The Invitees to the "Dark Reunion" Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Event Tourney

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Yet another Christmas party I'm not invited to...

As I foreshadowed a couple of days ago with Sephiroth's release article, starting today (Christmas day) and continuing throughout the weekend is an event online tourney in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Dark Reunion. The event says.. “Muwah hah hah... This time-limited tourney exclusively features fighters who have embraced the darkness.”

Sephiroth is the main attraction and attention-grabber here.
It's never said where these dark dudes all have met before. (That's what a reunion implies.)
Not in any other game, that's for sure. Not even in a GameFAQs character battle.

The nine invited darkness-embracers are Sephiroth, Dark Samus, Dark Pit, Ridley, Ganondorf, Wolf, Bayonetta, Joker, and Meta Knight. What do all of these characters have in common? It doesn't have to do with their morality. Perhaps their edgy aesthetic? They're all affiliated with Dharkon in the World of Light mode. But... what does embracing the darkness mean? Why are a number of characters not invited that you'd think would be? Let's ponder on that together.

In my mind, the characters that got snubbed are Mewtwo (uses shadowy attacks that are given the darkness element in the Super Smash Bros. series) Mr. Game & Watch (a reference to Super Smash Bros. Brawl's Subspace Emissary where Shadow Bugs are made from him... and he's also literally just black), Robin (a reference to their Nosferatu spell... as well as Fire Emblem: Awakening spoilers), and Greninja and Incineroar (both are literally Dark-type Pokémon). Those five, except Mr. Game & Watch, are also affiliated with Dharkon.

We might also try to make the case that Mario is totally a dark force, but since it's unclear what the criteria actually is, I won't push that.

Apparently the dark reunion involves jovial get-togethers at PAC-LAND.
I don't know what's more sickening. The uncharacteristic wholesomeness, or PAC-LAND.
You know, I'm glad I wasn't invited to this Christmas party.

I've basically spent the entire Christmas pondering what Meta Knight really has in common with Bayonetta (besides being broken top tiers in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Smash Bros. 4 respectively) and Ridley and Ganondorf (who are definitely not broken top tiers). I can't figure it out, and now Christmas is almost over and I have nothing to show for it. Let me know what you think in the comments section.

“Good-bye!” to this article.

Ludwig doesn't know if he's supposed to qualify as having embraced darkness, but apparently he hasn't. He's not really embracing anything, since he's kind of lonely on Christmas and hasn't been embraced by anything or anyone else. Yes, he would rather play as Dark Pit than the other characters allowed in the tourney.


The last event tourney article Ludwig wrote was last month, about people who wore hats.
The next event tourney Ludwig wrote about, Ballistic Barrage, uses the utterly arbitrary (and inconsistent) in-game definition of what a projectile is.
There's actually a trend of event tourneys where Ludwig picks purple Dark Pit when there's no one better, like among those born in the 2010s.