Every game franchise has its "black sheep".  Often times they'll have more than one but there is usually one title that stands out among the rest as the game everyone seems to hate except for a select few... only for that select few's appreciation of the work to gain more and more traction until it's widely accepted among the fanbase.  Zelda has Majora's Mask, Mario has Mario 2, Pokemon has Black and White, and the Kingdom Hearts series has basically any game that released after KH1.  For one of the most defining series in gaming, Metroid, that game is Metroid II: Return of Samus.

At one point widely considered the worst Metroid game and, to many, is still the worst "canon" Metroid game, Return of Samus released for the original Game Boy in 1991.  It sees our protagonist, bounty hunter Samus Aran, on a mission to exterminate the Metroid species after the Galactic Federation discovers their native ecosystem on the planet SR-388, lest they once again fall into Space Pirate hands.  It was innovative for the series, introducing several now mainstays such as Samus' triple firing beam the Spazer, the Plasma Beam which can pass through enemies and obstacles, the Space Jump which allows Samus to continue jumping indefinitely in the air, and the Spider Ball and Spring Ball, two Morph Ball upgrades that allow Samus to climb walls and natively jump in the form, thereby freeing her movement.  Metroid II also introduced and defined how saving would go in a Metroid game, being the advent of proper "save rooms" which are scattered throughout the planet.

However, as innovative as Metroid II was, it was also one of the most divisive games in the series.  Contemporary critics largely seemed to agree that the Game Boy hardware was holding back what could've maybe been a great game, though they couldn't exactly agree on how exactly it was doing so.  The small screen size and how it limits what Samus can see, the large caverns full of darkness and nothingness, the heavier focus on run and gun gameplay, the spirtework, the music, basically every element of this game had been praised and criticized in equal measure.  No two reviewers could agree on why this game missed the mark, but all of them could agree that it did, that the game was flawed and broken in ways that stopped it at the finish line.  And as the series evolved, and hardware evolved alongside it, Metroid II seemed like it was doomed to fade into obscurity, the lost, outdated Metroid game whose entire contribution to the series could be explained away in a couple sentences of the opening crawl of Super Metroid, its much more successful baby sister.

But that wouldn't be the end for Metroid II.  Rather, Return of Samus would see a second life among the community, with many citing it as a flawed but spectacular Metroid entry that had been sadly overlooked by both critics and the fandom at large.  I remember, actually, the first time I ever heard anyone talk about Metroid II was a very old video by the now retired content creator dookieshed, where he talked a lot about how the game was an underrated gem and how it nailed the sci-fi/horror atmosphere that the Metroid series would later on adopt as a feature in titles like Fusion and Dread.  Return of Samus became the community's favorite child, the misunderstood and oft forgotten middle kid in a line of icons.  The true Metroid fan's favorite.  Literally the Majora's Mask of the series.  And as the cult classic of the series, it would get a lot of love from the community, being the center of so much discussion and reevaluation and, most importantly, reworking.  Remaking Metroid II is such a common practice within the Metroid community that the most famed version of Metroid II is literally called Another Metroid 2 Remake.

Nintendo themselves would even try their hand at remaking the Metroid series' most underrated title.  In 2017, a year after the release of AM2R, Nintendo would release the creatively titled "Metroid: Samus Returns", a remake of Return of Samus for the 3DS by the developer MercurySteam, who would later go on to develop the next mainline Metroid title, the long awaited Metroid Dread.  Obviously with a game that has gotten this much love and this many remakes/reimaginings, both fan-driven and official, it's inevitable that people would compare and contrast them, see how they're different and the different approaches to what Metroid IS to them.  But an interesting thing that is revealed in this discussion is that none of these games seem to replace the original Metroid II.  Unlike the previous Metroid remake and its predecessor, Zero Mission and the original Metroid, there is no consensus that any version of Metroid II has truly perfected it.  That no matter what the remake does, something about Metroid II keeps getting lost in translation.  And I kind of want to explore why that is by analyzing each of the three key versions of Metroid II, what its goals are, and why there is still something to be gained from the original Metroid II all these years later.

The Metroid IIs - Why You Can't Make a Perfected Version of the Most Imperfect Metroid

What every version of Metroid II has in common

Before we begin discussing their individual ideologies, I want to establish the things the three of them have in common.  Namely their basic plot and core design ideology as a result of said plot.  Each version of Metroid II starts with the same basic plot setup.  After Samus' victory against the Space Pirates on the Planet Zebes, she reported her findings to the Galactic Federation.  These findings included the discovery of the Space Pirates' secret weapon, the Metroids.  The Metroids are a species of parasites that can latch onto a being and drain them dry of their life force in a matter of seconds, their origin is completely unknown and it seems likely they were intentionally created as a bioweapon rather than being a naturally occurring species in the universe.  The Galactic Federation, anticipating the Space Pirates being able to regroup, becomes worried about the continued existence of Metroids in the universe and so sends Samus on her next mission: to find the home planet of the Metroids and drive them to extinction, a harsh but necessary action for the benefit of the universe.

This leads Samus to the remote planet of SR-388, an alien world that was so off the Federation's radar that it didn't even receive a proper name.  It has seemingly never be inhabited, the planet being a haven of as of yet unknown fauna.  It is also the "native" planet of the Metroids, them seemingly having been created here for some unknown purpose.  As Samus touches down, she begins her hunt, delving below the surface into the massive labyrinth of caverns within.  It's here that she discovers the horrifying truth: the Metroids here are not simply existing, they're thriving.  Growing.  Evolving.  Breeding.  The larval stage of the Metroids, the ones she encountered in her previous journey, were basically an appetizer.  These new Metroids are faster, meaner, and their previous weakness to her beam weaponry has been effectively eliminated.  While they are now more vulnerable to both concussive and explosive force, their bodies have grown a natural defensive physiology to protect their weak points.  And the longer Samus goes on, the more they grow, eventually becoming massive alien monsters that look more like Xenomorphs than Metroids.

And so Samus must fight.  She must wander this planet, hunting horrifying creatures that are more hunting her than the other way around.  All the while discovering the hidden past of the Metroids, revealing that this seemingly uncharted planet may not have been as uncharted as it seems.  She will discover the secrets of the people who raised her, that the wise and noble Chozo people, a beacon of peace and technological prowess, might not have been the people she believed them to be.  She is truly alone, the odds entirely against her, the monsters lurking in every wall and crevice.  This is where Metroid II really shines for a lot of people, this sense of loneliness, of isolation, the weight of sins long past.  It nails the atmosphere of a Metroid game, with many of its fans saying the series has yet to truly recapture how perfect Metroid II's atmosphere is.  Metroid II's core strength is being so unabashedly, so truly "Metroid".  It's almost the real template for the series' style, atmosphere, and narrative, which is surprising given the fact that it's a Game Boy sequel not a lot of people knew about or played.  Super may have been the perfector, but Metroid II was truly the originator of "Metroid".

Samus Returns

We'll start by talking about the first incarnation of Metroid II that I personally played, the official 3DS remake Metroid: Samus Returns.  The long awaited return of the Metroid series, after a 10 year gap of no mainline titles (technically 7 but at this point Other M is no longer considered a mainline title); Samus Returns was, as previously stated, the first game in the series to be developed by game developers MercurySteam.  It is part of a noted trend, one might even say it's a "strategy", of Nintendo hiring new developers to remake their older titles to see if they can be trusted to begin working on newer ones, i.e. Grezzo and the Zelda remakes they did before making Echoes of Wisdom.  It is perhaps most famous for being one of the last 3DS titles people even noticed came out as they were fully moving over to the Nintendo Switch, a game clearly released to show that Nintendo was continuing to support the 3DS so if the Switch also failed, they could refocus on the 3DS until they found another niche.

