[This entry needs some general improvments, especially grammatical ones, feel free to edit!]
About
“Goku in Smash Bros” is a popular request to include Dragon Ball’s main character Son Goku in the Nintendo crossover fighting game Super Smash Brothers. The subject, due to the high improbability of actually happening, has become an in-joke in the SSB community to mock cringeworthy and unlikely characters requests.
Origin
Super Smash Bros is a fighting video game franchise developped by Nintendo and featuring a large cast of iconic Nintendo characters such as Mario, Pikachu or Donkey Kong. Since the second entry of the the franchise Super Smash Bros. Melee on GameCube in 2001, the debate of which character should join the roster became a popular subject amongst gamers. This leadt to the creation of several fake screenshots depainting absurdly large rosters including characters not only from Nintendo games, but also mangas, comics, cartoons and movies.
Son Goku is the main character from Akira Toriyama’s cult classic manga Dragon Ball. The character started as a parody of Sun Wukong (aka the Monkey King), the main protagonist of the chinese tale Journey to the West, but became more fleshed out and separate in Dragon Ball Z, the second part of the manga and anime. He has featured in dozens of movies and video games, including several crossovers with other Weekly Shonon Jump characters.
Spread.
The inclusion of Goku in SSB has always been a somewhat common joke amongst gamers but was never taken seriously and the same could have been said for characters like Darth Vader, SpongeBob or Superman. But the inclusion of the non-Nintendo characters Solid Snake and Sonic the Hedgehog in the third installment Brawl on Wii in 2008 started to devide the comunity of the likeness of non video game character to be include in the future. The producer of the games Masahiro Sakurai quickly clarified the situation, stating that only characters originating from a video game and having apparead at least once on a Nintendo console could have a chance. Despite this statement, the character is still an heavily requested character.
With the annoncment of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS, the argument came back stronger than ever, espacially due to the rise of social media since the last game and the implementation of the Miiverse community, always strongly reacting to each annoucment concerning the game, and the fact that Bandai Namco, owner of the Dragon Ball franchise, is co-developing the game.
Response
Though nothing have ever been officially confirmed, the inclusion of the Pokémon character Lucario could have been influenced by the Goku requests. The two characters share some notable similarities, including the Final Smash of Lucario in Brawl strongly ressembling a Kamehameha. In Super Smash Bros. 4, Lucario is even dubbed by Sean Schemmel, the iconic voice actor of Goku, who previously portrayed him in the Pokémon movie Lucario and the Mystery of Mew.
On another note, if Dragon Ball’s Goku is still an unlikely character, Nintendo could eventually include their own version Goku in the game, having released in 1989 on Famicom Disk System an adaptation of Journey to the West called Famicom Mukashibanashi: Yūyūki.
Hacks
With the strong modding community of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, numerous hacks have been made over the years, including texture hack, custom stages, musics and character models and movesets. The most popular Dragon Ball related one on Brawl Vault is a complete Goku hack by user Mariodk.
Similar cases
- Ridley– See “Ridley is too big”
- Geno: He is one of the main character from the SNES game Super Mario Bros. RPG. Despite being a fan favorite and coming from a Mario game, the character (as well as all the original characters and music) belongs to SquareSoft (now Square-Enix), thus his inclusion in a SSB game would be as much complicated for Nintendo than a guest character like Mega Man.
- Shadow the Hedgehog: This “darker” version of Sonic the Hedgehog is usually really popular amongst teenagers but more criticized by older audiances. Despite beeing a relatively recent character, his popularity conviced the developers to include him in the game as an Assist Trophy in Brawl and SSB4 instead of a more recurring character like Tails or Eggman. Despite that, he is still a heavily requested character on Miiverse.
- Shrek: with the emergence of the Shrek fandom at the same time as the development of SSB4, numerous pictures and videos of Shrek beeing a confirmed playable character started to appears. Contrary to the aboves exemples, this character request is much more ironic and played for laugh and/or trolling purposes.
Notable Exemples
