#also shout-outs to that one guy on dA who was inexplicably pissed off about how Byleth's Classic Mode in Ultimate ended in particular

[cardboardluigi64]

Random observation regarding Smash Bros. trophies: Originally, it was planned for there to be more Fire Emblem trophies in Super Smash Bros. Melee, but it was reportedly too complex for the development team (what with the game's infamously short, rushed, and crunched development cycle), so they ultimately scaled it back to just Marth and Roy, the two FE fighters that were in the game.

(The classic mode trophies for the two characters)

This hesitation to create full new models for additional characters persisted, even in the Brawl and Smash 4, games that took a bit longer to make than 13 months.

Beyond the assets they had to make for the games (i.e.: the fighters, Lyn as an Assist Trophy, and Chrom because he's a part of Robin's Final Smash), Fire Emblem's trophies in those games only consisted of imported models from Ike's games (don't ask me which one. I've never played either), Awakening (specifically for Smash 3DS), and, in the case of the Xander and Ryoma trophies you get from buying the Corrin DLC for Smash 3DS, Fates.

(sorry for the use of a very low resolution image of the Xander trophy, nobody actually thought to rip the model and upload it to The Models Resource, which is where I got the higher resolution images of the Gaius and Inigo trophies. I don't feel like ripping the model myself or booting up the game in an emulator just to take a picture of it that's bigger than 144p.)

Some of the models did get tweaked a little beyond being pre-posed. All of the Awakening models were updated to have actual feet instead of the usual Wind Waker stubs, and a few were even given reworked faces with comparatively-higher resolution faces.

Of course, in fairness, Brawl and especially Smash 4 had scaled back on creating wholly new models specifically just to be used as trophies compared to Melee (where only a handful of trophies were imported from other games such as Luigi (Luigi's Mansion) or the Animal Crossing characters). It's just the fact that the way that these games handled the Fire Emblem trophies just so happened to line up with each other.

And of course, when Smash Ultimate rolls along and decides that trophies were too cool and informative and replaced them with pngs they got off of Google spirits, the floodgates were opened for Fire Emblem, and they threw in way more characters in as spirits than they ever would've had they just stuck to trophies.

If there's something to take away from this. Let me know. I'm trying to figure that out myself.