Super Smash Bros. 4 was originally announced by Satoru Iwata back in 2011, though Masahiro Sakurai didn’t actually submit his project proposal to Nintendo until April 26, 2012. Needless to say, Super Smash Bros. 4, like many other games, has plenty of cut content throughout its interesting development cycle.
A new video was recently released by The Obsessive Gamer that goes over what we know in regards to the cut content of Super Smash Bros. 4. Needless to say, a lot of interesting information is covered during the 25 minute video.
As we all know, the Ice Climbers were originally planned to be playable for Super Smash Bros. 4 as they would be returning veterans from Melee and Brawl. Though they worked fine on the Wii U version of the game, a duo character proved to be too much for the 3DS.
Similarly, there’s data in the game corresponding to the Chorus Kids acting as Rhythm Heaven representation. It’s been theorized that they’d operate similar to the Ice Climbers, but as a trio rather than a duo. As one can imagine, this type of character was likely too much for the 3DS as well.
Finally, there’s also data indicating that Alpha of the Pikmin series was planned to be a separate character. Ultimately though, Alph was instead made into an alternate costume for Olimar.
Supposedly, characters like Heihachi Mishima, Ridley, Chrom, Takamaru, Steve, and Terra were also considered at one point in development, though each of them ended up being scrapped early on. However, Ridley, Chrom, and Steve would later join the roster of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate despite being scrapped ideas from Smash 4.
It also turns out that DLC characters in Super Smash Bros. 4 were originally intended to have custom specials like all the other characters, but this idea would eventually be abandoned. It turns out that that are some remnants of ideas present in the code for Mewtwo, though trying to implement them via hacking just caused the game to freeze or crash.
Check it all out in the video below: