2013-11-18, 05:45 PM
Lozmaster Wrote:Not to argue semantics, but Dr Mario and Mario are definitely absolute clones. I'd say some others are too. Pichu is pikachu but with all his moves made weak as pomegranate (and a different up smash? I think that is the only significantly different move), which I think definitely makes him a clone too.
They made quite a bit of effort to differentiate between characters that had similar movesets in the melee -> brawl transition, so sakurai must have had at least some problem with it.
I actually forgot those sets but those two are actually closer to fox/falco in terms of how many actual similarities they have (almost none) compared to the rest of them.
Dr mario is a significantly higher placing in the tier list specifically because of his differences. Fair is a reliable kill move for doc with it's strong upwards trajectory that can be followed into by at least two of his throws, mario doesn't have that. (mario's fair is terrible for it's actual purpose to boot) Doc cannot wall jump at all, mario can, and can do it out of his up-B. (his only real disadvantage to mario) Doc's Usmash bounces opponents off the ground so it can't kill like mario's. Doc's cape is longer/has better range but he can't use it in his recovery to stall more than once unlike mario. Doc's pills are better because their bouncing and power is better. And of course his fsmash has obviously smaller range and doesn't have transcendent priority that the fire hitbox gives mario...all of these things combined makes the way that doc and mario approach EVERYTHING is very different. Also, the length of their wavedash may very well be different also but i don't know this off the top of my head.
Pikachu and pichu are kind of simpler to explain although i don't know much about pichu. Pichu's moves are mostly multi-hit versions of pikachu's (fsmash, down-b) with lighter weight (second worst weight in the game next to zelda, and zelda's is only worse because it allows her to be the most easily combo'd character, not because she dies earlier) and better recovery moves (even though her weight means pikachu ultimately survives longer and still has among the best recovery in the game). Pichu also has nowhere near the gimp ability that made pikachu a viable tournament character.
And yeah they did a great job with the transition, but i think sakurai would have wanted to spend more time/money on those details if he could, but it's because he couldn't that we have that problem.