Was thinking about a Digimon rep and how they'd work for Smash after reading the last few pages of this thread, the gimmick for a Digimon would likely be evolution but how to do it and what way would work best?
Using Agumon who'd be the mostly likely candidate for a Digimon rep, the most obvious answer is them being able to evolve into Greymon like the anime and most modern games, either on a time, a charge meter or damage they've done.
But then Sakurai focuses on the games, not the anime which is a lot different so thought deeper. in the very first Virtual Pet when Agumon was introduced, they had five evolutions depending on how well you treated them, number of fights etc. Greymon, Tyrannomon, Meramon, Devimon and Numemon:
So I was think would Sakurai try to do something more accurate to the original games and I was thinking of ways how his team could do it?
- Just do the Greymon line, the easiest option and do what I said above, maybe also then having Metal Greymon be an option when you pass the timer/charge meter etc.
- Try to have all 4 main evos, Greymon, Tyrannomon, Meramon and Devimon (excluding Numemon because I doubt they'd want to poop throwing slug to be playable), either by have the skin you chose determining the one your Agumon evolves to sort of like Hero (so Skin one being Greymon, two being Blue Greymon, three being regular Tyrannomon etc) or have it be random when you fill the timer/meter or determined in the way you played and damage taken. This seems least likely since that would involve 5 models, 2 of which very unlike the Dinos.
- Same as the above but with just Greymon and Tyrannomon (which were Agumon exclusive evos), All three share similar bodies so you could reuse a lot of assets and Greymon and Tyrannomon already fight differently, Tyrannomon is a slasher and a brawler characters, with sharp Freddy-like claws while Greymon is more focused on their fire blast ranged attacks and in close combat, headbutts and using his horn. Again you could choose who Agumon evolve into via the skin selection or when the meter's filled or it could be random or based on playstyle, close and agressive being Tyranno and range and defensive being Grey.
- Side step all of the above and have Agumon warp digivolve to the very popular fan favourite Wargreymon.
- Or maybe have instead a duo team like the Ice Climbers if the two had slightly different move sets with Agumon and Gabumon that evolve into the most popular Digimon according to Bandai's own polls, Omegamon.
Again, I'm wonder if any of those would be feasible.