I will not mince words here, of the two notable remakes of this game, Samus Returns is arguably the bigger departure in design ideology.  MercurySteam was working with a dormant franchise in a genre that had evolved past its humble origins.  Metroid is famed for bringing the sprawling open worlds with roadblocks that require you to go around and complete other objectives to clear to the masses, but even by the time that its fourth entry, Metroid Fusion, had hit the market we were starting to see the genre grow past it.  The release of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the game that makes up the "Vania" part of the Metroidvania, showed an insufficiency in the Metroid part of the formula.  That while Metroid nails the atmosphere and exploration aspects, its core gameplay can be, and often is, somewhat lacking.  Namely, the combat, which in Metroid is very slow and not especially dynamic.  Now I think it's part of the charm, Metroid makes you feel like you're a roaming tank firing off at enemies to make them dead.  But to a wider audience, the traditional Metroid game would probably be a bit lackluster.  Samus Returns was launching the same year as Hollow Knight, arguably the greatest Metroidvania to ever exist, and Hollow Knight has all the things Metroid has in spades AND good combat.

So MercurySteam was in a peculiar position with Samus Returns.  Metroid needed some modernization, something to make it feel like a Metroidvania that came out in 2017 and not 1993, but how to do that without losing the spirit of Metroid.  Their solution is, in my opinion, elegant.  Metroid: Samus Returns largely plays like a traditional Metroid title, maybe a bit faster than games past but it primarily has the same methodical gameplay of the past titles.  But, it does make the combat more interactive.  Samus now has a counter as one of her core mechanics, particularly beneficial in this game as the fauna of SR388 really like getting in close.  When enemies, and especially Metroids, go in for an attack they will briefly flash and make a sound effect sometimes.  This opens up a parry window, allowing Samus to counter said enemy and stun them.  This allows the bounty hunter to safely deal damage to or dispatch the enemy safely.

As well, she gets new abilities in the form of the Aeion system.  Aeion is a Chozo techno-mysticism that Samus has built into her suit and/or DNA, allowing her to unlock new abilities from interacting with ancient Chozo technology.  These abilities range from environmental (a scanner which reveals hidden destructible blocks and unveils part of the map) to defensive (a brief super armor) to offensive (a powerful rapid fire shot which decimates enemy HP).  One can easily criticize these powers for being a bit too good at times, and I think the criticism is fair, but it does really inform how Samus Returns wishes to be perceived.  A traditional Metroid for a modern era, creating a more dynamic and action-forward experience.

However, as you could imagine, this greater focus on dynamic gameplay makes Samus Returns quite a bit different from the game it's remaking.  While Samus Returns does retain much of the atmosphere and the same basic plot structure of Metroid II, it is a far more action-y affair than the traditional Metroid series had been thus far.  Its key design ideology is very much to create the best "game" that Metroid II can be, rather than creating the best version of Metroid II in the same way Zero Mission attempted to create the best version of Metroid.  It's a game that focuses on being as fun as possible to reintroduce the wider world to Metroid, and in my mind, it succeeds, I adore Samus Returns, it is my third favorite Metroid game and second favorite of the classic series.  However, it's undeniable that it loses part of Metroid II in its quest.

See, one of the things that makes Metroid II so special, makes its atmosphere so beloved, is how natural everything feels.  Samus is the invader on this closed alien ecosystem and she never knows how close or far from a Metroid she truly is.  She is hunted as she is hunting, as previously stated.  Any room could contain a Metroid and while the game does show you the discarded shells of Metroids who have reached different stages of maturity to indicate that you're in the right location, encounters with Metroids in II feel very sudden.  Like Samus is stumbling upon a bear in the forest, a wild animal living its life that she now must do battle with.  This is not the case with Samus Returns.

In Samus Returns, every Metroid feels so choreographed.  Metroid fights aren't as much random elements in the world as dedicated boss fights Samus is being led to.  They're always events when they happen, a cutscene of the Metroid slamming through the wall to attack Samus occurs transferring directly into the battle.  This causes a ripple effect across Samus Returns, the natural feel of the environment of SR-388 is just gone.  In its place a fun but very video game-y world  It's not a bad decision, I want to make clear, so often when people highlight changes in adaptation it's with the note of "oh, this version is better".  Samus Returns is doing what is best for its own goals, not just in trying to make a more modernized Metroid experience but also in creating an accessible one.  These are neither correct nor incorrect decisions, they are just decisions one made.

But, it does compromise the original atmosphere of Metroid II in making this decision.  It fails to be a definitive remake of Metroid II because what it wants to be is so different from what Metroid II wanted to be.  Again, I think Samus Returns is brilliant, it's one of my favorite Metroid games and, honestly, one of my favorite games of all time.  Settled nicely in slot 90 (for now).  But in trying to be more action-y, more dynamic, more modernized, it doesn't become "THE Metroid II".  It's simply A Metroid II.  It makes big swings in its ideology that create what is probably the best "game" of the three, but if you are looking for loyalty to the source material, is the worse of the two adaptations of it.

AM2R

Now let's talk about the one that's the more faithful of the two, at least spiritually.  AM2R is a critically acclaimed and masterfully done fan rendition of Metroid II.  Attempting to actually do for Metroid II what Zero Mission did for the original Metroid, AM2R's core ideology seems to be "enhance, not recontextualize".  It's not like a direct remake by any means, it adds a considerable amount to the game, including a new B plot, new areas, and most notably a bunch of new lore.  If anything it fleshes out the history of SR388 MORE than Samus Returns did.  Lore that is all fanon, obviously, but it's still really cool to see, especially since for a series that is mostly about a solo warrior wandering through dark caverns and facilities to fight monsters, there's been a surprising lore focus.  The Prime series taught us that Metroid fans love lore, even if it doesn't feel like they should given the core ideal behind these games is "our main character is completely alone on deserted alien planets".

Now it's not entirely fair to say that AM2R's desire is "enhance, not recontextualize" as there are some very distinctive parts of this game that do go deep into interpretation on what the Metroid's purpose was.  But I think that the key idea driving AM2R is to make the modern player understand what it felt like to play Metroid II back in the day.  Its key ideals are preserving the atmosphere, of keeping that aspect of "Metroids are just as much hunting Samus as the other way around" intact.  It's a very hostile world, a world of creatures who have evolved into monsters after billions of years of isolation.  It does even lead into the horror aspects of Metroid more than Nintendo ever would on their own, the parallels between Metroid and Alien are drawn attention to and utilized for great effect.  Even if AM2R is not simply "Metroid II but in a more updated gameplay style", it does a lot to preserve the oppressive atmosphere and unique design ideals that make Metroid II so beloved.

But it is also a remake that does update Metroid II into a more updated gameplay style.  I don't know if this started out as a romhack of Metroid Zero Mission, the at the time most recent 2D Metroid as depressing as that is to say.  But it keeps a lot of Zero Mission's DNA, its visual style and core gameplay are very much borrowed from the GBA title.  This leads to a lot of very important, nay, crucial gameplay ideas.  For instance, being able to just switch on your missiles instead of having to hold down the button is obviously very important for a game where you must use those missiles constantly, as Metroids are only vulnerable to the concussive force of the Missiles.  It also adds some of Samus' missing powerups from the original Metroid II, most notably her iconic Screw Attack and her wide variety of beams.  But unlike Samus Returns, it doesn't modernize it to such a drastic extreme.  AM2R is what most Metroid fans probably think of when they think of safe, comfortable Metroid gameplay.

However, while I find AM2R incredibly fascinating and compelling and think that it probably is as close to a perfect Metroid II remake as we're going to get, it too is missing something.  And ironically I think what it is missing from Metroid II comes in what its core goal is.  AM2R wants to sell you what it felt like to play Metroid II back in the day, to enter this truly alien world with its deep atmosphere and its vast caverns.  But the feeling of playing Metroid II is far grander than what Metroid II actually is and as such, AM2R also cannot truly replace it.

For me, a major part of it is that AM2R is so inspired by both the horror vibes Metroid II has as well as actual horror films and video games.  I made the comparison with Alien before and I think that's pretty accurate to AM2R's general ideology.  It feels like a Metroid that is trying to bring that connection with the film that inspired it to the forefront.  There's a lot of body horror elements in AM2R, they visibly show the Metroids molting and growing throughout their life cycles, they literally use gross, flopping bug limbs as an indicator of when a Metroid is utilizing a smarter AI than previously encountered Metroids.  They also lean very hard into the darkness, there are times where you will be literally running around in the dark only to be assaulted by a Metroid who was lurking within.  Which especially seems Xenomorph-esque given the more monstrous designs of adult Metroids.

