Intro[]
Welcome back to my 100 New Stages for the Next Smash project! Today we're covering Stages 41-50, 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 fourth set of 10 stages.
41. Florio Nature Park [Pokemon - New Pokemon Snap][]
Most Pokemon stages are usually designed around some kind of building or else take place in a stadium where the battlefield changes to match different Pokemon types. And while I do enjoy stages in both of those categories, I have a bit of a different idea here. Pokemon Snap was a really popular game on the N64 and for years people were clamoring for a sequel. Finally for the Nintendo Switch, we got “New Pokemon Snap”. The name itself wasn't great, but I greatly enjoyed the game. Getting to explore all of these locations and take pictures of Pokemon doing silly things was rather fun. So I decided I wanted to make an area from it into a stage. I decided to go with the first location in the game as it's rather simple introduction to the game's concepts and also allows me to do a bit of a twist partway through.
It's not a well loved genre of stages, but I envision Florio Nature Park. And truly most if not any stage from a Pokemon Snap game, to be a scrolling stage of some kind. Visually speaking I imagine you'd see the NEO-ONE in the background of the stage instead of the foreground so the fighters would get to see the player from New Pokemon Snap going about their route through the Florio Nature Park while the fighting takes place in the area around them. As for what specific obstacles you'd encounter during the scrolling, I think it would be mostly a lot of environmental things like large bushes and trees, but maybe you'd also have to dodge around hostile Pokemon that don't like you barging your way into their territory such as Bouffalant, Tangrowth, or Pinsir. You could also have some kind of gimmick with the Illumina Flowers that could effect the battlefield possibly by either making some Pokemon hazards go away, or creating new platforms and such. The real reason why I specifically chose Florio Nature Park as my stage rep from this game, is the fact that it has a secret course associated with it, the Secret Side Path. At a certain point during the fight the NEO-ONE and the fighters would all get shrunken down as they take a side path through the Florio Nature Park. Suddenly nature has gotten large and you'll have to more carefully jump around logs and rocks to keep going. I think it'd even be fun if there was a point where you can to run across a Pokemon during the scroll such as Torterra, Meganium, or a group of Foongus. Eventually of course everyone would return to their normal size and proceed to the final area of the Florio Nature Park where you could see Pokemon like Vespiquen, Comfey, and Florges among the flowers before looping back around to the starting area.
42. Everblight Plain [Xenoblade - Xenoblade Chronicles 3][]
I really wanted to include a stage from Xenoblade Chronicles 3, but I'll admit I struggled to think of a good location that I thought was important enough, could look cool, and make for a good fighting arena. In the end I settled on the Everblight Plain which is where the opening of the game takes place during a battle between Kevesi and Agnian forces. It's been the site of several battles over time and is quite torn up from the constant war. After some initial tutorialing, it's here that the game introduces you to half of your playable party, and the other half comes soon after.
Considering how much of Xenoblade 3 is themed around the war and conflict between Keves and Agnus, and the fact that Everblight Plain itself has been the site of countless battles between them, I think it'd be very appropriate for battles on this stage to take place right in the middle of a battle between Keves and Agnus. I don't know for sure how the platform arrangement should be set, but I'm imagining a wide stage, similarly to how I previously designed Halo's Blood Gulch, with generic troops from the two nations appearing on the battlefield as hostiles not only to each other, but to the players on the stage as well. You could even have bombardments fly down onto the stage to cause large explosions or even have parts of the stage's terrain/platforms disappear in what appears to be a spatial distortion as an Annihilation Event occurs to essentially delete whatever used to be there.
43. Castle Bleck [Super Mario - Super Paper Mario][]
We need some more Paper Mario stages, and this time I want to talk about Super Paper Mario. While the game was initially not received well, I recall enjoying playing through it combining the traditional Paper Mario setting and some of its abilities, with the more standard 2d platforming nature of the classic Mario games. As for a stage though, while I considering having a flipping mechanic between Flipside and Flopside, I landed on Castle Bleck not only due to its importance for the game's endgame, but also due to its vastly different look as being near pure black with just white lines outlining details. It might be hell to play on and see where you're going, and would probably be banned by the competitive scene because of that, but I think it'd make for a unique visual amongst all the other colorful stages.
I kinda like the idea of Castle Bleck being a traveling stage. You'd start out just outside of its gates fighting in front of the castle before being pulled in and through a couple different transitions showing different areas. Then at the very end the fighters would be brought to the room where you fight Count Bleck with a bunch of flat platforms scattered throughout an otherwise empty room. Maybe Count Bleck could appear as a stage hazard? Or Dimentio even? After a point the stage would cycle back and return to the entrance of the castle.
