According to Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa, the Switch successor is slated to be revealed within this fiscal year, which runs through March 31, 2025 for Nintendo. Incidentally, Masahiro Sakurai recently informed fans that he’s been working on a secret game project since April 2022.
As a result, there’s been a lot of speculation about the next entry in the Smash series after Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. While it will no doubt be difficult to create a sequel for the latest behemoth of the franchise, the next game will no doubt need new characters to fill up the roster, including those that were once considered before ultimately getting scrapped in previous titles.
Like with every title in the Smash series, Masahiro Sakurai considered a number of different challengers for Super Smash Bros. Melee, many of which have never been implemented. One such character is Ayumi Tachibana from the Detective Club series.
“Well, I was thinking about it during the Melee days, Famicom Detective Club… Ayumi even has her own trophy in that game. But in the end, there’s no way she’d work overseas, so… but I do like Famicom Detective Club.” — Masahiro Sakurai
Ultimately, Sakurai decided not to make Ayumi playable in Super Smash Bros. Melee as he felt she would be too unfamiliar to those outside of Japan due to Famicom Detective Club being exclusive to Japanese audiences.
“Well, I was thinking about it during the Melee days, Famicom Detective Club… Ayumi even has her own trophy in that game,” once said Sakurai (as translated by Source Gaming). “But in the end, there’s no way she’d work overseas, so… but I do like Famicom Detective Club.”
Ironically, this same mentality did not prevent Marth and Roy from Fire Emblem joining Melee despite also being from a Japanese exclusive franchise. In fact, it can be argued that Marth and Roy’s popularity in Super Smash Bros. Melee (mostly Marth’s) served as the catalyst that ultimately localized Fire Emblem to the United States.
However, it should also be noted that the Detective Club series wasn’t as relevant as Fire Emblem at the time. The first game is the Detective Club series was released back in 1988 with the prequel releasing a year later in 1989.
The remakes for both games (The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind) wouldn’t be released until 2021 on the Nintendo Switch. This also marked the first time the franchise was officially released outside of Japan.
It’s also interesting to note that the third game in the mainline series, Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club, released earlier this year on August 29, 2024. Evidently, the series has become more relevant than it’s been in decades.
Considering this, could Ayumi Tachibana end up joining a future entry in the Super Smash Bros. series? Since she effectively hails from a visual novel type game, it would certainly be difficult to design a moveset for her, but probably not impossible for Sakurai.
Should she ever become a challenger within Super Smash Bros., we could see her sporting a moveset similar to that of Phoenix Wright’s from Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. She might have to spend a great deal of time “collecting evidence” rather than fighting to stand a chance against characters who hail from games that actually feature combat.
At this point, however, that type of gameplay has already been implemented for Minecraft’s Steve who spends a lot of time mining for resources before going all out against opponents. As a result, Sakurai might see the addition of this sort of character as being redundant in Super Smash Bros.
Sakurai did at one point state that he does like the Detective Club series, so it’s possible that he’d try to go out of his way to make the fighter concept work out somehow. If he was able to make characters like the Villager and the Mii work despite initial reservations during the development of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, he’d probably be able to figure something out for a Detective Club rep.
Having said all of that, it’s unknown how well or poorly Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club performed sales wise. If the game ended up flopping, that might be enough to disqualify the character altogether.
Ultimately though, we’ll just have to wait and see if Ayumi Tachibana ever ends up joining Super Smash Bros. as anything more than a trophy.