PLEASE PUT ASIDE YOUR PERSONAL OPINIONS ON THIS DEBATE BEFORE POSTING IN HERE. THIS IS NOT A DEBATE THREAD, IT'S A RESEARCH THREAD
Okay, I realized we don't have an entry for this yet, but I think with the lead up to Super Smash Bros 4, the debate of Ridley being too big to be a playable character is definitely noteworthy.
I am not actually in a good position to wright an article right now, so I was hoping I could get some people mobilized to help me find out the origins and spread of this.
Canon Average Size of Ridley:
Basic suggested size for making Ridley small enough to be playable:
Image Parody Examples:
Adlibed Example Arguments For Ridley's Inclusion Against His Common Size:
~"He was just about a foot taller than Samus in the original Metroid!"
~"What about the intro to Super Smash Brothers Melee where he looked just a few feet higher than Samus when you took perspective into account?"
~"Bowser is just as big right?"
~"Can't they just shrink Ridley down like some of the other characters they have had to resize to fit into the game? (the shrinking of Bowser, the growing of the Kirby Characters and Olimar, etc)
~"Isn't it just Meta Ridley who is that big?"
Adlibed Example Counter-Arguments to the above points:
~"That's been the only time Ridley was ever that size, and literal NES Ridley looks insanely derpy."
~"At the time, there has only ever been Two Metroid Games with Ridley in it. Metroid and Super Metroid. So it was thematically correct for the time Melee was released. Also the intro didn't account for Ridley's Tail."
~"Bowser can change his size canonically. And is usually that size in any of the spinoff games."
~Two Points: 1. "Ridley is not only large, but he is also fast. If you shrink him down and make him "Heavyweight", you lose a lot of what Ridley actually is." 2. "Despite resizing being a common thing in Smash Bros, all the characters within the same represented universe (example: Kirby and King Dedede) are still scaled to each other in the same way as they where in their source material"
~"Classic Ridley just likes to curl up for whatever reason. Animating a creature that big back then would have looked wonkey and put major stress on the hardware."
Also noteworthy mentions that even the Smash Brothers Series Creator Masahiro Sakurai has commonly stated he thinks Ridley is too big to be workable as a playable character, but also commonly teases the crowd by saying things like "Size has rarely mattered in Smash Brothers."
