My friend brought up an interesting discussion topic just a few hours ago.

For those who don't know what echo fighters are, it's basically a fancy new name for clone characters in Smash Ultimate that are so similar, that if they were any closer to their base, they would be an alt. (Basically, characters with differences on the level of Lucina and Dark Pit.) Along with the new name given, Sakurai has also labeled these characters with a special symbol (ε) which is meant to further hammer in the fact that they are essentially glorified alts, and did NOT steal slots from anybody, and are rather just popular characters that couldn't get in otherwise. It seemed to work pretty well, and the reception of these characters seem to have greatly improved, if my time on Smashboards tells me anything.

So, my friend (Who has also spent some time thinking about potential echos in Smash Ultimate) asked me if there could be a few echos in SSF2. I brushed him off quickly, but then I thought about it a bit more and realized that was actually a pretty good question.

Is it possible that a few characters not in the initial project plan could gain their chance as an echo fighter as development on SSF2 hits the home stretch? I'd say it's a solid MAYBE. For one thing, I'd imagine making an echo of another fighter in SSF2 wouldn't be quite as effortless as in an official Smash game, simply because SSF2 is a Flash sprite game as opposed to a 2.5D model based game. and all the sprites will have to be created by hand, which may not be worth it for characters so similar. On the other hand, it would be even easier by comparison to make echos than full fledged characters in SSF2, and who knows? I could see the dev team deciding to just add in a quick echo or two at the end to give the roster a little more beef (or just simply make sure a few slackers have something to do). (Plus, they're adding Pichu soon, so..... the sky's the limit, I suppose)

SHOULD they, though? Well... I'm a bit more split on that. I SERIOUSLY hope if they decide to do a few echos, they don't do more than two (if even that), because I absolutely would not want a ton of echos over highly original and creative new movesets, especially when considering the fact that many of the restrictions in character choice laid upon the Smash bros devs don't apply as strongly to SSF2 by virtue of it's nature as a fangame alone. But one or two echos? I'd be cool with that s***. (In fact, I'm liking the idea of Funky Kong as a DK echo more and more).

So, what do you guys think? Is there a chance we could see an echo fighter or two? Should there be an echo fighter or two?

Pichu's in.

But would Pichu be a semi echo?

Considering that every single sprite of animation needs to be manually created by the developers, I dont see how Echo Fighters would be easier to make than a regular character. Smash Ultimate works with 3D models which can be copied and edited requiring much less effort than making an all new model, but as far as my understanding goes every SSF2 "model" (if you even can call it one) has to be created from scratch anyway, which means that the time/effort save is just not there. Of course I could be entirely wrong and I wouldnt be too surprised to see Steven or some other spriter completely refute me here.

tl;dr~ Dont think so, wouldnt mind them tho

Pichu isn't an echo fighter.

This next part applies to anybody reading this. There is a bit of confusion as to what separates a normal clone to an echo fighter, so lemme clear that up. As we all know, clones are characters who share nearly all their animations with another character, starting with Luigi in Smash 64, who was a straight up clone of Mario. However, he had differences, such as a higher jump, taller, different properties in some moves, a few different animations, etc. This continued with the Melee clones. Luigi also got further differentiated from Mario, so he became a semi clone instead.

It would make the most sense to think of degrees of cloniness on a scale of sorts. Based on how close the clone's attributes and moveset are to the source character. Like, say, Lucas can be considered a Ness clone, but on a much lesser scale, only sharing forward smash, up air, down tilt, and specials (though they have nearly identical physics).

Then we have Smash 4, which gave us alternate genders for some characters (Wii Fit, Villager, Robin, and Corrin), and also entirely new characters as alts, like Alph, and the Koopalings, who even have their own announcer calls. Are they clones? Nnnnno. They have no gameplay differences whatsoever and aren't considered separate characters, even if they're technically different characters entirely. This brings me to all 3 clones in Smash 4 (Doc Mario, Dank Pit, and Lucina). All of them were originally alt costumes early in the game's development; but when the dev team was chilling after finishing everything else, Sakurai decided, for the hell of it, to give all three slight differences. When they did that, however, they couldn't be alt costumes anymore, as in Sakurai's words, "even the slightest difference in abilities requires a separate slot." Essentially, they couldn't be alts anymore because they weren't exactly the same as their source characters. BUUUUT, they still aren't exactly clones, because typically, clones have much more differences. (Dr Mario is an exception, though; he qualifies as a clone because he has enough differences from Mario).

So, characters like Lucina, Daisy, and Dark Pit, are not clones; they are essentially alt costumes that got promoted. And THAT is an Echo Fighter. Characters that may as well be alts, except for the fact that there is at least a tiny variation for a few moves.

Hope this clears up the confusion between what makes one an echo or a clone/semi-clone. Pichu isn't an echo because his moves have different properties, plus, his hurtbox size is different.



Yeah, I know it would be much more of a hassle (I even stated that in my original post). I think it would be easier because, while yes, spriting would be much harder than copying and editing a model, after that, you're pretty much all done, and you just need to edit a few more moves rather than making entire lines of code like for a unique fighter. (Plus, since they're basically glorified alts, they could feasibly use the sprites of the original character as a base)

Of course, I'm not a professional, I could be talking out of my a**, and I also expect Steven or someone else to come out of the blue and prove me dead wrong.

Pichu counts as semi-clone/clone (i think), since the self-damage gimmick exists and other things such as hurtbox sizes like someone else said.

The unfortunate thing is that everything you would expect to change between one character and their echo are all the things that are the most time consuming and/or tedious in character production.

You have to sprite everything from scratch more or less, since we aren't 3D and you can't swap a model. You have to redo all hitboxes as well, since those are manually created and exist for every frame. These parts can take quite a few months.

More often than not, the coding is actually the easiest part of making a character by a mile, which is the only real thing you can keep between a character and their echo.

So echoes specifically I don't really think would happen. It's just not really worth it. If you're going to go through all that trouble of making a new character, you may as well just go the rest of the way and make them play differently too.

How about Hollow Ichigo as Ichigo's echo fighter?