I imagine most of you know about the franchise, but for those who live under a rock or never played Doom (which knowing the smash community is a lot of people), Doom is a first person shooter developed and published by iD Software, released in 1993 for the MS-DOS. It is known for pioneering the First Person Shooter genre. Doom became extremely popular when it was released, with more people in the United States using it than Windows. Currently, a new title known as Doom Eternal is in development.
Who is Doomguy?
Doomguy (also known as Doom Slayer or simply Marine) is the main character of the series. Doomguy fights hordes of demons from Hell using weapons such as a pistol, shotgun, chainsaw, and more. Doomguy would be a heavy, fast zoner with powerful attacks, an archetype we don’t really have at the moment. He has two designs that would most likely be used as alts; the classic Doomguy design (left) and the modern Doom Slayer design (right).
Now there have been many arguments as to why Doomguy would not join, some more valid than others. I will go over each one before going over why he will join.
Arguments Against Doomguy
“He would be too violent!”
This is one of the main arguments you will see against the demon slayer. The idea that he would be too violent comes from the fact that the reboot has him brutally killing demons in ways such as ripping them apart with his hands. They will try to say that since Sakurai likes representing characters to be as accurate as possible, it wouldn’t be possible to have Doomguy stay true to his origins. While it is true that Sakurai does like to stay true to the source material, how true he stays to it does vary. For the fortunate characters, you have Ryu who not only has his moveset taking entirely from Street Fighter, but also Street Fighter inputs such as quarter circle forward and always faces his opponents in 1v1. Then you have characters like Ganondorf. Remember when he Falcon Punched Link in The Legend of Zelda? A pretty good moment that never happened. Even characters like Bayonetta who while is very faithful to her origins, still does not use some of her more violent attacks and was toned down in how much clothing she loses. Also, remember how I said specifically in the reboot? Doomguy did not brutally kill demons in many of his earlier titles like he does in the reboot. Doomguy does not need to rip Pichu apart to be violent as seen with Ridley’s attacks. His attacks just need to hit hard and feel good doing so.
“He can’t have guns in Smash!”
This argument comes from Sakurai stating that firearms aren’t allowed back in Brawl, which is why Snake uses explosives. However, that was back then. In Smash 4, Bayonetta retains her guns which still shoots bullets. Ultimate also has Metal Gear Solid spirits that feature realistic firearm in them. You may argue that Bayonetta can get away with it since her guns don’t look that real, which would have been valid until…
For his neutral special, Joker wields a gun. Not much to say, it’s a fucking gun. Before you say “but it’s a fake gun in Persona 5 lore!!” there is nothing in Smash that suggests it is fake. To someone who has not played Persona 5, that is a real gun that shoots real bullets. The only way to tell is to actually play Persona 5, but when you use said gun it still acts like a real gun. Even in the unlikely scenario where they have a problem with some weapons Doomguy uses, he comes with some sci-fi weapons as well.
“He isn’t popular in Japan!”
I haven’t seen any proof that he isn’t popular. What I do know is that every Doom game has been released in Japan. Doom does seem to do well enough that they can afford to sell it in Japan. Even if he is more popular in regions outside of Japan, that shouldn’t stop him. We have gotten characters who are more popular in the west than in Japan, such as Little Mac and Ridley. Even in terms of third party, Sonic the Hedgehog is a more popular character outside of Japan (and the best Sonic game in recent years was not made in Japan).
“They would go for Vault Boy or Dovahkiin instead!”
Now this is an interesting argument. There are people who will try to argue that they would pick characters from more popular games instead of Doom. While Fallout and The Elder Scrolls are very popular, Doom does beat both of them out in terms of legacy. Though if I’m going to be honest, we don’t really know how they are picking DLC exactly. The only one who is confirmed is Joker. Persona 5 did win Best RPG at the Game Awards 2017, but is still a relatively niche game. What we do know is that Nintendo does want to try to bring in new audiences, which all three can do. However, as I said, Doom does have a greater legacy which is what puts it ahead of the other two.
Why would Doomguy be in Smash?
With all of that out of the way, you may be wondering why Doomguy should be in Smash. I’ll go over things that are in his favor.
Importance
DOOM, as I stated, is very influential with it pioneering an entire genre of games. Back then, other FPS games would be called “Doom clones”. PC Gaming as a whole was solidified as a market thanks to Doom. A port of Doom known as Doom 95 lead to many opportunities for Microsoft (such as the Xbox) and even gave Gabe Newell himself the connections to make Valve. Importance, while not a requirement, can take you a long way, as seen in Smash 4 DLC in which we got big hitters such as Ryu from Street Fighter and Cloud from Final Fantasy.