44. Grand Festival Grounds [Splatoon - Splatoon 3][]
More Splatoon stages! More I say! Alright so we've got stages representing Story Mode, Salmon Run, and the general metropolis. That means a regular Turf War stage is next, right? Wrong! It's time for a Splatfest stage! Specifically I'm talking about the Grand Festival Grounds from Splatoon 3. This place was only added to the game during the final Splatfest of Splatoon 3, the Grand Festival, which united the idol groups of all three Splatoon games together as they each represented a team and rotated playing different songs at the Grand Festival Grounds which players could run around in while they waited for their matches to occur. The Grand Festival Grounds is a fun idea for a stage as it'd allow fighters to battle it out on a concert stage and serve as a great way to represent all three Splatoon games in one go!
So this stage could theoretically travel around the full Festival Grounds between the entrance arch, market stalls, and three separate concert stages. In reality though I think the stage would focus on the Giant Clam Stage, with possible transitions to either the Urchin Stage or Seashell Stage. But considering the Giant Clam stage is the largest and grandest, I'm just gonna go with that. So we have a concert stage where fighters could fight either on the ground in front of the stage, or on top of the stage itself. During the Grand Festival the concert stage also featured floating platforms with the different members of the Squid Sisters, Off the Hook, and Deep Cut flying around and singing so I think we could use those platforms for fighting too. I think we'd also *have* to have the members of each band on stage somewhere. Could possibly be dictated by what song is being played on the stage like how the Mementos stage changes color based on what game the song playing is from.
45. Rusty Bucket Bay [Banjo-Kazooie - Banjo-Kazooie][]
Banjo & Kazooie may have only just gotten into Smash with Ultimate's DLC, but I think there is room for the pair to get another stage. There's some good options, but I decided to go with Rusty Bucket Bay. Now I've only watched the games, but Rusty Bucket Bay came off to me like a standout location with the Rusty Bucket boat and apparently it's known for being one of the more challenging areas in the game. You've got a rusty 'ol ship surrounded by horribly polluted water. Sounds like a good place to battle to me.
Okay so if we're having the stage be Rusty Bucket Bay, then we obviously need to have the ship itself, the Rusty Bucket. So fighting would take place primarily on the Rusty Bucket as fighters just battle it out on the actual layout of the ship as it sits in the horribly polluted water. I was debating if the water should act like lava does in Smash where it would damage and knock fighters away on contact, but I have a different idea. Why not let the water... just be water? Fighters can swim through it like they normally would if they fall in. Mostly anyways. The water is polluted yeah? So you can swim through the water... but you'll be taking damage every second you're in it! On top of that, I think it'd be fun for the boat to sail away from time to time leaving behind minimal platforms and increasing the odds of falling into the polluted water.
66. Glittertown [Wario - Wario Land: Shake It!][]
Years ago I said to myself, we should get a Wario stage that isn't from the WarioWare games. So I did some idle looking over at the Mariowiki to see what locations there have been in the Wario Land games. The name “Glittertown” caught my attention and when I looked into it more and I saw it was a glitzy casino that Wario robs I knew I had to make it my stage of choice from the Wario Land games. I have no idea if it's a particularly well-liked or interesting location in the game itself, but I liked what I saw of it and I decided to go with it.
So with Glittertown my pitch is to have a mid-air stage with several platforms and throw in the design elements and gimmicks of the level kinda all over the place. You'd have slot machines placed around the different platforms which will at times spark with light allowing the fighters to attack them. Once the slot machine has taken a little damage, it's slots will spin and an item will fall out of it. There's also water fountains which will at times fire water up into the air which can be helpful for recovering back up to the stage. The Glittertown also has invisible platforms so I say let's replicate that with platforms that appear invisible at first unless someone is standing on them. And to mix things up you could even shift the position of these invisible platforms or even have some that float up/down or left/right.
47. Stack-Up [R.O.B. - Stack-Up][]
Every franchise that has gotten a playable character in the Smash series has also received at least one stage to fight on. Every franchise that is... except for one. Brawl introduced R.O.B. as a playable fighter, but two games later we still don't have any stages associated with R.O.B. or his games. I get he only has two, and the nature of R.O.B. himself being an NES peripheral makes it challenging. But it can be done. Personally I'm going to nominate Stack-Up over Gyromite to get a stage, which is honestly probably the weirder of the two, but I like the idea I have for it.
