Simon Belmont, King K Rool, and more announced for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in a massive Nintendo Direct

Going into last night’s Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Direct, many people were thinking “hey, they announced a lot at E3, what more can they possibly show?” Turns out, a lot. No really, a lot.

The first big announcement of the night was the inclusion of Simon Belmont from the Castlevania series, as well as his descendant Richter, as playable fighters in Super Smash Bros Ultimate, with the latter acting as an Echo Fighter for the main man himself. Alongside the new fighters, it was revealed that a new stage, Dracula’s Castle, will debut in the upcoming game. Dracula’s Castle will feature a tonne of enemies from the Castlevania series, including Dracula himself as a boss in the stage. It will also have 34 all new songs remixed from the Castlevania series.

The other big ticket item: King K Rool himself is here to cause mayhem and havoc. The crocodile king from the original Donkey Kong Country trilogy will be a playable fighter, to the pleasure of many Nintendo fans around the world.

But that’s not all! Alongside the all new fighters was the announcement of two more Echo Fighters — Dark Samus from the Metroid Prime series as an Echo of Samus, and Chrom from the Fire Emblem series as an Echo of Roy. All new fighters and Echo Fighters will be getting amiibo in the future.

There was also a gigantic info dump, way too big for a single article, but we’ve listed some of the major additions below.

• There are over 100 stages in Super Smash Bros Ultimate
  • Every stage will have a new Omega mode, bringing the effective total of playable stages to over 300
  • You will be able to enable Stage Morph, allowing you to play on two maps as they randomly switch throughout the match
• There are over 900 new and returning musical tracks, with a combined total playtime of over 28 hours
  • You will be able to listen to these tracks in a music player, which will work even when the Switch’s screen is off
  • Tracks are separated into series, and user-created playlists will be available
• There are dozens of new options for battle customisation
• There’s a new stage specifically for Training Mode, which will show all sorts of data about how far opponents will be launched when hit with different attacks
• There are even more new items, including Death’s Scythe from Castlevania and the Ramblin’ Evil Mushroom from Earthbound
• A tonne of new Assist Trophies were shown off, including Shovel Knight, The Moon from Majora’s Mask, and the Rathalos from the Monster Hunter series

A special edition of the game was also announced for Europe, which includes the game itself, a Smash-branded Gamecube controller, and a Gamecube adaptor. It’s not currently known if this is planned to come to Australia too, but we’ll update this article if it is.

You can watch the full Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Direct below.