Intro[]
Welcome back to my 100 New Stages for the Next Smash project! Today we're covering Stages 21-30, and remember that these are in a pseudo-randomized order and aren't a definitive ranking of how much I want each stage.
With that all out of the way, let's get into our third set of 10 stages.
21. Clock Town [Legend of Zelda - The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask][]
You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you? In 3 days, Termina is going to be destroyed and it's only hope is (Young) Link who is able to use the Ocarina of Time to reset everything back to the dawn of the third day. Clock Town serves as the main city in this adventure with Link running to and fro as not just his normal Hylian self, but also as a Deku, a Goron, and a Zora. The game has already been represented in Smash with Melee's Great Bay, but I think there is room for more.
The way I see it, there are two ways to approach a Clock Town stage. The first is to just have it be a static location as you fight atop buildings with the Clock Tower featured prominently, likely in the background. Maybe you could have some time/date mechanics going on. Alternatively, the more interesting idea is to turn Clock Town into a traveling stage showing off a few of the different key locations in the town. For the traveling variant, I think we should still have the Clock Tower be prominently visible in the background of the stage with it constantly showing the progression of time. We could see NPCs and events occurring in the background of the city and depending on what location we're at at the time we may see different things play out. As each day passes, perhaps the platform arrangements change. A platform on “Day 1” may no longer be there on “Day 2” meanwhile on “Day 3” there is now a wall in the way blocking off part of the stage that wasn't there previously. And with you visiting different areas of Clock Town in a different order each time, the stage would virtually be a fresh experience every time you play on it!
22. Krazy Kremland [Donkey Kong - Donkey Kong Country 2: Didd's Kong Quest][]
Krazy Kremland is a broken down amusement park on Crocodile Isle and serves as the fourth world in Donkey Kong Country 2. While not all of the world's levels are based around the amusement park setting, the notion of fighting in a Kremling Disney Land is a fun one to me.
The core of my idea here is to have a grounded stage where you fighting in front of various attractions with some notable Kremlings like Kannon and Kruncha are running booths as if they were Carnies trying to get you attention to play their games. If it was possible to play one of their games while fighting, that'd be cool, but I don't think it's really feasible. The tops of the tents would of course work as additional platforms as would the roller coaster track which would be featured in the upper half of the stage. Fighters would need to be careful of the roller coaster however as from time to time a group of Klanks will appear in a roller coaster car and go speeding down the track ramming into any fighters that are in their way.
23. Sauria [Star Fox - Star Fox Adventures][]
Star Fox Adventures doesn't tend to get a lot of acknowledgment outside of it giving us Krystal. It's the only game (I believe) to not feature any true space combat and is focused on just a single planet, Sauria. Considering that thus far all of our Star Fox stages have had us fighting on a variety of ships, having one centered on the actual surface of a planet would be a nice change of pace and I feel like either Sauria or Corneria are the best options.
As for how to set the stage, I've always tended to figure that you either just focus the stage on Krazoa Palace, or you make it a traveling stage which could also include locations such as Thorntail Hollow, SnowHorn Wastes, and Moon Mountain Pass. I'm not too sure about hazards unless you just wanted to have a few dinosaurs appear to cause problems. I also think it'd be cool to involve Tricky somehow, but I'm not sure of the best way to do it. I feel like I'd want to tie him into the stage transitions somehow, but no immediate ideas are coming to mind. Maybe I should watch an LP and take some notes.
24. Ashley's Mansion [Wario - WarioWare: Touched!][]
Let's get another WarioWare stage. We've already got once focused on getting to play the microgames as well as a stage set inside of a microgame itself. But we don't have any stages that just take place inside of the main setting of the WarioWare franchise, Diamond City. You could certainly do a traveling stage and visit some of main locations associated with the franchise's cast, but I wanted to instead highlight a specific location, Ashley's Mansion.