However, as you could probably imagine, I think that these decisions, these attempts to make it more of the sci-fi horror that its cult following always said it was cause AM2R to miss the same thing that Samus Returns misses.  Metroids aren't events, aren't staged like video game boss fights but they also aren't treated as natural creatures in this world.  They're the monsters that lurk in the dark, horror movie bad guys instead of predators that naturally roam this world.  Because it's so caught up in trying to capture what Metroid II felt like, it misses a key aspect of what Metroid II is.  Again, that's not a bad thing, it is simply an adaptational choice.  But it's one that makes it, just like Samus Returns, A version of Metroid II rather than THE version of Metroid II, at least in my opinion.

Why You Can't Remake Metroid II "Perfectly"

So why is this?  Why is it that despite two incredibly excellent remakes that, while both attempting to accomplish different things, still seem to be enhanced versions of this game, we haven't been able to create a version that truly replaces the original?  By all accounts this should be easy, Metroid II is an incredibly archaic Game Boy game, it should be one of the easiest entries in the series to replace with a later remake.  And yet, both of the big remakes of Metroid II fail to capture something specific about it, the natural feeling that Metroid II has that makes it so special?  In my honest opinion, the reason why Metroid II is such a hard game to "perfect" without losing something is the thing that makes it so in need of a remake.  I think Metroid II's biggest strength is being an early Game Boy title.

The Game Boy, as fantastic as it was, also was an infamously underpowered system.  It didn't even play in color initially, opting instead for different shades of what could only be described as "pea green".  While there are tons of truly evergreen titles on the system, it is now a very disappointing library to return to as a lot of games are simply just "poorer versions of console titles".  A lot of games had to compromise a lot to fit onto the Game Boy, and while at the time players were okay with said compromises if it meant getting to game on the go, it's undeniable that a lot of original Game Boy games feel really bad to play now.  Especially the earlier releases, games that didn't really know what worked on the hardware or, indeed, how to work the hardware at all.  I'm sure most people reading this have played an early Game Boy entry in a beloved series and hated the process the entire time.  Hi Super Mario Land.

However, I think that it is these technical limitations and this inexperience with the hardware that makes Metroid II what it is.  The dark, oppressive atmosphere that players felt in SR388 comes from how uncanny the game is.  It's weirdly quiet and very empty, a world of tight passages and small caverns.  A world that feels truly uncharted and uninhabited.  And while I'm sure this was an intentional decision to design it this way, it is undeniable that it came with great consideration for the Game Boy hardware.  Doing a big world just wasn't feasible, having a lot of music wasn't feasible, and having to account for these hurdles creates the very oppressive atmosphere of Metroid II.  This world exists because of the Game Boy.

This extends to the very natural feel of coming across Metroids, of just having them be parts of the environment.  I'm sure that, if the hardware had permitted it, we might've seen something akin to Samus Returns with the Metroid encounters.  Each Metroid being a specific boss fight and each encounter being an "event".  But the hardware limitations didn't permit that even if they wanted it, so Metroids are now a common element of the world that Samus simply stumbles upon.  I wouldn't be surprised if the sheer amount of Metroids was itself adjusting for a hardware limitation, there being 40+ Metroids to hunt rather than a handful.  It's a way to reuse assets and keep your game much smaller, but it also contributes heavily to Metroid II's vibe.  Having a population of Metroids makes SR388 feel more natural, sells the alien world that Samus is the true invader on that much more.

However, this is seen as outdated by the majority of players.  Metroid II has always had its fans, obviously, it probably has the most dedicated individual fanbase of any Metroid game period.  But it is incredibly difficult to make a game that has this same ideology anymore.  Especially in a franchise attempting to appeal to the widest audience possible, having this very specific, distinctive atmosphere, a world you just feel like you're thrown in and told to go hunting, it can feel obtuse and archaic.  Both remakes of Metroid II lose something of Metroid II because they have to.  Because the kind of game design that makes Metroid II so magical is also not acceptable anymore by a wider audience.  The game industry has changed, audiences have changed.  Samus Returns and AM2R may never replace what truly works about Metroid II, but that's good.  Because the changes they make, the ideas they bring to the source material, allow the spirit of Metroid II to survive.  There can never be a "perfect" Metroid II, but I think three flawed but ultimately brilliant Metroid IIs is more than a fair trade-off.

 Hi, this is going to be a dumb one, but it's a question I find interesting.  So, I've been playing Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade for my game clearing, Gaming Diary will be out whenever I finish it.  And I've been thinking a lot about the character of Lyn.  Lyn is a lord I'm very fond of, I don't think she's the most intricate character ever put to Fire Emblem, but she's a very unique lord nonetheless.  She's way more rugged and practical in comparison to the usually refined, well trained lords who adopt classical fencing techniques.  It's very fitting of her upbringing as a nomadic tribeswoman who would learn fighting for hunting and petty squabbles.

But it also made me think about Lyn in Smash Bros.  Lyn has always been a fairly popular request, being the first Fire Emblem lord the American audience was familiar with and with her style being very atypical for the often very samey potential Fire Emblem roster.  But this thought led me to another thought.  See, Lyn is a nomad and in the context of FE7, this is not so much a way of life as it is a distinctive racial or ethnic group.  Lyn is treated poorly, especially by other royals, due to her heritage, her father being a chieftan of a nomadic tribe rather than a highborn royal.  Even her own friends are kind of racist to her, noting how her "nomadic features" give her a "distinctive, unusual beauty" that they find striking.  Given the rough time period and state of European culture most Fire Emblem games are built off of, we can kind of infer that Lyn is half-Romani.  Or at least an equivalent race/ethnicity to the Romani.

Which brings me to my actual curiosity here: if Lyn were added to Smash Bros, would she be the first woman of color in the roster.  No.  The answer is no.  Of course not.  However, the actual answer is a bit more complicated than you'd expect, and has a number of possible answers.  It's a surprisingly complicated question, one whose answer is really up for interpretation.  And so I ask, dear reader...

Who was the first playable woman of color in Super Smash Bros?

Some Ground Rules

I want to first start by establishing some basic ground rules so that my intentions and understandings of the question I'm detailing are pretty clear.  They are, as follows:

1. This is not meant to be a criticism of Super Smash Bros.  I am not here to state that Super Smash Bros. has some sort of moral failing because there is a small potential roster of women of color or that this question is ambiguous in the first place.  This is genuine curiosity, and if there is any criticism present, it is moreso towards the gaming industry for both not featuring women enough and, moreover, not featuring women of color enough.  My only goal here is to go over the potential candidates and explain why they're each interesting as an answer to this question.
2. A potential candidate, in my mind, is not just a character who looks like they are a person of color.  This is an important thing to note as Smash, famously, has a number of characters who adopt an anime aesthetic in it and thus all could be considered Japanese.  However, most of the time these characters, despite their appearances, are meant to be analogous to European peoples.  Three Houses takes place in an analog of the Holy Roman Empire and thus all the characters can be considered to be German, Palutena is a Greek goddess, Samus Aran is the daughter of people named "Rodney" and "Virginia".  I'm only going to be focusing on characters who are either definitively people of color, or their place and/or people of origin are analogous to places and cultures that people of color come from.
3. Every candidate will be either human or humanoid.  The reasoning for this should be obvious but just to clear it up, this is a rule, if it's not a rule, the answer is Jigglypuff, who is a pink puffball from literal Japan.
4. If the candidate in question is related to an existing character rather than being a unique character, I will note that their technical origin date is when the character as a whole debuted but I will take into consideration whether the character debuted AFTER another character on this list as consideration on whether or not they were actually first.

With that out of the way, let's meet our candidates in order from least ambiguous to most.

Addendum 1: In the following text, I discuss the character of Corrin from Fire Emblem Fates.  It was my belief, having played Birthright and part of Conquest, that Corrin's character was a PoC, being from the Japan-inspired Hoshido by birth and only being raised in the Russian-esque Nohr.  I have come to understand that Revelations reveals that Corrin's heritage is far more complicated and that it can be brought into question whether she is a woman of color as a result, as her birth mother comes from a land that is just generally based on cultures with rich, mainstream mythologies (Greece, Norway, India, etc.)  As such, Corrin probably doesn't count and should be disregarded.

