Post by Slendy on Aug 25, 2023 8:29:19 GMT
I hope the title piqued your interest. This search may especially interest those people that were active during the Super Smash Bros 4 speculation days up to the game release.
I think all of you know what Super Smash Bros is, but, in short, it is a platform fighting videogame by Nintendo that acts as gaming biggest crossover. The main selling point for many people are the many playable characters from the various different gaming franchises brawling it out.
Now, back in 2011 Nintendo announced at that year E3 that they were developing the fourth entry of this series for both the 3DS and the Wii U (let's call it SSB4 for shortness). Then, at E3 2013 the first trailer was released and the real marketing campaign began, finishing with the release of both versions during the second half of 2014, with a wave of DLCs coming in 2015/16.
As you can see, before the first trailer, a couple of years passed with little to no news. This was a magical time where the whole community could speculate freely on how SSB4 would turn out to be. But a group of Japanese fans really knocked it out of the park.
This mysterious group of Japanese fans (whose identity is currently unknown to me) weren't just satisfied with speculating on forums and the likes, so they went ahead and created a whole fan website where they would basically describe their ideal version of SSB4.
The website was only in Japanese and it took a lot of inspiration from the Brawl Dojo (the official website of the previous Smash Bros game). It had lots of made up speculation on their version of SSB4, but the main course were, as usual, the characters: they had this enormous list of pages for each playable character they would discuss and each and everyone of them had an original artwork done by themselves in a specific coherent style reminiscent of a drawn version of Super Smash Bros Brawl characters portraits.
I remember, back in the days, I would spend hours on that website, fascinated by those characters' portraits and by their ideas (which I would read through Google Translate).
I remember they continued their work even after E3 2013, adding the real newcomers to their list as well, and I'm pretty sure they stopped when the games actually came out, although I'm not sure, they may have stopped after the last DLC for all I know.
I also remember that it was quite a popular website and that the original characters portraits were very appreciated online.
Now, fast forward to today, I randomly came across the following image of Anthony Higgs from "Metroid Other M" on a random Fandom wiki:
This is one of those characters portraits from that website. As you can see, it was a completely original drawing with this specific cel-shaded style that tried to mimick the Brawl portraits in a way.
When I looked at it, I was immediately reminded of that Japanese website and I tried looking for it in order to have a trip down memory lane and observe once more those beautiful portraits.
However, the website is nowhere to be found. The worst part is that the images are lost too, with this Anthony Higgs one being the only one I could manage to find.
This website and those images are a cherished part of my memories and I'm sure other people feel the same, so, I decided to ask for the Lost Media Community help!
I'm sure this lost website and its images are still somewhere, probably on the Wayback Machine, but so far my efforts to locate it have gone in vain.
I unfortunately don't have any more information I can give to you; many years have passed and I don't have a url or a name, with the website being in Japanese not helping out. I can only offer my help, my memories and that Anthony Higgs image.
Let's hope that we can manage to recover it for good ☺
UPDATE:
We were able to find most of the website on the Wayback Machine (although a lot of it was not saved unfortunately).
You can view the most recent capture of the whole roster at this link: web.archive.org/web/20191203040917/http://ikusaba.client.jp/character/menu.htm
You can also view the most recent capture of the home page at this link: web.archive.org/web/20210929170656/http://ikusaba.client.jp/index.htm
We also managed to find the Twitter (X) account of the original artist, who is still active: twitter.com/gonzarez1938
For more details you can read the thread below.
Right now we would like to contact the artist on his Twitter (X) account and convince him to join us in preserving his old work. However, it seems like we need a checkmark account to chat with him (and he is ignoring comments under his posts), so if you have one please let us know and contact him directly on our behalf
I think all of you know what Super Smash Bros is, but, in short, it is a platform fighting videogame by Nintendo that acts as gaming biggest crossover. The main selling point for many people are the many playable characters from the various different gaming franchises brawling it out.
Now, back in 2011 Nintendo announced at that year E3 that they were developing the fourth entry of this series for both the 3DS and the Wii U (let's call it SSB4 for shortness). Then, at E3 2013 the first trailer was released and the real marketing campaign began, finishing with the release of both versions during the second half of 2014, with a wave of DLCs coming in 2015/16.
As you can see, before the first trailer, a couple of years passed with little to no news. This was a magical time where the whole community could speculate freely on how SSB4 would turn out to be. But a group of Japanese fans really knocked it out of the park.
This mysterious group of Japanese fans (whose identity is currently unknown to me) weren't just satisfied with speculating on forums and the likes, so they went ahead and created a whole fan website where they would basically describe their ideal version of SSB4.
The website was only in Japanese and it took a lot of inspiration from the Brawl Dojo (the official website of the previous Smash Bros game). It had lots of made up speculation on their version of SSB4, but the main course were, as usual, the characters: they had this enormous list of pages for each playable character they would discuss and each and everyone of them had an original artwork done by themselves in a specific coherent style reminiscent of a drawn version of Super Smash Bros Brawl characters portraits.
I remember, back in the days, I would spend hours on that website, fascinated by those characters' portraits and by their ideas (which I would read through Google Translate).
I remember they continued their work even after E3 2013, adding the real newcomers to their list as well, and I'm pretty sure they stopped when the games actually came out, although I'm not sure, they may have stopped after the last DLC for all I know.
I also remember that it was quite a popular website and that the original characters portraits were very appreciated online.
Now, fast forward to today, I randomly came across the following image of Anthony Higgs from "Metroid Other M" on a random Fandom wiki:
This is one of those characters portraits from that website. As you can see, it was a completely original drawing with this specific cel-shaded style that tried to mimick the Brawl portraits in a way.
When I looked at it, I was immediately reminded of that Japanese website and I tried looking for it in order to have a trip down memory lane and observe once more those beautiful portraits.
However, the website is nowhere to be found. The worst part is that the images are lost too, with this Anthony Higgs one being the only one I could manage to find.
This website and those images are a cherished part of my memories and I'm sure other people feel the same, so, I decided to ask for the Lost Media Community help!
I'm sure this lost website and its images are still somewhere, probably on the Wayback Machine, but so far my efforts to locate it have gone in vain.
I unfortunately don't have any more information I can give to you; many years have passed and I don't have a url or a name, with the website being in Japanese not helping out. I can only offer my help, my memories and that Anthony Higgs image.
Let's hope that we can manage to recover it for good ☺
UPDATE:
We were able to find most of the website on the Wayback Machine (although a lot of it was not saved unfortunately).
You can view the most recent capture of the whole roster at this link: web.archive.org/web/20191203040917/http://ikusaba.client.jp/character/menu.htm
You can also view the most recent capture of the home page at this link: web.archive.org/web/20210929170656/http://ikusaba.client.jp/index.htm
We also managed to find the Twitter (X) account of the original artist, who is still active: twitter.com/gonzarez1938
For more details you can read the thread below.
Right now we would like to contact the artist on his Twitter (X) account and convince him to join us in preserving his old work. However, it seems like we need a checkmark account to chat with him (and he is ignoring comments under his posts), so if you have one please let us know and contact him directly on our behalf
