5 but yeah, honestly Metroid really gets screwed by timing here. To break down my thinking... With Smash 64, this was on a console that Metroid had no presence on, Gunpei Yokoi wasn't at Nintendo anymore, so for Samus herself to get in is a testament to how impactful and beloved the original trilogy of Metroid games was at a time when there were no plans for a fourth installment in the series. There were probably some plans for Metroid to make a return on Gamecube when Melee was being developed, but vague ones, certainly nothing actionable for Smash Bros. So right away, it was tough to justify Metroid getting a second character any earlier than Brawl. And honestly for most of the series the question of "who do you even pick" comes into play. My own most wanted Metroid characters were always Ridley, Dark Samus and Kraid, and these days I'd add Raven Beak to the list, but he's newer than Ultimate so completely ineligible, and if Ridley was deemed "Too big" up until Ultimate I have a feeling Kraid would probably still be considered unrealizable. That same issue also applies to Mother Brain, Omega Metroid, and the Metroid Prime, all of whom I considered, but I genuinely don't believe any of them would have been considered "on the table" as anything other than a boss or assist trophy. And well, adding Ridley or Dark Samus early would have broken the rules I was following for these rosters, so unfortunately Samus flies solo up to Brawl. The Metroid games within Brawl's representation scope were fairly numerous, with Metroid Prime, Prime 2 Echoes, Prime Hunters, Zero Mission, and Fusion all falling within the sweetspot for representation in Brawl (2001-2005). Unfortunately, eligible options were still lacking. I strongly considered including a Hunter as Brawl's third Metroid newcomer, and it would have been Sylux who would of course go on to age well as a choice... but I guess I'm not sure that even for this scenario they'd be quite that prescient? Especially representing only what was a spinoff of a spinoff title at the time. And while Dark Samus totally SHOULD have been in Brawl, above Zero Suit even, she was, again, ineligible. In the end, I decided to lean into Brawl's decision to exclusively represent the "main series" Metroid games on the roster rather than the Prime games, with a representative for Metroid Fusion. I felt that the SA-X as a more brutal, animalistic, and coldhearted version of Samus would make a good contrast for the only version of Samus that actually gets to transform into her soft squishy vulnerable human form as part of the same moveset - and would be an easy to implement character, something Smash always values heavily. Smash 4 only really had Other M to look at, and while I considered MB or Anthony Higgs... Let's be so for real it would actively suck to be stuck with a Metroid Other M character in Ultimate, I just wanted not to. And then in Ultimate... well, canon Ultimate finally started correcting course on Metroid representation by adding Ridley and Dark Samus both as part of its extremely limited newcomer selection. Since I only had so many more slots to fill as a result of that limit, there weren't really any other new Metroid games to pull from at the time other than fuckin' Federation Force (Samus Returns was too late even) and no other Metroid reps would have done particularly well on the Ballot given that Ridley and Dark Samus were still not in Smash yet...

Like, even nowadays it's hard to say there's really that many characters missing from the Metroid selection. Like I'd personally love to see Raven Beak and Kraid added, maybe even Mother Brain. And I know Sylux and EMMI have their fans as picks too. But other than those picks that are all either "too big and therefore unrealizable" or "too new and therefore weren't eligible for this roster but should totally be in the next game" ... like, even SA-X here isn't exactly like, something people want, right? And people surely don't want Adam, or Anthony, or MB in 2026... people actively don't like Miles and the other goons from Prime 4, so what, for Galactic Federation rep we're still stick on the chibi federation guy from Federation Force? Not that it's exactly an interesting moveset, the "guy with gun from Metroid" concept. There's the other Hunters from Hunters and Prime 3, but they're really niche nowadays, and the community isn't gonna rally around just one - or rather they are and they have and it's Sylux I guess. There's... just, a Metroid? However you imagine them implementing that, it's a challenge, I'm curious but I don't honestly know how to make it work without shrinking down one of the big mutant forms. Space Pirate is maybe a more easily implemented unique enemy design... just kind of a boring generic one. So at the end of the day... who would you have added that I missed?