Addendum 2: Some people have asked the question of, if there could've been an earlier WoC rep in Smash, who would it be.  This is a question that actually has an answer.  Masahiro Sakurai has stated in the past that he did, at one point, wish to include Ayumi Tachibana from the Famicom Detective Club series in Melee, as he was a massive fan of the games.  If Ayumi had made it into the game, she would've been unambiguously the first woman of color in the series, being a Japanese woman from what is intended to be real Japan.

Min Min

Btw, Min Min was my ARMs main, so I'm glad she got into Smash.

This is the easiest answer, this is the safest answer, this is the least ambiguous answer, but that does not mean it's correct.  Min Min comes to us from Smash Ultimate's 6th DLC, a DLC that fulfills an empty slot on the roster that Sakurai had always intended.  Sakurai had wanted to include characters from the Switch's first year on the market, but Ultimate was already pretty far into development before said games could come out and, as such, Breath of the Wild kind of had to be the cutoff.  Three Houses only really came into the first DLC pack, which was decided around Ultimate's release date because Intelligent Systems gave Sakurai a sneak peak copy years before the game hit market.

Min Min comes from the video game "ARMS", an early Switch 1 title designed to utilize the Joy-Con's motion controls.  It was essentially attempt to take the general idea that made Splatoon work, i.e. "what if we made a competitive game with the sensibilities of a more traditional singleplayer one" and try and create a more dedicated, competitive fighter with it.  In ARMS case, rather than being a shooter that played like a platformer, it was a fighting game that played like a third person shooter.  It unfortunately did not become successful to the degree that Splatoon did, but it certainly has its audience and Min Min in particular is the game's most popular character, having won their big character tournament at the end of their support window.

So why is Min Min the easy answer?  What makes her the safe option for the first woman of color in Smash.  Well uh.  She's Chinese.  Like, Min Min is from the ARMs' universe's version of China, she speaks actual Chinese, her name is a pun on the Chinese word for noodle, her theme is heavily inspired by music meant to depict China.  Min Min is the easy answer because she is the only character on this list who is definitively from a place in the real world and is the easiest to confirm as a woman of color.  She's also a handy line to draw for what we're doing, because she's so unambiguous, any character who is in contention for this title has to be before her.

Villager

The second "easy" option is the Villager.  The first new character to be confirmed for Smash 4 and, in fact, the first character to be shown for Smash 4 at all, Villager is one of Sakurai's truly most insane characters concepts that he actually got working.  Nowadays Villager almost feels quaint, as their moveset doesn't really do anything super crazy.  Compared to people like Min Min, who have had the mechanics from their own games fully adapted into Smash, to where you really feel like you are playing an ARMs character in this game.  But Villager is truly a highlight of Sakurai's creativity, a character from a life simulation game brought into a fighting game and made to work entirely within the context of them being from a life sim.  It's superb.

Villager hails from the Animal Crossing series, designed to represent the player character of Animal Crossing which is a player insert character.  An Animal Crossing character was actually in demand as early as Brawl, I remember a lot of speculation around Tom Nook being a character, or KK Slider mayhaps.  Instead, Sakurai decided that the customizable player character is instead the best way to represent the Animal Crossing series, having them utilize their various tools and items to fight.  In a way, Villager, and by extension the very similar but not quite a clone character Isabelle, kind of fight by just doing things randomly and the opponent sort of runs into them.  Being a player character though, the Smash team decided to include various alternate skins that represent the level of player customization present in the Animal Crossing series.

Which brings us to the question at hand.  As of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the Villager's 8th skin is a dark-skinned woman, meant to represent skin tone customization, a feature I don't think was in Animal Crossing when Ultimate came out but was very likely planned for the then upcoming next entry, Animal Crossing New Horizons, which was famously in development for a long time.  And, with this character being before Min Min, both Villager as a whole and this particular skin, Villager has a strong case for being the first woman of color in Smash.  Especially when you consider that Villager is, like Min Min, meant to be human, not some sort of hybrid, not a fantasy race with dark skin, just an actual human that is a woman of color that was on the roster before Min Min.

However, I feel of the candidates we'll be talking about today, Villager actually has the worst claim to the title.  For starters, Villager 8 is not the earliest character we're going to be talking about on this list, though she's the earliest revealed character I think that is decidedly "human" we will be talking about technically.  There are at least two characters that debuted before original villager, and many more that debuted before this Smash Ultimate skin of Villager.  But also, this feels a bit weird, doesn't it?  Like Villager 8 is really who we're going with, a singular alternate skin of a character, and not even one that appeared in every game the character in question has been in?  I don't feel comfortable saying "the first woman of color in the Super Smash Bros. roster is the last skin of a character whose entire visual ideology is being customizable".  It'd be like if Dovakhiin were on the roster and we called them the first woman of color who was playable because Dovakhiin 6 is the Arabic-inspired Khajit skin, it just feels weird!

Leaf (Pokemon Trainer)

So how about, instead, a character who occupies half the skin slots of a character.  Pokemon Trainer appeared originally in Super Smash Bros. Brawl in the form of Red, the original Generation 1 Pokemon protagonist, albeit in his FireRed and LeafGreen incarnation.  Pokemon was always a prominent part of the Smash Bros. roster, Pikachu is literally one of the original 8, Jigglypuff is one of the only secret characters in Smash 64, Melee's new character roster included multiple new Pokemon, and several Pokemon were planned and/or shopped at various stages of development.  But Pokemon Trainer is the character that represents the series the best, a character that sends out his Pokemon, represented by the Gen 1 starters at various stages of evolution, into battle and has them fight for him.  It's also a very clever way of doing a stance change character.  Unfortunately, Pokemon Trainer would have to be cut in Smash 4 as the 3DS couldn't handle him.  But when he returned in Ultimate, he brought a friend.

Leaf, or the female Pokemon trainer, hails from Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen.  She is not the first playable female Pokemon trainer in the series, that distinction goes to Krys from Pokemon Crystal, but Leaf is the first female Pokemon trainer that was likely designed to market the game to girls.  As was found in a recently translated old interview, FRLG made numerous design decisions to market to girls.  Leaf, and by extension, the concept of a female Pokemon Trainer, would make their way into the series with Ultimate, which marked the triumphant return of the Pokemon Trainer, with Leaf occupying the even numbered slots of Pokemon Trainer's alternate costumes, although she would end up representing the odd numbered Generations.  After the first two skins, which are default Red and default Leaf, they have costumes representing each Generation, up to VII, the most recent one out at the time, but because Leaf offsets it by one, Red gets the even numbers and Leaf gets the odd.

Leaf is a pretty strong contender for this crown.  Pokemon Trainer, as a character, was introduced to Smash much earlier than either Min Min or Villager, and is one of the earliest characters I will be talking about in general.  And while Leaf is locked to alternate skins, much like Villager 8, she occupies a more prominent role within those skins, making up 4 out of the 8 available.  Leaf is clearly a feature of the character, rather than just a one-off skin.  Most importantly though is that Leaf is Japanese.  The Pokemon world is not 1:1 with the real world, there are various geographical inconsistencies (like the UK being upside down) and the world is much more untamed than ours, but Leaf's region is probably THE Pokemon region that is the most analogous to a real world location, being basically a deurbanized Tokyo.  It's literally called "the Kanto region", which is literally a place in Japan.

However, Leaf runs into the problem that Villager 8 ultimately runs into.  While she definitely occupies more of a presence on the roster, Leaf is still just an alternate skin at the end of the day.  She's an other to her male counterpart, a set of slightly different character models to add some variety to the Pokemon Trainer.  As well, while Pokemon Trainer is an older character in the grand scheme of Smash, Leaf is new, being added into the character's DNA as of Smash Ultimate.  It still puts her in front of Min Min, but she's unlikely to be the first.  Still, I don't think she's a bad option by any means and if you want to consider her, then go for it.  There's not exactly a right answer here.

