New Smash Bros discovery reveals Sakurai considered unlikely Pokemon as secret fighter

Throughout the years, there have been countless rumors about scrapped Super Smash Bros characters and concepts and a newly-translated interview has revealed a Pokemon who narrowly missed out on being added.

Smash has evolved into a true celebration of gaming with many third-party reps joining the cast of fighters, especially in Smash 4 and Ultimate. Originally, though, only Nintendo characters were part of the roster.

The first game in the platform fighter franchise, now referred to as Smash 64, featured two Pokemon in the form of Pikachu and Jigglypuff, but it turns out that series creator Masahiro Sakurai had considered another ‘mon at first.

As Source Gaming explained in a video, this discovery was made after looking at a new archive for 64Dream, an old Japanese gaming magazine.

The magazine interviewed members of Hal Laboratory for its May 1999 issue to discuss Pokemon Snap and spoke with series creator Masahiro Sakurai about Super Smash Bros’ development.

According to Sakurai, he had originally considered adding Clefairy as a secret fighter but ended up opting for Jigglypuff instead because it offered a “more interesting” concept.

Sakurai noted that Clefairy was considered because the secret characters in Smash 64 were partly chosen to reuse assets from the base roster.

Clefairy would have taken from Kirby, but Sakurai ended up going with Jigglypuff instead. However, Clefairy would end up being in the game, being one of the ‘mon that could jump out of a Poke Ball item.

Jigglypuff has been featured in every entry in the series since Smash 64. Despite being a joke character in the first game, the Pokemon became one of the top fighters in its GameCube sequel, Melee, in large part due to her ‘Rest’ ability that can kill enemies very early.

Fans are still waiting on info about the next Smash title after Sakurai hinted that he would be coming out of retirement to work on it.

However, following the success of Ultimate and its immense roster, the question still remains if Smash 6 will be a full reboot or a deluxe edition of Ultimate, similar to how Nintendo handled Mario Kart 8 on the Switch.