With over 15 million copies sold, Splatoon is the biggest of Nintendo's newer franchises. Splatoon 2, the Switch sequel, more than doubled the sales of the original game on Wii U. Splatoon received its first representative in Smash with the generic Inkling, the very first character announced for Smash Bros Ultimate.
However, for such a massive franchise, the series remains woefully underrepresented on the Smash roster. It's in a situation similar to where Animal Crossing was, with its lonely generic Villager, before the addition of Isabelle.
With this new expansion pass Nintendo has an opportunity to give Splatoon a second representative. But who should it be? Fortunately, there is an obvious candidate!
Before Splatoon 2 the top candidates would've been Callie and/or Marie, the Squid Sisters, who served as the faces of the game. They hosted everything from the in-game news broadcasts to the Splatfests. However, the Squid Sisters were largely replaced in that role by newcomers Marina and Pearl in Splatoon 2. In the most recent Smash presentation (where Min Min was announced) Callie and Marie received Mii costumes, suggesting that they won't be added to the roster anytime soon.
That leaves Marina and Pearl. Although there was never a straight up Marina vs Pearl Splatfest, Marina's teams won 43 Splatfests to Pearl's 37, and is widely seen as the more popular idol worldwide. Furthermore, Marina is an Octoling, not an Inkling, and provides thematic variety within the world of Splatoon.
It would be very easy to come up with a Marina moveset that incorporates Splatoon weapons that Inkling didn't use -- easier than it was to differentiate Isabelle from Villager. As a character, her dialogue already indicates that she has a preference for the Brella and Octobrush.
And, of course, as a darker skinned character Marina would bring urgently needed representation to the Smash roster. However, even if that were not the case, Marina would still be an absolutely perfect candidate among Nintendo's first party options. Maybe the roster is already set in stone and maybe it isn't, but either way folks at Nintendo should give her the consideration she deserves.
#PutMarinaInSmash
Here are some great points made by other posters:
Alternate costume (from the Octo Expansion):
However, for such a massive franchise, the series remains woefully underrepresented on the Smash roster. It's in a situation similar to where Animal Crossing was, with its lonely generic Villager, before the addition of Isabelle.
With this new expansion pass Nintendo has an opportunity to give Splatoon a second representative. But who should it be? Fortunately, there is an obvious candidate!
Before Splatoon 2 the top candidates would've been Callie and/or Marie, the Squid Sisters, who served as the faces of the game. They hosted everything from the in-game news broadcasts to the Splatfests. However, the Squid Sisters were largely replaced in that role by newcomers Marina and Pearl in Splatoon 2. In the most recent Smash presentation (where Min Min was announced) Callie and Marie received Mii costumes, suggesting that they won't be added to the roster anytime soon.
That leaves Marina and Pearl. Although there was never a straight up Marina vs Pearl Splatfest, Marina's teams won 43 Splatfests to Pearl's 37, and is widely seen as the more popular idol worldwide. Furthermore, Marina is an Octoling, not an Inkling, and provides thematic variety within the world of Splatoon.
It would be very easy to come up with a Marina moveset that incorporates Splatoon weapons that Inkling didn't use -- easier than it was to differentiate Isabelle from Villager. As a character, her dialogue already indicates that she has a preference for the Brella and Octobrush.
And, of course, as a darker skinned character Marina would bring urgently needed representation to the Smash roster. However, even if that were not the case, Marina would still be an absolutely perfect candidate among Nintendo's first party options. Maybe the roster is already set in stone and maybe it isn't, but either way folks at Nintendo should give her the consideration she deserves.
#PutMarinaInSmash
Here are some great points made by other posters:
I was expecting more of a discussion on how cool Marina is in universe - like the fact that she is known to be EXTREMELY intelligent and created the shifty stations stages alongside many other inventions. Marina's a genius and I would LOVE to see her show up.
Especially if they give her some of the alt colors she had in the splatoon concerts.
Marina is an ex soldier, an hacker, an engineer and she was part of a team that stopped a racial genocide.
Obviously an ultra-safe company like Nintendo didn't overtly discuss real-world racism in their E10+ rated game, but Marina actually was the subject of some. . .fantasy racism in the chat room tidbits of the DLC over being an octopus. With Captain Cuttlefish (I.E. one of the "good guy" characters) being the one spouting it off no less, and more importantly being painted as unambiguously WRONG for it.
A whoooole lot of boomer-energy "one of the good ones" talk, complete with Pearl and Marina feeling noticeably awkward from it. Somehow Splatoon 2 of all games was the one to dip it's toes into the subject of uncomfortable microaggressions. And at the end of the day Pearl thoroughly dismisses any racist arguments and comments he makes in favor of being caring and supportive towards Marina. Hell, Pearl threatens to honest-to-goodness cut the old man if he lays a hand on Marina, LOL. I'm not good at describing these things but honestly it all felt like better messaging on the subject than most games I've played, even if the chat room segment was just a footnote to the A-plot of Agent 8 trying to escape a trippy deep-sea hellhole.
All this of course, contrasted with the fact that Elma doesn't really. . .have any kind of acknowledgement of her identity in general in XCX. And the game actually did have it's own racial subtext missions (and quite a few of them, no less!). She's just not relevant to that conversation.
. . .Mostly unrelated aside, but there's also something else about Off The Hook that might be worth considering them for. Full disclosure? There's some suuuuuper noticeable chemistry between Pearl and Marina in the official materials. Like, to the point that most of the Splatoon fandom, even people who want nothing to do with shipping, agree that they're lesbians and Nintendo just won't spit it out because they're afraid of the backlash. Hell, I think they're dating and normally I need this stuff spelled out by the company themselves before I can concede that a couple is a couple. With that in mind, adding them wouldn't strictly be adding a playable LGBT couple YET, but. . .it would be very, very easy for that to change. Like, one finger twitch on a keyboard easy.
Alternate costume (from the Octo Expansion):
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