Corrin

This will be the only time I talk about Corrin as being interesting, so you better enjoy this.  Corrin is the oddball of the Fire Emblem lords in Smash.  Corrin was the penultimate character in Smash 4's DLC, coming between Cloud and Bayonetta.  A lot of people criticize Corrin's inclusion within Smash as a cynical business move, because it probably is, but I do think Sakurai kind of cooked with Corrin.  She's like the easiest cut from the roster if they make another game but Corrin has a super unique and very fun moveset, utilizing their bizarre half-dragon form to do a lot of wild stuff in combat.  Corrin is also the only Fire Emblem lord that I feel truly belongs in this conversation.  Whereas other lords are just intended to be European with a distinctly anime aesthetic, Corrin's race/ethnicity is much more complicated than that.  Why?  Well, let's get into it.

Hailing from the trilogy of Fire Emblem Fates, Corrin is the fully customizable main character of those games.  Corrin was raised as a prince/princess of the Kingdom of Nohr, a cold, harsh, very Eastern European style kingdom that encompasses the vast majority of the land on the continent that Nohr is located on.  Shortly after the game starts, however, it is quickly discovered the Corrin is actually the lost member of the royal family of Nohr's neighboring kingdom and long-time enemy, Hoshido.  The two kingdoms have been at war for a very long time, and any time there is a treaty between the two, it is only a matter of time before said treaty is broken.  As such, war ignites in the midst of Corrin's reunion with their birth family and they are forced to choose a side: either side with the family who raised them, knowing they stole them, or side with the family they were born to, even though they do not know them.  Or maybe they can forge their own path.  Or join Smash!

So why is Corrin in discussion for the first woman of color in the roster.  After all, as previously stated, most Fire Emblem lords look Japanese, but their Kingdoms are analogs for the numerous European kingdoms.  Well, Corrin is a bit unique because her heritage is distinctly inspired by East Asian culture.  Hoshido is a country that, as you could imagine from the name, carries a distinctive Japanese lean.  Their lord and heir apparent to the throne is designed after a samurai, the names all have that lean (Ryoma, Takumi, Hinoka, Sakura), and geographically it is a smaller country on the east coast of a continent that is on a peninsula with an island chain.  With all of this evidence, it can be easily surmised that Corrin is either Japanese or, given the geography, Korean, and that Nohr is actually Russia.  This would definitely put her in the running as the first woman of color on the roster, appearing an entire game before the others listed.

However, once again, there are issues.  Like with Villager and with Leaf, female Corrin is not the default, she is a series of alternate skins on a character who is, in Smash, traditionally depicted as male.  Which is actually kind of a rarity for Corrin, mind, as a lot of other sources tend to depict Corrin as canon female, but I digress.  There is, also, the issue with Corrin being an FE lord.  Fire Emblem takes place in a high fantasy world and while there are analogs to the real world given in its history and geography, it's also not uncommon for Fire Emblem to blur those lines.  There are a lot of ninjas in Europe in the FE world, I'm just saying.  There is also just the fact that Corrin isn't quite human.  Corrin is a dragon, a half-dragon mind you, but a dragon nonetheless.  The half-blood daughter of a truly ancient race of dragons that is now all but extinct.  So while I don't think a convincing argument could be made that she shouldn't count because she is "not actually human", I could understand why some people would go that way.  That being said, I think Corrin has the strongest claim to the title we've seen thus far, at least of the ones that are a little ambiguous.  

Inkling

I know, I know, I literally made a rule about this.  And I literally just brought it up as a counterargument that could be leveled at Corrin.  Hear me out though.  The Inklings were the very first characters revealed for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, being revealed in the game's reveal trailer.  If you are keeping track, that means the majority of the potential answers to this question have technically debuted in Smash Ultimate.  That's certainly interesting, don't you think?  I promised I wasn't going to criticize, I know.  Anyways, Inkling is one of the only newcomers in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's base roster that doesn't come from a fairly old game, Splatoon being a game that came out during Smash 4's content cycle and very quickly became one of Nintendo's tentpoles.  And I think, given how Splatoon is, they become a very interesting answer to this question.

Splatoon is a franchise that takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth, long after the extinction of humans.  Since the disappearance of the dominant race, squids have evolved into humanoids and have become obsessed with the pillars of human culture.  Things like fashion, music, sports, etc.  This new race of shapeshifting humanoid squids, called the Inklings, would inherit the Earth and recreate essentially the best of human culture, heavily influenced by Japanese idol culture.  In fact, the area that the Inklings occupy and from which they host their primary sport, Turf Wars, is heavily implied to have once been Japan and has now just been warped by whatever changes the Earth has gone through in the intermittent millions of years.  As such, the Inklings are themselves are something of a parrot of present day urban Japanese culture, and are noteworthy as such.

The Inklings have a bit of a leg up on the previous character's we've discussed in that, unlike with Villager 8, Leaf, and femme Corrin, the female Inklings ARE the default skin in Smash.  The Inkling's default skin is the platonic ideal of an Inkling, a young Japanese girl with orange hair and a white t-shirt with a brand logo on it.  I believe this is the design of the Inkling that we even first saw, appearing in the original Splatoon trailer which Smash Ultimate parrots for its reveal.  Not only that but Inkling, representing a game with loads of customization options, has skins of varying looks and, indeed, skin tones.  I feel like, outside of Min Min, the argument could be made that Inkling is the least ambiguous character in this lineup, not only is she a woman of color by default, but she is also represented by multiple women of color.

On the other hand, the Inkling is a squid.  That's a little reductive I realize, but the point is still valid.  Inklings are shapeshifters, they are not only able to switch between their squid and humanoid forms at will, but also change most things about their appearance on a whim.  This has been a very positive feature of the Splatoon series, as the games have been lauded for their inclusivity.  You can switch up your appearance and gender at basically any point.  But also, it makes this a little messy.  Can we consider Inklings PoC when they're actually humanoid squids shapeshifting into facsimiles of the culture that existed before them?  It also runs into the villager question, in that the reason why the Inkling is so varied in their alternate costumes is as a representation of player customization.  Splatoon is a series where you play as an Inkling you created, not any specific Inkling.  As such, the Inkling costumes are all designed to show the wide range of customization options present in the game.  The Inkling is very ambiguous despite in many ways being more concrete than any option previously listed despite Min Min.  They're probably the biggest question marks on this list.

Sheik

This is, to some people, the "correct" answer.  And this is, to other people, heresy.  I honestly just feel kind of gross even putting Sheik on here, to be honest.  Sheik is the earliest character on this list by far, being one of the first newcomers ever shown for Super Smash Bros. Melee.  Amusingly, because of how they're shown in the intro, Sheik is actually considered to be on the roster BEFORE Zelda, despite being the secondary transformation of her in Melee and Brawl.  Sheik is one of the very few Zelda characters on the roster and one of the only ones that has a unique moveset, as most Zelda characters are based on other characters in the roster as they were inserted as a means to buff the roster while not adding too much development time.  Sheik is very popular, despite the fact that they were included in a singular game from 1998, it's almost difficult to imagine the roster without them at this point.  Sheik is also complicated for this question for a couple very specific reasons.  We'll get into them.

Sheik originates from the iconic and critically acclaimed video game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.  Entering the story after its game-defining time skip, Sheik appears as a helpful but mysterious figure in the darker and ravaged version of Hyrule that Link awakens in.  They are of the Sheikah tribe, a race of dark-skinned peoples who have loyally served the royal family for centuries and for whom Kakariko Village, a small farming town at the foot of Death Mountain, is home.  Sheik aids Link on his quest by nudging him in the right direction on his quest and teaching him the sacred songs which will allow him to more easily navigate Hyrule.  This all culminates in the plot twist that Smash likely spoiled for you if you weren't old enough to Zelda in 1998, the Sheik has actually been the missing Princess Zelda the entire time, having used the Triforce of Wisdom to transform themselves into a young Sheikah so they could hide from Ganondorf's eye.  Sheik was also planned to make an appearance in Twilight Princess, which is what their design from Brawl onward is based on, but this was ultimately scrapped.  Good thing too, Twilight Princess already has too many balls in the air.

