It feels like it hasn’t even been that long since Smash for the Wii U and 3DS came out, but we have a new announcement to be hyped for since Nintendo’s E3 conference. Smash’s director Masahiro Sakurai decided to unveil the latest installment and confirm our suspicious; Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is coming, and everyone is hyped out of their minds.

The presentation was huge, as Smash announcements often are, and they boasted plenty of features over the next couple of days while they showed gameplay through an invitational tournament and through the Nintendo Treehouse conference post-E3.

So what can we expect from Ultimate? Will it live up to the Smash community’s expectations? Will it have something for the casual players as well as the intense Melee community? Will this be the game to unify Smash as a whole?

Every single character is coming back. Yes, every single character. No exceptions. If they’ve ever been in a Smash game, they are back. Notably, this includes the following, which were not present in Smash for 3DS and Wii-U:

• Ice Climbers
• Doctor Mario
• Pichu
• Young Link
• Ivysaur and Squirtle (Pokemon Trainer is now one complete character again)
• Wolf
• Snake

The three premier newcomers to the Ultimate installment are Ridley, Inkling, and Daisy. This is what we know so far—there might be more announced before release or more secret characters that may be unlocked on release day—but as it stands, the roster is at a staggering 65 characters.

Ridley’s inclusion resulted in a lot of hype from fans of the series. A new representative from the Metroid franchise, Ridley is a giant space dragon that breathes fire and terrorizes Samus with his sharp teeth and gigantic frame.

He’s as every bit as awesome as he sounds. He speared Mario and Megaman with his giant tail in his reveal trailer. It was sick. Okay, okay, back to the facts.

The Inkling, from Nintendo’s new IP Splatoon, are little squid-kids with multiple weapons that shoot and spread ink. The ink-spreading is actually dynamic, and other characters (and the stage) can get coated in Splatoon-style ink. The Inkling can have eight different costumes, each one with a different color of ink.

They used Daisy to show off their new term for what were previously known as “clone characters.” Characters that share a moveset with another character (e.g., Lucina sharing a moveset with Marth) are now known as “echo fighters,” to imply that they “echo” the character that has the original moveset. She is based on Peach, with differences that we have yet to discover.

At the invitational tournament, about half of the roster was locked. The audience got to see plenty of gameplay footage for new characters like Ridley and Inkling, but a lot of characters like Young Link and Pichu will have to be seen later for more info on how they play.

Zer0 won the invitational again, beating MKLeo in the finals. The invitational had eight players, four being notorious Smash 4 competitors and four being notorious Melee competitors. The Melee competitors scrubbed out pretty quick because they weren’t used to the slower gameplay and didn’t have “mains” readily available. They were more liable to try new characters, whereas MKLeo and Zer0 were still playing their mains from Smash 4 (there was a lot of Sonic versus Mario in the grand finals). They were using Switch controllers during the tournament, but it is confirmed that Gamecube controllers will be usable on the Switch. (The game may come with an adapter, as Smash 4 did for the Wii-U.)

So far, it shows that there is also a focus on returning stages. They are trying to bring back as many stages as possible, including stages from the N64 game and Melee (with some having updated graphics and some still using the retro blocky feel).

The gameplay feels a lot faster and smoother than Smash 4. It seems that the developers heard a lot of complaints from the hardcore Melee fans, and decided to agree that the gameplay needed to be sped up. Here are some of the core gameplay additions and changes that were mentioned during the announcement and seen during gameplay:

• There is “badminton” style knockback. A lot of it occurs very quickly, then tapers off at the end.
• Directional airdodging is back. An airdodge is performed by pressing L or R during the air to enter invincibility frames. In recent entries, airdodging could be done repeatedly and did not affect your trajectory; in Melee, however, you could airdodge in a direction for extra movement while in the air. Ultimate goes back to the Melee way of airdodging. Which brings us to our next point…
• Wavelanding and a very weak form of wavedashing are both present using the directional airdodge. For those that haven’t played older smash games, “wave” movement is done by airdodging into the ground before you hit it, causing your character to slide against the ground. It is used for extra movement options and is an important competitive tech that has been left out of previous entries. It is returning, but is severely nerfed and has tons of landing lag. It is unknown if this will be viable when the game is released, or if it is left in more as an easter egg.
• “Roll spamming” was the bane of many a competitive Smash 4 player, but this has been nerfed as well. The more you roll, the slower it’ll get and the more vulnerable you’ll become.
• Bayonetta is still broken, and there were bugs regarding her moveset in the invitational that Sakurai remarked on after the tournament was over.
• When a character nears the edge of the screen, the “blast zones” (the lines that KO you if you touch them) will show on the top right and mark the character with a little dot. This is in addition to the circle that appears when a character is no longer visible to the camera. The blast zones being visible and represented by a diagram helps players to realize how close they are to dying after getting knocked to the side.
• There are individual character tweaks, such as Link having his sticky bombs from Breath of the Wild and Samus being able to charge her charge-shot in midair.

The release date is set to December 7, 2018. The quick release date after the announcement tends to imply that there will be patches (and possible DLC) sooner rather than later, which is pretty new for the Smash franchise as a whole. Nintendo is slower compared to other companies when it comes to updating the game. Patches and downloadable content should keep this game fresh for a long time, just like it did for Smash 4.

Whether you’re a casual player or a tournament grinder, Ultimate will have something for everybody. This is truly meant to be a celebration of the entire series and all the Nintendo games that are a part of it, so there will be plenty of single-player content to enjoy as well.

The future is looking great for Smashers.