There are 49 unique characters total in the latest Super Smash Bros., 51 if you count the three different Mii Fighter forms. That's a dozen more than in Brawl and nearly twice as many as in Melee. But even with all those newcomers and returning faces, one pair of veterans were sadly benched for the season: Ice Climbers. And the reason for their absence is the 3DS hardware.
In director Masahiro Sakurai's latest column in Japan's Famitsu magazine — as interpreted by Nintendo Everything — he explains that though the duo was running fine on the Wii U, the didn't work properly on the 3DS. Since they don't have a new game coming out any time soon, they weren't as high a priority as other characters, so the decision to cut them was made.
More than just disappointing Ice Climbers' fans, this incident is yet another mark against the 3DS version, which requires the upgraded New 3DS if users want to use the C-stick for smashes or Miiverse for image sharing. Maybe the souped-up hardware would have allowed the Ice Climbers to rejoin, but I doubt Sakurai would have wanted to split userbase like that. It's a shame.
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS will be out on October 3. The Wii U version arrives later during the winter, or possibly on November 21.
