Smash Bros. Hype is Everlasting
You’ve seen the reactions. How could you not? The atmosphere of every Super Smash Bros. character reveal is downright electric. It’s the silent anticipation, the sheer quiet. The guessing game before the big reveal, and when the moment finally comes – for those few seconds, even if you’re not deeply invested in Smash Bros, the energy is something you can feel in the depths of your soul. You can’t help but join the hype.
Ever since that announcement of “Everyone is Here”, the fans’ enthusiasm for new character reveals has only gone up. Who will be the next Super Smash Bros. character? There were always a set of rules that new fighters had to follow – ones that, thanks to Smash Ultimate, slowly and steadily began to erode. And each barrier broken opened the floodgates for more and more possibilities.
But which Smash Bros character reveal caused the most hype? On this, Sakurai has an answer: it was Cloud Strife, from Final Fantasy 7.
“Cloud’s reveal was shocking, even looking back at it now. We took an unusual amount of time with the opening part, making it quiet and still, reminiscent of the opening of the original game. So that there would be something new no matter which fighter pairing it is, there were a lot of references included, like the stages, and this made it a bit longer than the other DLC videos.”
This statement comes to us from a recent blog post going over the history of Smash Bros. reveals, discussing what went into them and what their impact left.
For many people, Cloud was just a pipe dream. Something of an inside joke within the community (beware, that video is from late 2000s Newgrounds – with a sense of humor to match), until that dream became reality. Smash only ever included characters from Nintendo consoles, why would they include Cloud? Turns out, “because it’d be awesome” was a valid answer to that question. And with that door open, a fan’s mind could go wild with possibilities.