If there's three franchises that Super Smash Bros. cannot go without, they would be Mario, Zelda, and the subject of today's article: Pokémon. With a new pair of games having just been revealed, the franchise is more topical than ever, so how would the franchise look in a more condensed, refreshed Smash Bros. roster?
For the sake of this article, my picks will be based on the different pillars of Pokémon as a game franchise, and to represent the core games, I would have the Pokémon at the core of the franchise: Pikachu. He would be slightly reworked, with tilts and aerials being filled by physical attacks in the series, such as Iron Tail and Spark, while special attacks become his special moves, featuring Thunderbolt as a long-range side special, Discharge as an area-of-effect neutral special, Volt Switch launching a ball of electricity downwards (or ahead if on the ground) acting as a recovery, and Thunder remaining the same. As for the final smash, it would be replaced with a Z-move, probably Catastropika, Pikachu's exclusive Z-move, but maybe Gigavolt Havoc, the electric type Z-move, would work better.
The Pokémon games are much more than the main series, however. One of the most noteworthy series of spin-offs is the Stadium series, which first launched in Japan in 1998. Later games in this series would introduce Pokémon from the second and later third generations, so to represent these games, I choose Espeon. This psychic-type gets its spot not only by being an evolution of a generation 1 Pokémon (common in Johto's Pokédex), but also by being a starter in the GameCube games (directly in Colosseum and as an evolution of your starter in XD). Unlike Pikachu, it would rely almost entirely on special attacks, employing moves like Dazzling Gleam as a down smash, Psyshock as a side smash, Giga Impact for an up smash, and Confusion and Grass Knot for tilts. As for specials, perhaps Swift could be employed as a homing attack for a neutral special, Psybeam as a long range side special, Calm Mind as a down special to raise attack power throughout the match, and Psychic launching Espeon upwards as a recovery. The final smash could probably be a simple Shattered Psyche.
The Stadium series is hardly the only spin-off, however. Another famous series of games is the Mystery Dungeon series, subtly represented here by Grovyle. This line of starters has been an integral part of the Mystery Dungeon series from the beginning, being a starter in every game in the series with the exception of Gates to Infinity. In addition to this, Grovyle in particular was central to the plot of the Explorers games. Its moveset would, like Pikachu, use physical attacks like X-Scissor, Leaf Blade, and Aerial Ace for smashes, tilts, and aerials, and special moves like Giga Drain and Leaf Storm for the special attacks, though Acrobatics would have to be its recovery. The final smash is a tricky one, as I have a hard time imagining it using Bloom Doom for this slot. It could work though, for lack of a better option.
The final representative for the Pokémon franchise would be representative a more recent spin-off, namely Pokken Tournament. This is, of course, Lucario. His moves would probably remain unchanged, since his current play style where he gets stronger as he takes damage is rather unique and fun.
With these characters, I not just picked representatives for different sub-series, I also aimed for diversity in the types of the Pokémon and the generations that they hailed from. The biggest problem with these picks on this front is that no Pokémon from after generation 4 made the roster, which could probably be fixed with Splatoon-style DLC to bring back Greninja. This was also just a single way of handling the Pokémon representatives; it would also work to pick slots based off of the pillars of Pokémon as a brand (beyond just the games) or group together generations and pick representatives from these different eras. That just about wraps up this article, and sorry about the no pictures thing. Steemit is still having technical difficulties.