One of Super Smash Bros.’s most controversial characters is coming back for the Wii U and 3DS versions, as announced today on Ninteno’s official site.
Meta Knight debuted on the Wii’s Super Smash Bros. Brawl in 2008. In 2011, the competitive community banned him from tournament play, the first and only time it ever made such a drastic move for a character in Nintendo’s fighting series. Most considered Meta Knight far too powerful. He could practically fly and could do a lot of damage quickly, and he had fast, powerful moves that could easily knock opponents off the screen.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1527039,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"A"}']In other words, he had no weaknesses.
Of course, the ban of Meta Knight didn’t do much to increase Brawl’s popularity in the competitive gaming scene. Instead, pro gamers prefer the 2001 GameCube version, Super Smash Bros. Melee, which most consider a better balanced game, one that requires more skill from the player. Melee was one of the fighting games at this year’s Evo tournament.
The ban itself didn’t last forever, as it was part of an attempt by the community to create a standardized rule set that evaporated in 2012. Since then, individual tournaments have had to decide themselves whether they want to ban Meta Knight, which many still do.
The new Smash Bros. games for Wii U and 3DS give Nintendo a chance to finally have the competitive community move on from Melee. Re-balancing Meta Knight would go a long way toward accomplishing that goal. In fact, fans already have plenty of their own ideas on how to fix Meta Knight over on the series’ biggest online community, Smash Boards.
The 3DS version of Super Smash Bros. comes out Oct. 3. The Wii U version follows later this year.