My idea for this stage would at first glance make it just look like a grounded (and larger) version of the Luigi's Mansion stage. However Ashley's Mansion is a bit more structurally sound and can't be demolished by attacking its supporting pillars. Instead, I would have Ashley (and/or Red) appear in the mansion attempting to brew potions or cast spells. Perhaps this could result in platforms/floors suddenly starting to float up and door, or move around inside the mansion to different locations. Ashley's magic doesn't always go right however. Perhaps her cauldron could overflow and create a damaging poison trap to spill out in the main area of the mansion and any fighter that makes contact with it will take damage. Or perhaps she'll grow a simple plant into the towering Monster Flower which would fill the mansion with large vines and even stick its massive flower head up through the roof and serve as a hazard to all fighters as it would not only disrupt/destroy the current platform arrangement, but also attack any and all fighters (Stage Boss perhaps?). Of course the Master Flower would eventually wilt and Ashley (and/or Red) would then repair the mansion to its original form.
25. Cerulean Cave [Pokemon - Pokemon Red/Blue][]
Once known as the Unknown Dungeon, Cerulean Cave is Pokemon's first post-game dungeon. Once the player has become the champion they can enter this cave for one final challenge, finding and capturing the most powerful Pokemon in existence, the legendary Mewtwo. Getting through the cave itself isn't too difficult, you just gotta navigate some ladders and do a little surfing, but be sure to bring plenty of Poke Balls.
I like to imagine Cerulean Cave as being rather interior. The bottom of the stage has rocky platforms to stand on, but instead of being fully grounded or having empty space to fall through there is instead water separating the platforms that fighters can drown in. Additionally, the top of the stage is completely covered by the cave's ceiling which means that the only ways a fighter can be traditionally KO'd is to knock them past the blast zones to either the left or right side of the stage. I also think the ceiling should have stalactites hanging off of it which will deal extra damage if a fighter gets knocked into them. Perhaps the stalactites could even be made to fall if they are hit enough times by either collisions or attacks? Either way, the ceiling is remaining intact.
26. Brain Age [Brain Age - Brain Age][]
Train your brain in minutes a day! Anybody else have fun with Brain Age? I didn't play it a crazy amount, but I enjoyed doing the sudoku puzzles. The game contained four main modes where you could play educational minigames as a way to strengthen your brain and test the age of your brain. This ranged from memorizing as many words as you could from a list, connecting dots in a maze, doing math, counting syllables, and of course sudoku puzzles.
Smash has already given us an Assist Trophy to represent Brain Age in the form of Dr. Kawashima's floating head, but I think there is room for a stage as well. I'm imagining a fairly blank looking arena, not too dissimilar to the PictoChat stages, though I'm unclear if the stage should be grounded or mid-air. Dr. Kawashima's floating head would appear as a background element who would provide not only fun trivia facts, but also inform players when a minigame would be occurring soon as well as giving instructions on what to do. Now my thought here isn't fully formed, but I'm imagining a bit of a less frantic and more chill style of minigames than what the WarioWare, Inc. stage offers. One minigame could be to solve a math problem and there would be four possible answers on the screen and whatever answer you hit first is what your answer will be. Fighters that get the answer correct will get some sort of boon, perhaps a small bit of healing, while fighters who were wrong will... take some damage or receive some other sort of punishment. You could also have minigames where Dr. Kawashima is reading a list of words and you have to select which word of the four options *wasn't* spoken so players will have to concentrate while they fight. There's a number of things that could be done to create a calmer(?) and more brain-focused version of the WarioWare, Inc. stage's minigames.
27. Mirror Chamber [Kirby - Kirby & the Amazing Mirror][]
The Mirror Chamber, or Central Circle, is the hub world for Kirby & the Amazing Mirror. Kirby is able to use the various mirrors in this room to travel all across the Mirror Worlds to places like the Rainbow Route, Carrot Castle, and Candy Constellation. It's a central and iconic location for the game and it's platform layout is already perfect.
I feel like the Mirror Chamber is a perfect choice for a stage where you can just copy down the exact look and layout straight from the game and import it directly into Smash. Set it as a grounded stage (or maybe a mid-air one?) and have all the platforms and mirrors exactly where they were in the original title. This would likely make it a tad bit of a larger stage, but certainly nothing approaching Temple. Dark Meta Knight would also work as a perfect hazard as he could appear out of any mirror at any time to attack any fighters who are nearby it. I imagine a hazard like this would be setup so that it prioritizes appearing out of mirrors near where fighters currently are and may further prioritize trying to go for fighters who are trying to hide away near a mirror and not engage with the fight. Another potentially interesting thing you could do would be to have Dark versions of whoever is in the fight (Joker, Ike, Dark Pit, whoever) and have them pop out of a mirror to attack the fighters. Though it's probably easier to just keep it to Dark Meta Knight.
