Snake and Zero Suit Samus Ultimate Redesigns

Overview

Snake and Zero Suit Samus Ultimate Redesigns refer to skin changes to the characters Snake and Zero Suit Samus for the upcoming Super Smash Brothers Ultimate that de-emphasized Snake's butt and Samus' breast size. The changes became subjects of discussion for fans following the reveal of the characters at Nintendo's Direct presentation at E3 2018.

Background

On June 12th, 2018, Nintendo gave a Nintendo Direct presentation during E3 that revealed major details about the upcoming Super Smash Brothers game, subtitled Ultimate. The announcement revealed that every character who had ever appeared in a Smash game would be on the roster. This included Snake, who had only appeared in Super Smash Brothers. Brawl. The presentation also included footage of all the characters in the new game.

Developments

Shortly after the presentation, viewers noticed that the designs of Snake and Zero Suit Samus had been altered such that Snake's butt and Zero Suit's breasts were de-emphasized. Twitter user @IronPineapple_ noticed the former in a tweet that gained over 11,000 retweets and 39,000 likes (shown below, left). Multiple Twitter users noticed the reduction in Samus' breasts, including @MyJoJob, who gained 22 retweets and 88 likes praising the change (shown below, right).

Of the two redesigns, Snake's drew a majority of the attention, particularly for media sites who compiled popular fan reactions. Some popular reactions to Snake's redesign included a tweet by @nielpeachs that gained over 3,600 retweets and 9,100 likes (shown below, left). Fan art tweeted by @DoghouseCorgian gained over 1,800 retweets (shown below, right).

This drew the attention of multiple media sites including Polygon^[1] and The Verge.^[2] Both sites argued that Snake's redesign was worse than Zero Suit's because Snake was intentionally designed to have a prominent butt by Hideo Kojima, whereas Samus was not intended to be a "sex icon." This led to a thread on /r/KotakuInAction making fun of The Verge's piece that gained 453 points.^[3] Other sites covering the redesign reaction included Mashable^[4] and Daily Dot.^[5]

Search Interest

External References