There are two main problems with Sheik being the first woman of color on the roster.  One that's more based in canon and the other which is more based in fanon.  The former issue is that an argument could be made that Sheik is not truly a woman of color.  She is simply a magical disguise put on by Zelda, a means to hide herself as she awaits Link's return.  She is not necessarily a character to her own, just a costume put on by a woman whose appearance is more in line with European royalty.  But I could also easily see the argument that Sheik's popularity, her legend as it were, has made her a character in her own right.  And that Smash in particular is evidence of this fact, as the two characters have evolved in completely separate ways, with Sheik not even maintaining the very few elements that she shared with Zelda by the time Ultimate was released, i.e. losing the Light Arrow as a final smash.

The other problem is that Sheik is typically depicted as a man by the fandom.  Not only is Sheik a man to the fandom, but Sheik is a pretty important symbol of transmasc gamers, I distinctly remember the outcry that happened around Smash 4 when Sakurai confirmed Sheik in the game was female and people called for erasure.  Sheik being a guy is the first thing most people know about him, and the twist that Sheik is Zelda hits harder as a result.  It's why I feel uncomfortable with putting Sheik in this running, it feels a bit like stepping on the toes of a community I am not a part of.  Sheik's gender identity being masculine is very important to people, both in a narrative sense and in a representation sense.

So why is Sheik here at all?  Because, according to Nintendo, THIS is the correct answer to the question.  Or at least the closest thing to a correct answer that we'll be given without asking them directly, at which point I imagine they'll say like Min Min just to be safe.  Sheik has almost always been understood internally to be a woman.  The idea that Sheik is a man mostly arose about from the fandom, as previously stated, namely due to the fact that Sheik's gender is very ambiguous.  They don't lean too heavily into masculine or feminine character design and, to a lot of people, that immediately equates to masculine because most of our characters are male.  Especially in the context of video games in 1998.  I don't really like it either, to be clear.  Again, I feel like I'm stepping on people's toes by even suggesting this as an option.  I just want any trans readers to know I love them, I'm sorry Sheik is here, but I couldn't justify not putting them on here, especially since they're probably the "correct" answer.  It's an answer I really wish wasn't here and I don't blame anyone for disregarding Sheik as a possible contender, as this question is super ambiguous anyways.

Daisy

I bet when you clicked on this, you never thought it would end with Princess Daisy.  One of the very first characters to be shown off in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the first "newcomer" revealed in the first Smash Ultimate direct actually, Daisy was introduced as an "Echo Fighter".  Basically how Smash now contextualizes clone characters, rather than them having their own individual spots on the roster, they now share one with another character.  So Daisy isn't character 67, she's character 13E.  For the record you are only an Echo Fighter apparently if you debuted in Smash 4 or Ultimate, the Melee and Brawl clone characters got to keep their numberings.  Here's the thing, when I started thinking about this question, it was just something I was like "well here's the list of possible candidates but this one doesn't work for this reason or this one is ambiguous for that reason", stuff like that.  When I got to Daisy though, that's when I wanted to turn it into a blog post.  So let's do this.

Daisy hails from the original Game Boy launch title "Super Mario Land".  Created as a way to make the Game Boy game feel distinctive from the console Mario games, so as not to feel like just an inferior port, Daisy has become a fan favorite character over the years, in particular due to her portrayals in the Mario sports games, especially Mario Strikers.  Compared to her counterpart, Peach, she's tougher, more energetic, and just a bit psychotic.  It's honestly shocking how long it took Daisy to reappear in the mainline series with how beloved she is, she was literally in Smash Bros before she made another mainline Mario game reappearance.  However, it is from her origins of that our question comes into play.  And with Daisy in particular, it is exceptionally complicated.

So, Daisy's place of origin is Sarasaland, an empire ruled by Daisy's royal family.  Daisy is an empress.  Sarasaland is comprised of four Kingdoms; the Birabuto Kingdom, a vast desert kingdom which contains ancient ruins, namely large pyramids, the Muda Kingdom, an kingdom set on a large island chain in the ocean where weird occurrences happen, the Easton Kingdom, a mountainous kingdom high in the sky where the people have built large statues of men, and the Chai Kingdom, a forested kingdom covered in primarily bamboo.  Sarasaland, in a departure from most other Mario games before or since, has its kingdoms representing real world locations, spanning Egypt, China, Rapa Nui and Bermuda, though the last one could be the mythical continent of Mu, which was believed to be in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  Aside from the fact that this empire would be comically massive if it were in the real world, stretching from North Africa all the way to the coast of the Americas, this also raises a very interesting question about Daisy: is Daisy a WoC?

Now, I don't think Nintendo has ever or will ever weigh in on this debate one way or another.  I think in their mind, Daisy is the princess of a fictionalized kingdom and while that kingdom has real world analogs, it's not a place.  Daisy isn't Egyptian just because her kingdom is Egyptian, it's a fantasy world.  Daisy is very likely a generic European royal that just so happens to have a kingdom made up of cool iconography that the team working on Super Mario Land thought would be cool.  Except I don't think that's actually true.

See, the answer of "is Daisy a WoC" seems to change based on the game.  Daisy is typically depicted next to Peach and, as a rule, always has darker skin than her.  Even the most pale Daisy appearances are slightly tanned.  But again, it's not enough to where you could look and go "yes, Daisy is a person of color".  But sometimes, Daisy has fairly dark skin.  Her first appearance in color, Mario Tennis, is one such case, having Daisy's official art have pretty dark skin.  And this is also true of Mario Party 3, Daisy again has dark skin in that game.  But then in Mario Party 4, she is much paler.  And it keeps going back and forth like that.  Daisy sometimes has pale skin, sometimes has tanned skin, sometimes has dark skin.  There are some Daisies where it seems like the art team was implying that Daisy was a woman of color and other Daisies where she just definitively isn't.  It's shockingly complicated and I think it is only fitting that the surprisingly ambiguous question of "who was the first playable woman of color in Super Smash Bros." ends with a character who, herself, is really ambiguous.

In recent years, though, there's been more of an acceptance among the community that Daisy is indeed a woman of color, or at least she should be.  It seems a bit obvious to many of them, Daisy's massive globe spanning empire she is the singular monarch of would cover North Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, the Pacific Islands, Central America, before finally landing in the Caribbean and coastal America.  It's comically large, as previously stated, but it is a diverse swath of people and it would imply Daisy is part of them.  Granted, the British Empire also was comically large, to the point where the sun never set on Britain, but I imagine Nintendo doesn't want to imply that one of the biggest characters from their cartoony mascot platformer is a ruthless colonialist who violently conquered this land.  If Daisy is not officially a woman of color currently, which again is complicated, she probably should be going forward.  It'd be nice for Nintendo's biggest franchise to prominently feature a woman of color.

So what is the answer?

Min Min probably.  Look, I don't know what the actual answer is, and I don't really think there is one singular answer.  There are many asterisks to basically any candidate that is not Min Min, and the other answers can be seen as unsatisfying.  Like I said, what is probably the "correct" answer is one that feels a little icky because of how much that character means to transmascs.  Everyone is going to interpret this question differently and, honestly, even if it were something Nintendo was interested in answering, I don't think we'd like their answer, because it'd probably be Min Min.  I will say though, it is infinitely disappointing to me that every eligible character besides one debuted within the last two Smash games.  Smash is a series that has been around for almost 30 years now and not only is this question ambiguous, it's a depressingly small sample pool.  I think even the characters after Min Min, there's like A Steve skin that is a black woman, and then that's every woman of color on the roster period.  And that's honestly the other reason why I don't like just saying Min Min, because it means that in the 30 years we've had Super Smash Bros, the 6th to last character introduced in the game about having EVERY Smash character is the first WoC.  Feels just a bit wrong, doesn't it?  Maybe the answer should be Jigglypuff.

Shantae - A Gaming Diary

This is a series I've really wanted to tackle for a while.  I really like the Shantae games, but I haven't really spent a ton of time with them overall, only playing through Risky's Revenge and about half of 1/2 Genie Hero in the past.  And about 1/5 of the original, I got through the first dungeon at least I'm pretty sure.  But for the most part, the original, Pirate's Curse, and Seven Sirens have kind of been rotting on my shelf for many years at this point.  And with the sixth game now releasing and subsequently being a disaster, thanks LRG, I spent a lot of years defending you and now it's just all bad all the time.  I have my issues now with the "forever physical" crowd in general but like, the worst thing about the panic over the death of physical media is how many people are getting conned by organizations like LRG because they want things physical.  I digress.  I look forward to hopefully doing diaries and reviewing all the other Shantae games but for now, let's talk about the original Shantae!

