I never thought I’d say this, but I’m actually a little disappointed that Waluigi is only an Assist Trophy and not a playable character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Unlike a lot of people, I wasn’t rooting for Waluigi to make the roster due to his nature as a meme these days. In fact, I never thought of him as a worthy inclusion as a playable character on the Smash Bros. roster until after Ultimate was revealed. He still wouldn’t be one of my most wanted characters, mind you, but after some consideration, I can’t help but feel Waluigi is being treated rather poorly (at least, when we consider certain circumstances).
Now, some people complain that there are “too many” Mario characters in Super Smash Bros. But that’s nonsense. Exceptionalist that I am, I think the most accomplished series deserve the most characters, and seeing as Super Mario is Nintendo’s most accomplished series, it can have however many characters it damn well wants. Zelda and Pokemon have achieved similar success, and would be the two other series that could potentially keep adding characters and I don’t think anyone could make an actual argument against it, though I understand that Zelda has less notable characters to work with than Mario or Pokemon.
My point is that Waluigi was not someone I considered to be a worthy character to be playable in Super Smash Bros., seeing as he only exists for the purpose of giving Wario a tennis partner, and he only ever appears in the Mario sports games and Mario Kart as kind of a filler character, leaving no real impact on the series other than to be the butt of jokes.
But then, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate revealed Princess Daisy – a Mario character who is basically a filler character in Mario sports titles and Mario Kart who has left no real impact on the series – as a playable fighter in the upcoming Switch release. If she can make the cut, why not Waluigi?
In fact, I can think of two (somewhat connected) reasons why Waluigi actually makes more sense than Daisy. The first is that Daisy, being a clone (I refuse to call them Echo Fighters from here on out), doesn’t bring anything new to the table. I know, apologists like to claim that the clones “don’t take too much data to make and don’t get in the way of other fighters,” but they’re still just lazy, copied-and-pasted additions that don’t add anything to the game. I’d rather see less characters and have them all be distinct, than see the number of characters rack up simply because the developers were able to copy enough existing characters. Waluigi wouldn’t have to be a clone though (I guess Daisy didn’t have to be one either, but here we are). Considering Wario’s moves are primarily built around WarioWare – a series which Waluigi has no involvement in – it’s easy to separate Waluigi from the Wario that’s already present in Smash Bros.
This leads me to the other reason why Waluigi would be a decent(ish) inclusion compared to Daisy: his differences from Wario – and subsequently, the less likelihood of him being a clone – could mean drawing on different inspirations for a unique moveset, which could then lead them to draw from the Mario sports games themselves.
Why would this mean anything? Well, because the Mario sports games have no representation within Smash Bros’ character roster, and while it’s a series that may not need representation, the Mario sports titles have been around long enough and have had enough entries that it doesn’t seem undeserved to have a single character represent it.
I know, people could again argue that he’s “another” Mario character (but again, it’s a series that’s earned it), but the thing is the Mario series isn’t a singular series, but a franchise that encompasses various series within different genres, with the Mario sports titles being among the only Mario series not represented in Super Smash Bros. People could also argue that Daisy does represent just that (again, the sports titles are basically where she shows up), but because she’s a clone of Peach, Smash Bros. missed the boat on that one. Waluigi more easily avoids the clone possibility, and could have been given a Mario sports titles their Smash representation.
Think about it, moves based around tennis, golf, baseball, basketball, go karting, hell, maybe they could even throw in some kind of Mario Party inspiration in there. If Waluigi were even considered for Smash, that is.
Waluigi’s exclusion from the playable roster isn’t a major loss for Super Smash Bros. Like I said, I never even thought about him being a worthwhile character for the series until after Daisy’s reveal. But once Daisy was revealed to be just another clone, while Waluigi remains an Assist Trophy, it made me realize that, if Sakurai and company were willing to bring in C-tier Mario characters, they missed a little opportunity here for a more unique character, and an aspect of Nintendo’s biggest franchise that has yet to get acknowledge in Super Smash Bros.
Also, WAAAAAAAAH!
Wizard Dojo 
I’m all for adding more and more characters. However, I can see an argument that the first character left out will be the one that gets attention. In this case it was Waluigi, if he got in, it’s probably someone else
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You know, I kinda prefered this when I only saw a blank blog and thought it was a joke, it made me chuckle a bit.
As for Waluigi, I think he’s pretty much bottom of the barrel newcomer material. There’s a lot of Mario characters you could add before him that are more interesting, there’s a lot of other Nintendo series that could use the newcomer, there’s a lot of yet to be repped Nintendo series that could get a playable character, and there’s even so many 3rd parties that’d make so much sense to be in it than him.
What would Waluigi accomplish? A funny joke? I think really out of field additions like Mr. Game & Watch and Wii Fit Trainer cover that field while also doing a good job repping an aspect of Nintendo’s history as developers Waluigi really doesn’t.
Prospect for an interesting moveset that wouldn’t make him a clone doesn’t really merit to anything as you could say that about just any character really, even someone could go crazy and try to make Daisy sound interesting by giving her the crystal themed powers she has in the Strikers games, and I feel Peach and Bowser Jr. do a pretty decent job covering the sports and kart games in some shape or form.
I think the final thing I have against him for something cheap and easy like an echo fighter is…who do you shape him after? No one else really has Waluigis awkward physique and proportions, and I don’t think anyone else wants a moveset that makes zero sense like Ganondorf does.
As it is, all I see in Waluigi is a meme gone way too far, I don’t wanna treat Smash as this almighty series with the highest of elitism of who deserves to be in or not, but with all the possibilities the Mario series alone has (not even stretching to other series, 1st or 3rd party), Waluigi just seems like such a waste of time and effort for what ultimately would be a joke. There’s many things that could be criticized or questioned of Sakurai choices in his games (not restricted to character selection), but he really doesn’t deserve the harassment he’s getting on social media, especially for such a dumb joke.
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Hahaha! The weird thing was, the blog was blank for a few hours thanks to some weird error that occurred when trying to correct a spelling mistake on my phone. I figured some people might have thought it was intentional.
Waluigi certainly wouldn’t be among my top choices, not by a long shot. But after the game’s announcement it hit me that a representative of the Mario Sports games could have worked in its own way.
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