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Ice Climbers excluded from Super Smash Bros. due to 3DS hardware

Series director Masahiro Sakurai explains why the Ice Climbers won't be in the new Smash Bros. The reason, as one might imagine, has nothing to do with the Wii U.
Ozzie Mejia
Ozzie Mejia
4

So now that the latest Super Smash Bros roster has been finalized, we know exactly who made the cut. More importantly, we definitely know who didn't. As expected, a lot of fans are crying foul over the exclusion of Smash Bros mainstays, the Ice Climbers. In the wake of the fan outrage, series director Masahiro Sakurai has offered somewhat of an explanation.

Speaking to Famitsu (via Nintendo Life), Sakurai pointed out that the Ice Climbers ran into an ample number of technical issues while on the 3DS hardware. Since symmetry between the 3DS and Wii U versions was a top priority of the team, it unfortunately met the Ice Climbers had to be removed from both versions of the game entirely.

Sakurai noted that a fix was not a priority, given the Ice Climbers' relative low standing on the franchise totem pole. So that's the end of the Ice Climbers as Smash Bros competitors... for now.

Senior Editor
Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?

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  • Shacknews legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
    reply
    September 17, 2014 2:15 PM

    Ozzie Mejia posted a new article, Ice Climbers excluded from Super Smash Bros. due to 3DS hardware.

    Series director Masahiro Sakurai explains why the Ice Climbers won't be in the new Smash Bros. The reason, as one might imagine, has nothing to do with the Wii U.

    • fire00f1y legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
      reply
      September 17, 2014 2:49 PM

      I'm not fussed about this.

      • OzzieMejia moderator legacy 10 years
        reply
        September 17, 2014 2:53 PM

        I'm not an Ice Climbers guy, but I can see why people would be miffed.

        I also imagine that has to be a fixable set of bugs if they were able to get Rosalina & Luma running without any problems. I still don't rule out that we see them as DLC down the line.

        • MetaSaval legacy 10 years
          reply
          September 28, 2014 7:54 PM

          I don't know. I'm sure if there was any way to get Ice Climbers in there, Sakurai would have put them in there. He loves the Ice Climbers, and while I don't play them that often, I loved the fact that they were in there. Maybe if he makes an exception to having the same roster on both systems, we'll see them on the Wii U version, but I don't know how adamant he was on keeping parity between the two versions, as far as the character roster goes.

          Also, from an amateur programmer's perspective, I don't think Rosalina & Luma required the same AI processing power as Popo & Nana. I can't really articulate why, but Luma doesn't seem as advanced as Nana was.

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