Smash Ultimate fans hoping for a Goku DLC fighter addition will have to accept that it's simply never going to happen, according to series creator Masahiro Sakurai. Super Smash Bros. is a series that has always lent itself well to fanbase requests, and its latest iteration features the largest - and still expanding - roster in fighting game history, making it even easier for consumers to request their favorite pop culture character and hope for the best.

Smash Ultimate is, after all, pretty close to wish-fulfilment in fighting video game form already. Smash Ultimate is getting Terry Bogard as a DLC fighter unexpectedly after recently adding the heroes from various Dragon Quest games on top of Persona 5's Joker, and if that eclectic collection of DLC fighters wasn't already a strong indicator, Smash Ultimate has quickly become the site for unexpected gaming crossovers to occur with regularity. Recently, Sakurai also indicated that, as long as fans are still interested in the game and there are opportunities to add new fighters, Smash Ultimate will continue producing DLC far into the future.

While there are seemingly endless possibilities for who might be included in Smash Ultimate in future updates, Masahiro Sakurai has ruled out at least two specific examples. In an award acceptance speech during the Tokyo Game Show 2019 ceremony - which saw Smash Ultimate take home the Grand Award from the show - Sakurai mentioned that he consistently gets fan requests from people outside of Japan for characters like Dragon Ball Z's Goku and Iron Man in a speech that was translated by Twitter user PushDustin. He then followed up with an absolute dagger to the heart of any fan who was secretly harboring hope that those characters might squeak into future DLC crossovers at a later date:

"Basically [Smash Ultimate] will only have content from video games in it."

This isn't news for the franchise, which has consistently re-iterated its belief that characters from video games should be the only pursuit for fighter DLC. Sakurai has also outlined Goku and Iron Man before as examples of characters he didn't think would happen, but this is about as firm as the creator has ever been on their chances. The fact that Sakurai took the time to mention these characters again while discussing content that won't be added is further proof they're just not going to come to the series.

Of course, fans looking for loopholes will no doubt point out the fact that both characters have featured as protagonists in video games in the past. That hasn't seemed to stop Smash Ultimate from committing to excluding characters like Goku and Iron Man and, with a roster that's going to continue growing for years, Sakurai has earned every right to decide who gets added to the series based on a fleeting whim, let alone actually solid reasoning like the explanation he continues to have to give at nearly every turn.

Source: Tokyo Game Show (via PushDustin)