You may know Super Smash Bros. as one of the most famous Nintendo games. It helped start a lot of other game series.
The first Super Smash Bros. game came out in 1999 for the Nintendo 64. Since then, generations of video game fans have played as its characters and met famous characters from the past of video games. Nintendo’s well-known franchises, such as Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, and Metal Gear Solid, have all had characters in this series.
Aside from that, the series has also included characters from less well-known series that have become more famous since being added as Super Smash Bros. fighters. These eight Nintendo-owned titles might not have been known if their characters weren’t in Smash. Some of them have become gaming icons because of it.
Kirby
Nintendo has a lot of different series, and Kirby, the pink puffball, is one of their most well-known figures. Kirby wasn’t a main character for the company when the first Super Smash Bros. came out in 1999, even though games like Kirby’s Dream Land and Kirby Super Star did well at the box office.
In Super Smash Bros., Kirby’s 3D appearance was also a turning point for the character because it was the first time his voice was heard. The character’s appearances in fighting games would shape its later video game appearances, such as in Kirby Fighters Deluxe for the Nintendo 3DS, which was based on the platform battle.
Star Fox
Star Fox was one of the first games on the SNES to use 3D polygonal graphics, which made it a very important game. Fox McCloud, on the other hand, became a playable character in Super Smash Bros. for N64 not long after Star Fox 64, the most famous game in the series so far, which introduced the main Star Fox fighter pilot team.
In later Super Smash Bros. games, it became possible to play as figures like Falco Lombardi and Wolf O’Donnell. The popularity of these characters carried over to the Star Fox series, especially games like Star Fox Assault for the GameCube that let players handle a number of different Star Fox crew members.
F-Zero
Before Super Smash Bros., F-Zero was Nintendo’s most popular driving game series. It first came out on the SNES in 1990. But not much was known about the main characters until Captain Falcon showed up as a playable character in the fighting game. Since then, Captain Falcon has become one of the most well-known figures in Nintendo games.
Captain Falcon is still a well-known character in video game history, even though Nintendo hasn’t been as supportive of the F-Zero brand as they have been of Mario Kart. Also, all of his most famous moves, like the deadly Falcon Punch, come from Super Smash Bros., since F-Zero characters rarely leave their vehicles in F-Zero games.
Mother
Some people thought it was strange that Ness was in the first Super Smash Bros. game, since the character had only been in the rare SNES game Earthbound. But over the next few years, the SNES game and others in the Mother series would have a huge impact on the JRPG genre.
In addition, Ness’s appearance led to the addition of Lucas, who is the main character of Mother 3, a GameBoy Advance game only available in Japan. Since then, that game’s lack of westernization has become something of a legend among Nintendo fans. Hopefully, the series’ success among serious gamers will pay off one day.
Fire Emblem
Marth and Roy were added as available characters in Super Smash Bros. Melee to honor the Fire Emblem series, which started on the NES in 1990 but was mostly forgotten. But once Fire Emblem characters were used in games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the show went from almost being canceled to a huge hit.
A lot of people think that the success of Fire Emblem today is due to the fame of Fire Emblem Awakening, a 3DS game that lets you play as three different characters. Even Fire Emblem Engage, the most current game in the series, makes the most of its history of characters by including heroes from earlier games, such as the different Smash fighters.
Kid Icarus
In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Pit made a victorious return to Nintendo games. Before that, he was the simple main character of a very hard NES game. But Masahiro Sakurai, the director of Super Smash Bros., really ushered in the second coming of Kid Icarus by making Kid Icarus Uprising, a new game in the series for the Nintendo 3DS.
Two more Kid Icarus characters have been added to the Super Smash Bros. series since Wordle Unlimited came out: the goddess Palutena and Pit’s evil clone Dark Pit. There may be good things ahead for Kid Icarus fans, but it wouldn’t have been possible without Sakurai including the character in the 2007 fighting game for the Nintendo Wii.
Pikmin
Shigeru Miyamoto, who made Mario, came up with the idea for Pikmin. The first game came out in 2001 for the GameCube, and a second one came out in 2004 for the same system. Six years after the main character, Captain Olimar, was added to Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Pikmin 3 was released as a second game in the series for the Wii U.
Pikmin is now one of Nintendo’s most popular running series, and Pikmin 4 is the most recent game in the series. Olimar isn’t as popular as some of the younger characters, but he is still the franchise’s representative in Super Smash Bros., along with Alph from Pikmin 3 as a costume variant since Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS.
Xenoblade
The Nintendo Wii game Xenoblade Chronicles came out in 2010, but there were no new games for a long time. That is, until the game’s main character, Shulk, became a playable fighter in Super Smash Bros for Wii U and 3DS. This made the original game more famous, and over the next few years it was ported to Nintendo 3DS and the Switch.
Since Shulk was added to Super Smash Bros., Xenoblade has had a lot of sequels and spin-offs. The Wii U game Xenoblade Chronicles X is one example. In 2017 and 2022, the Switch will have two sequels. As a bonus, the DLC for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate added Pyra/Mythra as a second possible fighter from the RPG series.
