Here’s Where Nintendo Reveals Everything About Smash Bros. Ultimate
Nintendo is betting big on Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for the Switch’s 2018 holiday season, and the game seems to be pulling out all the stops, including every character from the franchise’s history and more, tons of stages both nostalgic and new, an absolutely absurd number of great songs from Nintendo’s library of game franchises, and more.
Ultimate is a grand celebration of all things Smash Bros., and Smash Bros. is a celebration of all things Nintendo (and a bit beyond), making this installment in particular a dream game for video game fans. With just over a month to go before its December 7 release date, Nintendo has announced yet another Smash Bros.-focused Nintendo Direct presentation for today (at 10AM EDT, 7AM PDT), clocking in at 40 whole minutes of showcase time for the title.
That’s after the game was already Nintendo’s E3 centerpiece and got its own lengthy Smash Direct already, really driving home just how much content there is to talk about in the game. So what’s so exciting about today’s Direct in particular? Well, it’s likely to be the last one before the game’s launch, and series creator/director Masahiro Sakurai has previously stated that unlike previous titles in the series, the entire playable fighter roster of Ultimate (unless there’s DLC, anyway) will be revealed before the game hits stores.
That means we’re likely to get at least a few, if not several new characters confirmed today, likely bringing some of the game’s biggest surprises, since they’ve been kept for last.
Today should also reveal a mode that was conspicuously hidden during the last Direct, which fans determined to be named “Spirits” on its menu screen icon. It’s been theorized that this is a followup to Smash Bros. Brawl’s “Subspace Emissary” mode, which was Smash’s most complete side-scrolling story mode to date. The Wii U game was comparatively light on single player content (the 3DS version had its own Subspace Emissary-light in the Smash Run mode), so it’s possible Sakurai is trying to rectify that in this sequel.
But why reveal the whole roster before launch and spoil the surprise? It’s possible Sakurai has decided to do this because leaks have pretty regularly spoiled the rosters of past games, and fans tend to get pretty excited over those leaks, so why not stir up that excitement through an official reveal, instead?
He may still have been beaten to the punch, though, as a recent leak seems to have spoiled the remaining fighters left in the game. For those who have seen it, that portion of this Direct presentation will be more confirmation than announcement, but some of the characters it teased would still be pretty surprising, considering we don’t actually know that the leak is the truth—and honestly, even if it is.
What else remains to fill the 40 minutes of the presentation? We still don’t know anything at all, really, about the game’s online capabilities, which are a big deal for a game primarily geared towards multiplayer. Smash Bros. Wii U/3DS were massive improvements over Brawl in this area, specifically introducing a mode geared towards players who want to compete in a less party-oriented set of rules. It was still limited compared to the rest of the gaming world, though, so there’s a lot of room for improvement and new additions to be announced. (There have been some intriguing rumors here, as well.)
Whatever the case, we’re about to find out at 10AM EDT!
After the presentation, there will also be a “Nintendo Treehouse” presentation, where members of Nintendo’s team sit down to play and talk about the new game, as well as others including Yoshi’s Crafted World, Pokémon: Lets Go!, and Diablo 3: Eternal Collection. Enjoy!
(image: Nintendo)
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