MAtgS said:
I rather have SSB on 3DS than Cafe. I struggle to think new thing could even be done on a console SSB. I mean yeah, better online is a given but that's not really new. There certainly aren't much in the way of hypeable characters left. Sure there are characters I would like to see in a SSB but Phantom Zelda, Andy & Sami from AW, Mike Jones, Mii & Captain N aren't what I would call marketable (well maybe Mii).
Almost every first party big name was already in Smash Bros Melee. The only big Nintendo characters that Brawl added were the Kirby antagonists, Wario and Pokemon Trainer/Red. And, even out of those, only Pokemon Trainer was really a mainstream character worldwide.
As far as character additions go, there's the obvious idea of more third party fighters. Really, if they could get Capcom's and/or Square-Enix's licenses, there would already be a big pool of relevant characters available. I'd say that Sega's license continuing in the game is already pretty much guaranteed, considering the 3 Mario & Sonic games.
As far as Nintendo itself goes, they still have some worldwide franchises without representation in the game, like Advance Wars, Golden Sun and even some NES ones like Balloon Fighter, Mach Rider and now Castle Murasame thanks to the sequel built into Samurai Warriors 3. I mean, obviously those wouldn't give huge sales for the game, but they all could add more variation to style or gameplay.
There's also still a big pool of secondary characters from the various franchises too, like Wario/ware and F-Zero.
I guess a playable Ridley would get quite a positive reaction from Metroid fans. There's also the obligatory Pokemon update, with a second Pkm trainer from the recent games or just new pokemon based on the new games.
The Mario franchise has already been explored a lot, but it still has people like Waluigi (who probably would be used to represent the Mario sports games), Toad (They could use the Toad brigade designs from Galaxy if they don't want a generic design for Toad), Bowser Jr., Rosalina and even Geno - If they could get Square on board. Geno did have a cameo in Mario & Luigi, so it doesn't seem to be too hard to get him, if there's some interest. I don't like him much, but he seems to be a fan favorite.
Zelda has a large pool of characters too, even if they're one shots. Sheik herself was basically a one shot character, so Smash Bros hasn't shown hesitation to add one shots.
Then, they also could just take the Roy route again, make a character based on an upcoming game, rather than something from a few years ago. Brawl was notably lacking in modern game content, not even reused tracks from games launched less than a year before it but the next one could be made with bigger coordination for marketing purposes. If Nintendo planned to launch a new franchise with a new character, or even just a new Fire Emblem or some other game with a new main character, including that character in the next Smash Bros would help marketing the new game.
As far as game systems go, they could always make the game faster again (although I hope they keep Brawl's "hit stop" effect) and, specially, as far as mainstream attention goes, revamp the "Final Smash" mechanic. Maybe keep the Smash Balls, but add some type of super attack that can be used without them.
Single player has more than enough space to be vastly improved too and, like you've mentioned, there's online.
A portable SSB probably would need to be reduced to smaller stages only, due to the zoom feature, and it'd also make local 4p harder to do, so the portability wouldn't really be a complete improvement.
