In Name Only

One of the most common ways to keep a series fresh is to add new characters to it. Sometimes, this idea is taken to an extreme, in which a large portion, if not all, of the existing cast is replaced. I bring this up because Game Freak recently announced that in the upcoming Pokémon Black and White games, none of the existing 493 Pokémon would appear until after the main story is completed. It’s a blessing and a curse, because while it’ll be nice to trek through a cave without running into swarms of Geodudes and Zubats, many of the new Pokémon that have been revealed so far are – how do I put this kindly – godawful. Is it possible to successfully replace a significant chunk of a series’ cast? Let’s take a look at some other games that have taken such a leap of faith.

Super Mario Bros. 2: By the late 1980s, Mario was a household name; partially because Super Mario Bros. was one of the greatest video games ever, and also because said game was bundled with every NES. America was well aware of Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, and also their enemies in King Koopa and his hordes of turtle soldiers, evil mushrooms, flying fish, and carnivorous plants. In Japan, Super Mario Bros. 2 was sadistically difficult rematch against King Koopa et al., but in America, SMB2 left Mario and company to fight an entirely different set of adversaries, most of whom wore bizarre masks or had severe gender issues.

Anyway, since it wasn’t technically a Mario game (I’m sure you know that story by now), only one of the enemies from SMB2 returned in Super Mario Bros. 3, which returned the job of antagonist back to the Koopas; as far as continuity was concerned, it was as if SMB2 never happened, though the fact that that entire game was a dream helped resolve that.

Not all hope was lost for the enemies of SMB2, though. Starting with Super Mario World, they gradually joined the Koopa King’s ranks. By some bizarre miracle, Shy Guys manage to find work as minions to this day, and that bizarre re-skin Mario game in which you couldn’t even stomp on enemies found a place in the Super Mario canon.

Street Fighter III: Many of the fighters from Street Fighter II have returned in its spinoffs, Street Fighter Alpha and Street Fighter EX, but when Capcom released its full-fledged sequel in Street Fighter III, the only familiar faces from it, or any other Street Fighter games, were those of Ryu and Ken, meaning all the other characters were brand new (though by Third Strike, Akuma and Chun Li were added).

While not familiar, many of these new characters were quite vibrant and interesting, which is why it was a shame that, much like the Super Mario Bros. 2 enemies, none of these new world warriors would see the light of day in the next sequel, Street Fighter IV. On the contrary, the original arcade roster of SFIV was essentially that of Super Street Fighter II with four new fighters added, as if Capcom was saying “we had a good thing going and we blew it – the people want Guile and E. Honda back!” Nine more characters were added to the console version of SFIV, but they were either new or from SFII and SFA. It took until Super Street Fighter IV, which was released earlier this year, for SFIII characters to become playable again; luckily, Dudley was among the three chosen therein.

While Street Fighter III might be the black sheep of the series character-wise, it still has many fans, and it provided us with this unforgettable match, which, on second thought, is between two characters from SFII. What the hell?

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin: Advance Wars is an almost disturbingly light-hearted series of turn-based strategy games about global warfare, the focus of which is on a rivaling groups of commanding officers, or COs, who deploy infantry, tanks, and planes to destroy the enemy CO’s infantry, tanks, and planes. Since the first Advance Wars game, there has been a recurring set of COs joined by a few newcomers in each new game, but when it was announced a few years ago that Advance Wars: Days of Ruin will take place in a future in which 90% of humans have died, it was a real un-Nintendo-like buzzkill, leaving us under the impression that all our favorite COs are probably dead.

It turned out that Days of Ruin had no relationship to the main Advance Wars storyline, and most likely takes place in a different world, but there were still a few months where I was bummed out because I thought that Jess and Javier were dead. In that regard, Advance Wars: DoR handled these new characters in a different manner than the previous examples.

While it is a solid strategy game that in some ways, brought the series back to its basics, it has a completely different roster of COs that will most likely never be integrated into the main series.

Perhaps radical cast changes aren’t the worst thing for a series, but I can only hope that the remaining new Pokémon designs are better than the already revealed “floating gears with smiley faces” and “goth stack of cones.” Are there any other series of games in which you felt that they pulled a real switcheroo when it came to the cast? Did you completely hate those new jerks? Let me know in the comments.