the war-chests known as Nintendo's stable of IPs as well as those of Capcom, Sega, Bandai Namco, Konami, & more), there's quite a bit of potential to be tapped into. But it's clear that, much like black/brown representation, this isn't taken into as much consideration as it should be (though I'd imagine that it's at least kinda considered, given Isabelle's Classic Mode run). As someone who loves the Smash series to death, here are a few things that I'd like to see improved with both Smash Ultimate (especially if character DLC support extends past the Fighters Pass) & future Smash games.
THE NUMBER OF WOMEN ON THE ROSTER
NOTE: I'll add the Byleth version of the banner when it becomes available.
NOTE: I'll add the Byleth version of the banner when it becomes available.
As of when this thread was made, Smash Ultimate's female fighter ratio currently sits at 18.75% for characters who are female by default. By this I mean that while Inkling & Wii Fit Trainer count, the likes of Robin, Corrin, & Byleth don't (I'll get to that later set of characters, especially with regards to Corrin & Byleth). The problem with this is that, even though the number of female fighters in the roster is pretty high, the ratio is the 3rd worst percentage of any modern fighting game (worse than Smash Wii U/3DS, even). The only games that have worse percentages than Smash Ultimate are Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite (a game marred with corporate meddling from Marvel Entertainment) & Dragon Ball FighterZ (a game based on a franchise that lacked in women to begin with, at least until very recently). To better illustrate my point, Biestmann was nice enough to help create the framework for the graphs below showing the breakdown for the roster with regards to gender (which I had to re-create in Excel).
NOTE: The "Other" section refers to characters who don't have a specific gender in their source game (Mewtwo) or don't have their gender specified in Smash (Jigglypuff, Incineroar, Lucario, Pichu, Greninja, Charizard, & Piranha Plant). Special thanks to Biestmann for creating the template for both of these graphs, Clov for helping us get the "Other" section correct, & Platy for helping with color selection for the graphs.
At least with the lack of black/brown characters, an argument could be made that Nintendo just doesn't have a ton of characters for Sakurai to pull from on that front. But with regards to the female fighters, there's almost no excuse considering the plethora of fan-favorites that Nintendo could pull from (Ex: Dixie Kong, Elma, Lyn, etc.). Though as mentioned in the first note section, Smash Ultimate's percentage becomes more acceptable when you factor in alternate costumes, which goes into my next point.
THE DEFAULT VARIANTS FOR GENDER-CHOICE CHARACTERS
One of the reasons that Smash Ultimate's female fighter ratio is as bad as it is currently is a direct result of many of the female variants for the gender-choice characters being alternate costumes rather than the default. In fact, the only ones who are women by default are Inkling & Wii Fit Trainer (as mentioned in the previous section). At least with Robin, I can forgive him being male by default since he's the more popular variant of the character (going by the Fire Emblem Heroes poll). But I do recognize that the margin between both variants of Robin is close enough to where not many would complain if Female Robin was the default. But in this case, I'm using Corrin & Villager as prime examples of my point with regards to making more of the gender-choice characters women by default. In the case of Villager, they come from a series that's already popular with women to begin with. As much as I like the base Villager design, I see Villager as a Robin-esque situation where not many would complain if Female Villager (as shown above) was made the default. Hell, I'd argue that it'd be encouraged. As for Corrin, well, I've already gone into detail about Corrin in the past...
To me, Sakurai sticking with Male Corrin as the default design feels like Sakurai pointlessly standing against the tide, even after Intelligent Systems got the memo that the fans vastly preferred Female Corrin. Female Corrin is a prime example of my argument, & it's something that I'd like to see rectified in future Smash games (should Corrin return). Most of what I said about Corrin can also extend to Byleth, whose female form enjoys more popularity by a sizable amount compared to her male counterpart. And given how most of the gender-choice characters went to the male versions as the default, going with Female Byleth as the primary version would have been a nice change of pace.
THE DESIGN & PRESENTATION OF SMASH ULTIMATE'S WOMEN
I say this as both as a point that Smash has made clear improvements to certain designs as well as the fact that some of those changes ended up not being for the best. While Female Corrin is an example of a marked improvement over her original incarnation (namely with the removal of her exposed thighs), Zero Suit Samus kind of represents both the improvements & the flaws added to her design in her time in the Smash series. As for the improvements, those changes didn't come along until Ultimate. By that I mean Zero Suit Samus better-defined muscles & reduced breast size. That's not to say that large breasts aren't a thing in the real world, but Zero Suit Samus' in Smash Wii U/3DS was to the point of sexualization (with that said, her official render pose is a fair bit sexualized with the emphasis on her breasts & butt). Likewise, given the training & genetic restructuring that Samus endured, her having more defined muscles makes perfect sense. As for the negative change, it has to be the heels. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of rocket boots to help enhance Zero Suit Samus' moveset. My problem is that they were made into heels, especially when the developers of Zero Mission clearly said to not give Samus heels.
While Sakurai isn't the first to screw this up, that doesn't mean that he can't set a good example going forward. He can even keep the rocket boots, just make them into regular shoes rather than heels. As for the presentation aspect, that's where Palutena comes in. And unfortunately, she has a couple of issues.
NOTE: While the taunt gif is from Smash Wii U/3DS, said taunt went unchanged in Smash Ultimate.
In the case of the taunt, while I understand that Palutena is a more playful kind of goddess, her doing a pole dance for one of her taunts feels out-of-place for her & just comes off as blatant sexualization. This is especially true for how Smash Wii U/3DS handled Palutena's reveal trailer which, while it didn't carry over to Ultimate, still plays into the aforementioned taunt. What makes it even weirder is that the Kid Icarus cast as a whole, Palutena included, was reimagined from the ground-up by Sakurai himself. It honestly makes me more disappointed than I normally would be, & I hope that Sakurai rights this wrong in future games (if he returns as the director). Going back to Zero Suit Samus, some of her animations are a bit questionable.
NOTE: While this animation was altered between Wii U/3DS & Ultimate, many of the problems from the original animation were carried over. I included the other Wii U/3DS gif as a point of reference.
I'd go into detail about what's wrong with this animation, but the gifs can pretty much explain everything for me. With that said, it should be noted that despite some of the particular missteps, Smash Ultimate is generally pretty good about how the ladies are handled from the standpoint of both design & presentation. Unlike some fighting games these days, Smash doesn't emphasize sex appeal with camera angles, & the E10+ rating of the game makes sure that things can't get too sexualized. My general point is that the positive changes made to the designs of Zero Suit Samus & even Female Corrin are something I'd like to see across the board (when necessary, of course), and that Sakurai & Bandai Namco should be more conscious about stuff like that as well as maintaining Sakurai's famously-high standard in terms of adhering to how the characters are in their source games from a presentation standpoint.
A LOOK TOWARDS THE FUTURE
If we're talking about how hopeful I am for the future of a number of these things getting rectified, I wouldn't say that I'm optimistic regarding the number of female fighters going up in the near future. All of the rumors (however credible they may be) & speculation for the characters in Fighters Pass Vol. 2 seem to be centered around characters who are either guys or are male by default (granted, having female variants for the male characters is appreciated, but it doesn't help fix the existing problem all that much). This is tue for most of said speculation I've seen of characters who may be likely or are currently discussed (Ryu Hayabusa, Doom Slayer, Dante, Heihachi, Phoenix Wright, Geno, etc.). If this scenario ends up coming to pass, Smash Ultimate would have a female fighter ratio of 18.292% (which would be worse than Smash Wii U/3DS), which would be disappointing given the aforementioned large stable of women that both Nintendo & their third party buddies have access to.
All of this goes back to what I said a few sections ago about Nintendo & Sakurai not taking stuff like representation of women & people of color into consideration when it comes to Smash's roster. I understand that the game is a celebration of gaming history, but it should also stand as a shining example of what gaming is & what it could be. It's part of the reason why I do these threads. It's not to rake these games over the coals, but because I love the franchises my threads focus on & want to see them do better as well as illustrate when they do things right. A common complaint I get when bringing up this topic is that "there shouldn't be forced diversity" or "gameplay should be the main factor". This is Sakurai we're talking about, the same guy who made Piranha Plant interesting. I'm sure he could make a cool moveset for various women & people of color. And either way, options exist for both (especially for women) that would bring a lot to the table. And because of that & the fact that I want this game to serve as that shining example, I as well as the other members of the Women in Smash Thread Team suggested 3 women who Nintendo & Sakurai could add to Smash Ultimate via DLC and 3 women who Sakurai could add to the next Smash game many years from now (unless there's another director, then the question is directed to them). The only limits with our requests is that these female fighters had to have originated from a video game (with one exception for one of Platy's requests, though it's a deep cut into Nintendo's history) & have been on a Nintendo console at least once (the latter is more of a courtesy than anything else). With that said, here are our personal requests...
Neoxon said:
Platy said:
Clov said:
NOTE: Primethius doesn't have a preference as to his request being added as DLC or in a future Smash title.
Primethius said:
NOTE: Like Primethius, Biestmann doesn't have a preference as to the following being added as DLC or in a future Smash title.
Biestmann said:
NOTE: A.By is the newest member of our team. And as such, I wanted to give her the opportunity to give her picks.
A.By said:
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter, so feel free to make your opinions on the top heard. And once again, I'd like to thank the Women in Smash Thread Team for making this thread possible. You all are amazing & I can't thank any of you enough for helping me with this thread.
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