Review

Shantae is a good little video game.  The godmother of all indie Metroidvanias, Shantae's greatest strength is in its presentation.  During a playthrough, you will probably find yourself asking at least a couple times "how did they do this on a Game Boy Color".  In many ways it feels very modern, Shantae does not feel overly different from how it feels now on modern consoles for better or for worse.  But there are a couple notable pain points, namely in the boss design, and for as much as Shantae elevates the hardware, the hardware ultimately lets down Shantae, as it has numerous gameplay quirks caused by the Game Boy screen crunch.  That being said, I really enjoyed my time with Shantae, despite its flaws, and look forward to playing the remaining games in the series eventually.  7.2/10 

Diary

6/7/25

Man, Shantae looks incredible.  Like, in the context of Game Boy Color games, mind, it obviously doesn't look incredible by today's standards.  But it's really amazing how detailed and expressive the character sprites are given the hardware.  A lot of them look pitch perfect to how they look today, it's crazy.  And the towns feel so alive because of the clever use of just a handful of sprites in an over the shoulder view, it's so wild to me how impressive this game is.  The over-the-shoulder segments in particular just look like they could've come out a modern Shantae game.  Uncontroversial take: Shantae is the prettiest Game Boy game of all time.

Maybe, hear me out, this is the good ending.

This game is a lot harder than I expected.  Like, I'm starting to realize why this has sat in my "unfinished" pile for so long, other than having a broken 3DS. specifically with a broken B button.  It's rather difficult to play games without a b button, especially Game Boy games.  So, a big reason is that save points are pretty few and far between, so you have to redo a lot of progress if you run out of lives.  And, you know, I say this every blog entry, I am bad at every video game.  So I've had to redo a lot.  But just like, Shantae struggles in combat in this game, she has such a problem with basically every enemy and I know it's because they want to incentivize buying upgrades and items but it's been an uphill climb so far.  But we persevere, I want to beat this game before I start doing the other Shantae games I've either never played or never finished.  Thankfully the game is pretty generous with continuing, you restart with all the money, items and progress you had upon death.

This is the first instance of ret-2-go in the game, and it's from an NPC. 

It's really amazing to me how identical this game is to modern Shantae.  Like they got it in one.  The humor is on point, every character really feels like themselves, the visuals are basically identical other than having to be on a Game Boy Color.  And WayForward's unique visual style is already so recognizable, I had to laugh at points because they knew what they were about.  Gotta respect it, tbh.  I love this visual style so much and it's just insane to see how it's already so present from the outset.  And the music, man, so many iconic tracks that are already present.  I'm always amazed Burning Town originates on the Game Boy, it's such a complex track for the hardware.  It's kinda sad that it took so long for WayForward to make Shantae a success, I wonder what happens in the alternate timeline where for some reason people buy a Game Boy Color game in 2002.  Would Shantae be in Smash?  Who knows!?

6/8/25

I'm really starting to get into a flow with this game.  Don't get me wrong, I'm still dying a considerable amount, but it's steadily becoming less.  I feel like I understand the gameplay more now than I did previously.  A big thing is that I'm getting better about using items, before I was hesitant to use them because everything was dying to Shantae's hair in one or two hits but now it's like "I'm just making this harder on myself for no reason".  I also found a minigame I can get a lot of gems on so I can now just grind out money and not have to worry, that's nice!  The Up + B input to use items feels a little finnicky but I'm getting there.  I also got this really cool kick move that's been putting in a lot of work, it gives me a better option for dealing with stuff in the air than "time your hair attack so that it hits the enemy in the air."  And the couple health upgrades I've picked up have been really helpful.

I'm also just, generally, getting better at traveling by night.  Shantae has a day-night cycle in it, which is very impressive for a Game Boy game that it can even handle the natural shifting between day and night, this game feels so ahead of its time I swear.  But at night, enemies becomes way more dangerous, getting a buff to their health and, maybe this is a placebo because of it, feeling more aggressive and dangerous.  A large part of Shantae has been learning which fights are worth fighting and which ones you should try and run from.  It doesn't always work out that I CAN run from them, mind, the Nagas have sonar attacks which do chase you down, but I'm bouncing out of combat at any chance I get if the opponent is too tough.  Unfortunately it seems like the Metroid-esque enemy infinite spawn points were only for the first bit, as far as I've seen, so we doing this for real now, training wheels off.

I got the silly little monkey!  I can guarantee you if I had heard about this game back when it was new, I would've pushed for it so hard finding out that it was a game where you shapeshift into animals.  I almost bought Tak 2 when I was a kid, having never played the first one or even knowing what it was, just because the ads promised shapeshifting into animals.  Probably for the best I didn't, mind, I had a bad habit of getting frustrated as a kid and blaming the game for being bad.  I really like that Shantae uses her shapeshifting powers in place of traditional upgrades.  There's just something way more cute and fun about being able to transform into a monkey as opposed to getting a high jump, wall jump, and morph ball.  Who doesn't love a monkey!?  Exactly, best morph ball in a gaming.  I don't remember if I said that about the chicken too in Guacamelee, I might be repeating jokes.

I'm sorry this entire section was just screenshots of cute girls. 

I've been kind of tempted to replay Risky's Revenge after this, the only Shantae game I've ever finished.  Yes, the only one I've ever finished is the second one, which was the obscure DSiWare release.  It's been so many years that I'm really curious how I feel about it vs. the other Shantae games now.  Because so far, I feel like I'm strangely liking this one more?  Like not a lot more, but definitely more.  And I know they cover a lot of similar, if not the same, beats so, it'd just be interesting, y'know.  I should add that to my list.  Or maybe I just do it after this, get the Shantae tag I made for this to have some use right away.  We'll see, I guess, I do have a system for these things.

6/11/25

The color dungeon was really cool.  Like, I know it's kind of a silly thing to be impressed by, oh, a dungeon built around color puzzles, Game Boy Color games NEVER have those.  But I liked the mechanics of having certain enemies that only interact with certain colors and not being able to interact with other colors, it's a neat concept.  And I love the theming that it's an electric dungeon, and all these enemies are completing a circuit with Shantae when she's a specific color, it's super clever.  The only disappointing part about this dungeon is really the problem all these dungeons have: there's no map.  I get lost very easily in these dungeons because I'm never quite sure what rooms I have been in/cleared.  This dungeon being an entirely vertical design did not help either.

I am definitely farther now than I have been previously.  I know when I played this in the past, I never got to the second transformation, likely because I was bad.  The Naga Wasteland is a pretty big difficulty spike from the forest, y'all.  But now I have the cute little elephant, always excited about a game with an elephant.  I like how strong the elephant feels like right out the gate.  Its ability to easily one shot certain foes is such a handy trick and the game shows it off immediately by having the dungeon be full of these incredibly strong rock monsters.  Especially in a game that makes you feel so squishy, as Shantae often does, it makes you feel so powerful to suddenly have a big tank that can crash through enemies, great game design.

Rottytops is in this game!!!  I kinda figured Rottytops would show up eventually because so far every notable character from later entries has showed up, but it's still nice to actually see her.  Rottytops is literally my favorite Shantae character, she's so cool and so unique and I love her dynamic with Shantae.  Like it's so interesting to have an intelligent, hot zombie with an irreverent sense of humor and a clear attraction to the main character that either makes her want to kiss her or eat her brains, it's so fun.  And I love her caravan of intelligent zombies so much as well, gives this cool nomad vibe to her, it's fantastic.  Her racing minigame can go die though.  Or I guess undie?  Re-die?  I don't know, it's been the worst part of the game so far and the first point in it where I've felt the need to save scum.

I've talked a lot about how ahead of its time Shantae feels, how it honestly barely feels different from the modern games, but I'm starting to butt heads with the Game Boy-ness of it.  The screen crunch is ROUGH, I feel like I'm never safe jumping from a higher platform because I'm not sure what is at the bottom.  For a lot of the game this wasn't a huge issue but now that I'm entering the late game, as it were, the platforming is becoming significantly more precise and as such my potential for just dying from a jump I couldn't see increases.  This isn't a Shantae specific problem, of course, the hardware let down tons of Game Boy games and, especially Game Boy platformers.  I genuinely think Super Mario Land 2 would be up there with like World and 3 in the discussion of greatest 2D Mario if it wasn't for the screen crunch making it just categorically worse.