Bethesda’s Relationship
Bethesda (the company that owns the rights to DOOM at the moment) does have a good relationship with Nintendo. Bethesda has supported the Switch since the reveal trailer with Skyrim being one of the games shown on the system, a port of DOOM 2016 that ran surprisingly well, and the latest entry, DOOM Eternal, is releasing on the Switch at launch. Todd Howard himself also appeared on the January 2017 Switch Presentation. A Doom-themed Switch was shown as well. It may not be something like with Microsoft’s relationship, but they certainly don’t hate each other to say the least, which would allow them to work together.
History with Nintendo
Doom’s history with Nintendo does run longer than the recent titles launching on the Switch. The original Doom was ported to the Super Nintendo making use of the Super FX chip. While it was worse than the PC version, it is still impressive. There is also a Nintendo exclusive Doom game titled Doom 64 (I wonder which system that came out for). Having history with Nintendo isn’t important as seen with Joker and Cloud, but it is still worth noting.
Google Theory
Okay, now before I move on with this one, please take this with a very small grain of salt, nothing is confirmed or disconfirmed with this one.
Now, how this theory works is that, if you live in Europe and you use Google with very specific search terms, an ad for the Fighter Pass will be shown to you. This of course happens with Joker. However, it turns out there are 4 other characters that this happens with as well and among them is Doomguy (though in this theory it only works with Doom Slayer specifically), with the other 4 being Banjo & Kazooie, Ryu Hayabusa, and Artorias the Abysswalker. The most interesting part of the theory is how it only works with these 5 characters. Many other characters (Erdrick, Steve, Crash, Leon, Thanos, every Pokemon, etc.) has been tested and yet they did not have the ad shows up. About a week later, the keywords changed; the characters part of this theory is now negative, meaning the ad will never show up regardless of other keywords.
Doom Today
Some of you may be wondering how Doom is doing today. Not only are the original games still remembered fondly, the 2016 game is also highly praised and sold very well. Doom 2016 has been nominated for and won multiple awards, including some at The Game Awards 2016 in which Doom won Best Action Game and Best Sound/Music Design while also being nominated for Game of the Year. Doom Eternal is coming soon, which many fans are looking forward too.
Bethesda Talks About Smash
One last thing before we end this. There was an interview in which Pete Hines who is Bethesda’s vice president of PR and marketing, talked with a news site called Metro about single player games, along with Bethesda’s relationship with Nintendo. Right before the end of the interview, Hines was asked about whether or not Bethesda talked to Nintendo about Smash and responds with “Oh yeah.” Now you may be thinking “but wouldn’t that be breaking NDA?” My answer to that is not really. While he did say they talked about Smash, that’s all he said. Hines did not mention what they talked about specifically, for all we know it was something as simple as “We really like Super Smash Bros video games”. While it does not confirm or disconfirm anything, it does show Bethesda and Nintendo are able to chat and negotiate with each other about Smash.
Recently, Hines was talking about DOOM in a Nintendo Power podcast for E3. During this podcast, he makes an interesting comment in which he states “It’s pretty cool to be in the midst of shipping a new DOOM game, while we’re also in the 25th anniversary, and we’ve got a lot of stuff planned at QuakeCon and uh… who knows, maybe some more surprises for Nintendo fans along the way.” Now, I will say that this could just be some sort of Nintendo exclusive content for DOOM Eternal, or ports of old games. However, I don’t think the latter is something that would be exclusive to the Switch, and if it was done it would be on the PS4 and Xbone as well. What does it mean? We will have to wait and see. While ports of older DOOM games have been released, they aren’t Switch exclusive.
The End
And that is all. While Doomguy is not a lock for the Fighter Pass (no one, not even Erdrick or Banjo, who are now playable), he has very good chances. While I am not the biggest fan of Doom, Doomguy would be a cool addition and would bring some really good tracks as well. I don’t have strong feelings either way on him joining Ultimate (Brawl is better anyways), but all we can do is wait. Credit to Grapevine and MintPepsi for helping me with the document. The Importance of Doom 95 and Bayonetta: Punish & Torture Attacks HD are owned by UtterSpartan and qwerasdf011 respectively.
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