So how would a Stack-Up stage work exactly? I want to take the players and put them on top of the R.O.B. peripheral that kids controlled back in the day when playing Stack-Up and Gyromite. There would be three platforms at the bottom of the screen representing where on R.O.B.'s body he could be commanded to place colored blocks. As the fight occurs the giant R.O.B. will be slowly picking up and rearranging the blocks onto different platforms. Players can ride the blocks that are being carried, but they'd want to avoid being crushed by a new block that's about to be placed. Maybe you could even have the top of R.O.B.'s head as a platform that would serve as a mostly safer option to fight on as it can't be messed with, but it would also be much closer to the upper blast zones so fighters could be easily KO'd upwards.
48. Tick Tock Clock [Super Mario - Super Mario 64][]
Super Mario 64 has so many good offerings for stages and I could probably make a good stage design for most of them. But today I want to talk about Tick Tock Clock. Tick Tock Clock is an interesting world in Super Mario 64 which is entered by jumping through a clock face, but the time displayed on the clock when Mario jumped through it will have an affect on the level and depending on what you are trying to do you'll want to time your jump to get in there at the right time. The level itself takes place inside of the clock and has a lot of moving pieces, so it's rather appropriate that the ways this level can be affected by the clock are to either 1. Make the moving platforms move extra slow, 2. Make the moving platforms move extra fast, 3. Make the movement speed random and change while you're there, and 4. Stop all of the moving platforms in their default positions.
So if we're going to have a stage based off of Tick Tock Clock, I feel like it needs to be a tall with a lot of platforms. Some platforms can rotate, some can spin, and some will just travel around paths in different directions. Some of those platforms could even collide in a way that would knock players off of them forcing them to either relocate or risk falling into the abyss. But it needs something more. It needs... a twist. Much like how in Super Mario 64 the level's behavior would change based on the time of the clock, I propose a similar twist. Depending on what the time is on your console, the behavior for the stage's platforms will change. If the battle starts to load when the clock says XX:01-XX:15, then the platforms will remain frozen in their default positions for the whole match. From XX:16-XX:30 the platforms will move slowly. From XX:31-XX:45 the platforms will move at a random speed which will shift up and down at random points as the fight goes on. Finally, from XX:46-XX:00 the platforms will all move quickly.
49. Twilight Realm [Legend of Zelda - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess][]
The Twilight Realm is arguably the most important location in Twilight Princess being the home of Midna and Zant and also being where Link is cursed to transform into a wolf. It'd be a far better way to represent the game than the Bridge of Eldin in my opinion though I could see the argument being with how dark the place is that it would be hard to see what's going on, similar to what I imagine would be said for Castle Bleck. Regardless, due to the locations importance and vastly different appearance, I feel like it at least deserves to be considered.
I see two potential avenues for the Twilight Realm as a stage. The first is to just set it in a generic location and just use the aesthetics of the Twilight Realm to build something simple. Maybe there could be some important locations or objects seen in the background, but there wouldn't be any importance to them for the stage itself. The other thought is to set the stage either in front of or in an important location, in this case I'd nominate the Palace of Twilight and that could even be the entire stage's theme and name instead of just Twilight Realm. You could potentially set it right In the throne room and show Zant sitting on the throne watching the fight. Maybe Zant could even cause hazards to occur either by attacking the stage himself, or sending monsters to do his bidding such as Zant's Hands and Shadow Beasts.
50. Dolphin Park [Wave Race - Wave Race 64][]
Last year when Jonno and I were doing our Roster Redux project for Super Cast Bros he pushed hard for Ryota Hayami of Wave Race to be added in our new Smash 64 game. Ryota didn't end up making our roster for that episode, but the idea of Wave Race stuck in mind and when I was gathering stage ideas for this project I thought Dolphin Park could be an interesting idea. It's not only one of the race courses in the game, but it also holds a secret where if you perform a series of tricks you'll unlock the ability to ride a dolphin there. Sounds like fun a place to fight to me.
For this stage I imagine the fighters would be battling on the pier which would stretch all the way to the blast zones on the right side of the stage, but would end short on the left side leaving empty space above the water. This stage would be *mostly* peaceful I feel, but I do have two hazards in mind. The first is the racers and their jetskis. Every now and then a jetski could get closer to the left side of the pier and end up splashing water onto it pushing fighters back towards the right side of the stage. Additionally, I think it'd be fun to let the dolphins in on the fun so for their hazard I like the idea of the dolphins jumping over various points on the pier from the background, which could allow them to jump into fighters and knock them aside.
Outro[]
And with that, we have another 10 stages in my 100 New Stages for Smash project, bringing us to 50, we're halfway there! This time, only 2 of these currently exist on the wiki. Maybe someday I'll get around to making the rest.
Teasers for next time: A modern Donkey Kong stage, Somebody's Hideout, and a City Under Siege.