6/12/25

Just an absolute demon.

We got spooky in this part.  You'd think the last part would be the spooky part on account of the zombies, and it kinda was, but this part had an entire haunted house themed dungeon.  Lots of spooky skeletons adorning the walls and cobwebs everywhere and ghostly creatures, it was a really cool atmosphere and I enjoyed it a bunch.  It also had a really fun gimmick where enemies would walk on by you no problem if you hid in the shadows giving it a bit of a stealth vibe to it as well, it was neat.  But then after I finished up that, I move onto the next area, assuming we're out of the spooky, and then there's all sorts of actual demons all over the place!  Just horrible shadow goblins everywhere!  Just an unusually spooky part of the game!

The spider powerup in Shantae is such an interesting one, I'm curious how they did it on the Game Boy, tbh.  The spider clings to the background and climbs around on webs or walls or what have you.  It's a very unique take on wall climbing but more than that, it's just incredibly impressive that it works.  WayForward did sorcery on the Game Boy Color and it's kinda crazy because their output before Shantae is not super noteworthy.  Like you'd expect from how advanced Shantae seems, that Shantae was the magnum opus of a developer who had been defining the GB/GBC for years and new intimately what they could do with it but like.  WayForward made very few real video games before Shantae, it was primarily activity packs and interactive storybooks with a couple licensed platformers in there.  Though bizarrely their adaptation of Wendy the Good Witch is actually kinda fire, containing an ahead of its time gravity shifting mechanic.  They got so much out of so little.

My face when I have to do a boss fight in this game.

I don't think I like any of the boss fights.  Granted I've only fought 3 of them so far so maybe the game turns it around in the close but like.  Boss fights seem to go on for way too long, and it's not always clear if what you're doing is correct.  This is kind of a general issue with Shantae, it's not always super obvious if your attacks are effective because of the wide range of enemy animations present in the game.  Like it's neat that basically every enemy type has its own specific flair to how they get hit, but sometimes enemies flash when they're being damaged and other times they get knocked back and other times they get stunned and still other times nothing happens, really.  This wide range of enemy responses to getting hit makes it pretty ambiguous if what you're doing is even working, and this is especially true during boss fights.  Every boss so far I've been like "okay, something is happening when I hit the boss but it doesn't feel like the boss fight is necessarily progressing, maybe there's a puzzle here I'm missing" and so I try to change up my strategy to solve the puzzle and it turns out, no, I just need to hit them for like 10 minutes.  Go figure!

I feel like next time I update this, I'll have beaten the game.  I don't have a lot left and as I've mentioned previously in my post on Guacamelee!, I have this weird thing with Metroidvanias where once I'm able to fight the final boss, my interest in going back through the game and collecting stuff decreases considerably.  It's unfortunate for Shantae though that you need the final transformation from the fourth dungeon to really go through and get 100%, meaning you're locked out of a lot of upgrades until just before you can face the final boss.  I do kind of want to go through and do another run through with the last transformation though, as I'm pretty sure it can fly?  So it'll make going back through the world really convenient, presumably.  We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, though!

6/14/25

I indeed got the ability to fly!  The Harpy transformation is, other than the screen crunch obviously, the first time I feel like this game feels old.  You have to aggressively button mash to keep yourself in the air, which even playing on a more ergonomic device is tiresome.  I cannot imagine playing with this transformation on original hardware, I feel like that would be rough.  But it makes traversal so much easier, I can just fly over entire maps.  The game tries to put enemies high up so you can't just fly over everything to get to places faster but it doesn't usually work out that way, the Harpy is just really overpowered and makes backtracking through the games' world so much easier, if I wished to go back into it and 100% the game someday it'd be a breeze.

I'll just say what we're all thinking, Risky wore it better. 

I don't know if we are supposed to be surprised by the reveal that Risky Boots is the "Bandit Town Protector Genie", I know from later Shantae games that subtlety is not exactly the Shantae series vibe.  They'd make a lot of very direct jokes about how it's clearly Risky in disguise and nobody notices it.  But I did not immediately recognize that fact because the Game Boy graphical limitations actually do a good job of hiding that she is just Risky in disguise.  It is a very interesting little nuance to the game that definitely would not exist in later entries and I just think that's a little neat.  It wasn't until she refused to tell us her name that I was like "oh okay, this is Risky, the color palette makes sense now, lol."

Forgot to take a screengrab of the DK barrels, have this weirdo.

The ice dungeon ran into the screen crunch problem big time.  The core gimmick of the dungeon is DK style barrels where you launch from barrel to barrel, trying to reach your final destination without hitting a wall or launching into a pit.  The main problem is that you can't really see anything that far out from you, meaning that you're basically always blind launching.  I don't really mind having to memorize patterns, mind, like it'd be boring if it was just very obvious on where you needed to go.  I just don't like that I can launch myself directly into death without knowing beforehand because the screen is small.  The ice dungeon boss, also real bad, the biggest instance of "game being unclear" I've encountered thus far.

Thankfully the final area of the game was pretty strong.  The Tinkerbat Factory is your classic "use all your skills" dungeon, it has various obstacles that you must (or at least, it's intended for you to) use specific transformations to progress.  There's pipe mazes that you can only get through as the monkey, there's obstacles needed to be smashed by the elephant, there's a wall climbing section for the spider, etc.  I'm always fond of this kind of dungeon, I like when a game really lets you use all your tools at the end to really show how well the player knows their skillset.  I just kinda wish it went on longer, tbh.  Paradoxically, despite the rest of the game being like it is, the Tinkerbat Factory is short and easy, with a checkpoint every other room that you reload from if you game over.  And it's not like a dungeon where you're locked in, either, it's a place you can leave from at any time, it's just weirdly generous for a game that has otherwise been not unkind but definitely a little extreme at times.

The final boss rules though.  It starts out as a puzzle fight that pretty effectively communicates to you what you have to do, a rarity in this game, against this giant steam punk mech.  And it uses the monkey form a lot which it's the best form so good, you know.  But then the second phase is just a one v one with Risky that's really fun, Risky is kind of a tricky boss fight, as you would expect from a pirate.  She does a lot of switch-ups, she'll prep an attack and then be bluffing or she'll go from nothing to attacking without giving the player a wind up.  It's very in character for her to constantly be switching up, I like it a lot.  It also is a boss that both tests the players' pattern recognition and reaction time, I'm not good at the latter but it's nice to go at the end "how good are you at the game".  Or you can be like me and just use your items.  Risky's got nothing on a spinning death ball.

And we end off the game with Shantae giving up everything she ever dreamed of!  To run it back, Shantae has a lot of insecurity about the fact she's only a half-genie.  She feels like she's lying to people and that she's somehow inadequate because she isn't a full genie.  And after saving the world from Risky Boots, as well as freeing the genies that were imprisoned in each of the dungeons, the genies give her the option to ascend to full genie-hood, the one thing in her life that she has always wanted.  But doing so means sacrificing her life, she will no longer be bound to the mortal realm and may never see her friends and family again.  So with a heavy heart, she chooses to decline their offer, stating that she would rather become a full genie in a way that allows her to keep the things most important to her.  The genies send her back to the realm of the living, and credits roll.

Shantae was fun!  I think presentation-wise, it is a great swan song for the Game Boy/Game Boy Color, it manages to do so much on the system that seems impossible.  Shantae is a character that has long been pseudo-associated with Nintendo, and I think looking at this game you can kinda see why.  Shantae manages to manipulate what a console can do far beyond what seems possible, in the same way that, despite the Mario Galaxy games being on inferior hardware, they look just as good as some of the HD games that were concurrent.  Unfortunately, that same system lets Shantae down a little bit, the screen crunch can make gameplay rough, the very simplified control means it's a bit annoying to do everything that it wants to do, and just in general you can tell it's not as big as it wants to be.  Other than a couple pain points though, it's a fun experience that I'm glad to have finally gotten through and I look forward to playing more Shantae in the future!  7.2/10