The VG Resource

The Prince of Sablé from Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (For the Frog the Bell Tolls) is in!

It looks like he is an assist trophy where he transforms into either a frog or snake. I love all of the lesser-known Nintendo games showing up in the upcoming Smash Bros.

EDIT: A minute too slow, dang.

Characters people want playable getting deconfirmed left right and center, in seriousness though it's really great we are getting alot of forgotten Nintendo characters as assist trophies this time.

People wanted Prince Sablé...? Even if they wanted him, after Takamaru getting the cut that would be very unlikely

Something tells me that Demille is also going to become an assist trophy, but let's see if he's actually going to be in this game this time around.

I always thought the guy who was on the cover of the game was Prince Richard, not the Prince of Sable. Prince Richard has a signature curl in his hair, which the Sable Prince lacks in the game. Also in the game the Sable Prince is shown to have dark skin. So this update kind of upset me at first until I found some official art of the character, and I guess he is actually supposed to look like that:



Also apparently Richard has blue hair. I didn't know that either.

It's weird that he turns into a frog or snake to attack though, since neither of those forms are good for fighting within the context of his game.

He's just trying to incorperate all the things he's known for in one.

based on his in game sprite he looks black lol

but no really where is my muddy mole, mike jones?

is isaac still an assist trophy?

It's hilarous too. So you see how Prince Richard looks like that, but in Link's Awakening his artwork was nothing like that. His sprite still looked the same, but his artwork though.


Who the hell is this? He doesn't even have blue hair anymore!

So I noticed that the last two Mondays have both been assist trophies.

Can't say it's a trend, but maybe at least most future info will be juicy like assists, stages and modes.

Also just noticed we SORT OF have indirect Link's Awakening representation, perhaps once removed.

I don't even know that character, but his model makes me wish he was playable. He has a very "video game" vibe that I feel like is missing from a lot of modern character designs.

More like very old-school anime

I see where you're coming from, and I thought of that as well. I suppose it would make sense that there would be a similar school of thought going into those character designs though, since they're from the same area and era?

There's a very definite design ethic to a lot of early (and I guess predominantly Japanese) video games that doesn't seem to be nearly as visible as it used to though. I mean, if I were looking at Prince Sable without context, I would assume him to be from something Harvest Moon or Quest 64 related before I assumed something closer to an anime (though he looks like he would fit in pretty well with those VHS fairy tales...). If you look at Cloud from FF7:



as compared to his current look:



The first design's particular purple and yellow colors, with the bizarre yet sparse costume, it's very "video game" in tone. Whereas the latter costume is very "Matrix". It seems like we get more of the "Matrix" type of characters these days, or redesigns with that appeal. This is true even of characters like Fox and Falco, who are both very cartoony but don't carry the weight of a SNES-era character design. I guess I just miss that 90s type of art and design (and I know there are modern games with similar philosophies, but those are evolved as well. I think the closest game to really strike home for me recently is Shovel Knight).

Current Cloud is still super anime
That last picture you posted is actually (bad) fanart and his clothes change for actual plot reasons (as in it's a prequel game).

It's funny you talk about Fox because I think Fox looks more anime now than it ever did before. Though I can't deny that 90's designs had a charm of their own, but it's mostly a byproduct of an era, I don't think that video games are getting very heavy on "Matrix" look either.

Not saying you're wrong about Prince Sable, but if I ever saw him out of context I would just assume he was a character for some obscure old anime rather than a video game character, and that's not bad, because that's definitely the vibe they were trying to go for.

I guess it's just the same difference between, using anime again, Speed Racer vs. Bleach (or basically any Jump manga that isn't One Piece). All the characters are kind of interchangeable in their design, and if they were thrown into a game like Smash Bros. they'd look very samey. Then you toss in Speed Racer, and he just stands out in a good way.

(08-04-2014, 03:48 AM)Mutsukki Wrote: [ -> ]People wanted Prince Sablé...? Even if they wanted him, after Takamaru getting the cut that would be very unlikely

Apparently in Japan people are sad over his exclusion. Not sure if the good Prince is their equivalent of how Waluigi's assist trophy status was here in the states, but suffice it to say if I was Japanese and a fan of oldschool Nintendo I'd be kind of disappointed to have two characters confirmed to be only Assist Trophies in two weeks in a row.

I mean, I'm not that surprised they aren't playable given their lack of attention by Nintendo since their inception, but I AM happy to see them at least as Assist Trophies. If there is another Smash sequel in the future, there's always a shot for an Assist to be upgraded into a playable character, and having them here can spark interest in their respective series as well.