How I Would Reboot Super Smash Bros: Part 6 - Metroid
Super Smash Bros. is a huge franchise, with many storied franchises in its roster. Among these veterans is Samus, representing the Metroid series. Her franchise has been around since the NES days, and as such, it is quite the storied series. The question is, how would she fare in a reboot of the series? That's the topic of today, so let's get right to it!
Sticking with the philosophy of roster choices in this series, the picks here will be representative of the pillars of the Metroid franchise, namely the 2D sidescrollers and the FPS Prime series. To represent the older Metroid games, Samus would probably be the best fit. Her current moves would still suit her quite well on this front, though making the standard attack standard shots and working the melee counter from Samus Returns in, likely as a side smash, would service the character well. It would also be nice if the player could utilize the Morph Ball as a form change in which the player would be smaller and faster, and attacking would drop a bomb along with the option to charge up for a power bomb. The only other aspect I would rework would be changing the final smash to some of the aeion abilities, namely the Lightning Armor and Beam Burst. For a brief period, Samus would be invulnerable due to the Lightning Armor, and have both a powerful rapid-fire beam on the standard attack thanks to Beam Burst, and an even more devastating melee counter as a result of the Lightning Armor.
That other pillar, Metroid Prime, would be a bit trickier to come up with a moveset for, since Samus mostly retains the same core moves there. However, finding a character to show off some unique abilities from the series is much easier, since Samus has a sort of clone in the form of Dark Samus, who exclusively appears in this series. Her standard attack, tilts, and aerials would mostly be similar or the same as Samus, but her specials would be somewhat mixed up. Her neutral would be the Shrapnel Beam, which fires a wide shot that embeds itself in the ground and can continue to deal damage, her side special would be the explosive Darkburst, her down special would be the Morph Ball, and she would use phazon's power to rise into the air for a recovery. Her final smash would involve creating a couple of echoes of herself, either acting like low-level CPUs of the character, or acting like the previously seen assist trophy, likely the former.
To conclude, the Metroid series has both a storied history and a bright future, and should be represented in Smash Bros. as much. This has been a fun speculation exercise, and even though the upcoming Smash Bros. game probably won't be a reboot, it is still interesting to imagine what the franchise would look like rebuilt from the ground up. If you want to read the rest of my series, here it is:
If you're reading the series from the beginning, the article on the stages for both this franchise and the Pokémon franchise is right here.