28. Airship Fleet [Super Mario - Super Mario Bros. 3][]
Super Mario Bros. 3 introduced not just the Koopalings, but also gave us Airship levels which would later return in games such as New Super Mario Bros. Wii and New Super Mario Bros. U. Other games have airship levels as well, but they function a bit differently and this stage idea is inspired by their original appearance. In that game Mario had to board the airship in order to fight the Koopalings, but to do that he had to navigate through the constantly scrolling airship while having Bullet Bills and Cannonballs being fired at him from all directions.
For Smash, I want to put the players right on top of one of Bowser's airships. The level would not only be constantly scrolling as the fighters make their way from one side of the airship to the other, but there would also be a bit of a sway as the airship bounces ever so slightly up and down through the sky. Put some Bullet Bill Launchers and Cannons on the airship too so the fighters have to keep dodging projectiles. And what happens when they reach the end of the airship? Well there won't be a fight with a Koopaling nor with Boom Boom, instead there will be a small gap in the air followed by yet another airship. Perhaps some of these airships will have slightly different layouts to them. Platforms in different spots and Bullet Bills flying in from different spots. Could be randomly generated each time, but I think in this case it would be more of a set pattern. Airship A, then B, then C and D, and finally looping back to the same layout with Airship A.
29. Badge Arcade [Badge Arcade - Nintendo Badge Arcade][]
This is probably an odd choice, but I say why not? The game was shutdown about a year ago alongside the 3DS' online capabilities, but through 2014 to 2017 the game was getting constant updates adding more and more badges to it that players could win in claw machines to display on the home screen of their 3DS. It was a fun little thing and we even got an Assist Trophy from it even though by the time Ultimate released, Nintendo Badge Arcade was no longer receiving any updates.
For the stage, I'm picturing a mid-air setup that takes place inside of one of the Badge Arcade's claw machines. This is another one where I think you could feature a variety of platform arrangements which the stage could cycle through every 30-60 seconds or so. Each layout could also have various badges across the stage which could be picked up like items and either thrown, or used as simple battering weapons. And though I'm not a fan of this particular idea, you could also have the claw be utilized as a rare hazard which would work similarly to the Arcade Bunny Assist Trophy with the claw occasionally coming down from above and attempting to grab a player and drag them up over the top of the stage's blast zone.
30. Mappy [Mappy - Mappy][]
And now for our first new 3rd party franchise, the classic Namco arcade game, Mappy! Mappy features the player controller a police mouse named Mappy as he runs through a mansion to try and retrieve stolen goods from some thieving cats known as Meowkies. The mansion this takes place in is rather large with six floors of hallways and doors in various places. The mansion also has trampolines at the bottom of it for Mappy and the Meowkies to land on and bounce on, but they will break after Mappy has bounced on them enough times.
I'd set this stage up to be one that takes place right inside the mansion matching the design of the original NES title with the only real change being that I'd remove the trampolines that connect the bottom platforms. Fighters could jump and fall through the upper floor's platforms with no worry and the doors could serve as simple barriers that prevent you from running through them. Attacking a door with enough force though would cause that door to slam open and smack anyone or anything that was behind it. The door could then stay open for say, 20 seconds or so, before it closes shut again. As an additional hazard, I think we could have the Meowkies running through the mansion as well with two focuses. The first would be to pick up and steal items that are lying around on the stage. Fighters could attack the Meowkie to take the item away from them much like Mappy would. Additionally, I think it'd be fun to have the Meowkies try to attack fighters who are currently holding items in an attempt to steal them.
Outro[]
And with that, we have another 10 stages in my 100 New Stages for Smash project, bringing us to 30! This time, only 3 of these currently exist on the wiki. Maybe someday I'll get around to making the rest.
Teasers for next time: A Museum, a stage from a Visual Novel, something Furious.