Super Smash Bros. Ultimate fans have been waiting for months for more word about the next five characters in the second Fighter Pack. We know that next month will see the Smash debut of a character from Arms, but past that, Nintendo has been weirdly silent about not just this, but everything. As we wait, here are the next five characters we’d like to see in Smash.

The Next 5 Characters We Want to See in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

This list is starting from the assumption that Smash, in its current state, is primarily a celebration of video games as a medium, and of Nintendo’s output in particular. The base roster for Smash is famously a reunion episode of “Captain N and the Game Masters,” after all. Historical value counts for more than popularity here.

It’d be nice, with that in mind, if all franchises currently in Smash were locked at their current representation. Mario and Fire Emblem make up a good quarter of the roster between them, after all, and as cool as it might be to see Waluigi, there’s a lot of ground left to cover. Hence, the next five characters in Fighter Pack 2 should be from games that haven’t been in Smash at all.

Yuri Lowell

As long as Cloud, Joker, and most of the protagonists from Fire Emblem are in Smash, we may as well continue down the road of making Smash into the largest JRPG crossover possible. There are a dozen characters from Namco Bandai’s long-running Tales series that would fit perfectly well in a Smash game, and I almost handed this off to Velvet Crowe on the basis of Smash being such a sausage fest already, but Tales of Vesperia’s protagonist has the dark sense of humor and the preexisting crossover cred to make this work.

Yuri can differentiate himself from the Fire Emblem swordsmanship crowd with his acrobatics, flashy moves, and calling in Estelle for backup. I’d even go so far as to say that Yuri and Estelle’s MAP attack from Project X Zone would make a good Final Smash, and it’s even a shout-out to a Nintendo 3DS exclusive.

Doom Marine

I very deliberately didn’t say the Doom Slayer. No, we’re going back a step to the original 1993 Doom, with the nameless Marine in the lime-green belly shirt who changed the face of action game history. If this is truly meant to be an all-star video game lineup, the Doom Marine belongs here, full stop. The Master Chief can go to the back of the damn line.

Give the Doom Marine a makeover to look more like his grandfather BJ Blazkowicz under the helmet, and equip him with a blend of his classic arsenal and the up-close melee moves from 2016’s Doom reboot. For a Final Smash, he’d obviously pull out the BFG, but it’d be truly great if it came up with a targeting reticule and the classic Doom UI.

And naturally, if he’s here at all, there have to be plenty of nods to his unlikely friendship with Isabelle.

The Goose

Fighting games thrive on weirdness sometimes. Marvel vs. Capcom 3 wouldn’t have been half as hype without Amaterasu or MODOK, and Smash could use some of that out-of-nowhere appeal. While the Untitled Goose Game’s star has fallen a bit in 2020, they’d be a hilarious and potentially creative candidate for an entire Smash moveset based around harassing people.

The Goose could steal characters’ equipment and make off with it, honk for a short-ranged knockback, throw objects from its stash for a projectile (and the Goose’s tendency to steal every bell it can find sets up an amazing out-of-the-box sight gag with the Villager or Isabelle), and let out a devastating megaphone-enhanced super-honk for a screen-clearing Final Smash.

Related: Potential Super Smash Bros. Ultimate ARMS DLC Characters

Lara Croft

See above, re: sausage fest; Smash is way overdue for more women as DLC, and there’s no better choice for the job than Lara Croft. While she’s predominantly associated with the PlayStation, so is Cloud, and Lara still deserves her Smash invitation for much the same reason as the Doom Marine does. She’s an important character in the medium’s history.

My one caveat is that this ought to be a throwback to the original Lara, the darkly cheerful action star, rather than the PTSD-riddled survivor of the post-2013 games. That’s not a slam on new-school Lara by any means, but it’s impossible to imagine her voluntarily joining an interdimensional king-of-the-hill fighting tournament. The original Lara would be there on day one with bells on, ready to flip, cartwheel, and shoot her way through Smash. She’s even got Croft Manor and its many secrets as a ready-made stage, and a rocket launcher or an appearance by her dorky friend Kurtis Trent for a Final Smash.

(Oh, be quiet. I liked Kurtis. He had a Krull and a soul patch. All he needed was a Thrasher T-shirt and he was a perfect ’90s character.)

Jill Valentine

The Resident Evil series is overdue for main-stage inclusion in Smash. You can make a valid argument for plenty of characters in its main cast, whether it’s Chris punching a boulder as a Final Smash, Leon Kennedy doing RE4-style suplexes, or Wesker having an entire arsenal of Matrix-ripoff dashes, but Jill’s been out here doing the work since ’96 without so much as a role in one of the animated movies. She deserves a turn in the spotlight again, particularly after the RE3 remake.

Her old Marvel vs. Capcom 2 moveslist offers a few options here, particularly her Beretta counter and anti-air grenade launcher, but Jill ought to bring a few of her Mercenaries and Revelations melee moves to Smash with her. A Final Smash where the Nemesis suddenly catches up with her, launching a devastating series of attacks that somehow manage to hit everyone in the stage but Jill, would be a hilarious callback to her Tyrant super from MVC2.

We’re waiting just as eagerly as everyone else to see what happens with Smash Ultimate this summer. Check out some of our other tips, tricks, and articles, such as:

• How to catch your own Gigantamax Eevee in Sword & Shield
• This Animal Crossing: New Horizons hack makes star fragments grow on trees
• And now for something completely different: here’s our first look at Robocop’s Brutalities in Mortal Kombat 11

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate could use some more genuine weirdness. We’re overdue for a stage set in a Tetris level, or the Vic Viper from Gradius as a full-fledged character. I want to wreck fools in Hyrule Castle as a space fighter the size of a large bird. Share your own dream Smash cast with us, the stranger the better, via our official Twitter, @PrimaGames.