My thoughts on what a Smash Bros moveset for Shantae might look like

This was something I wrote up on another site (some combination of boredom and inspiration). If nobody minds some massive copy/pasting, I thought I'd put it up here for y'all to see and enjoy!

When I originally wrote this, it was intended for people who were familiar with Smash Bros, but not necessarily familiar with Shantae. You guys will probably recognize a few references that I'm over-explaining a bit here. And in case it's not obvious, this was written specifically with Brawl in mind.


There are three bigs things I'm focusing on here. One is that she's a dancer, so her regular attacks should look a little flashy and flow into each other whenever they can. She attacks using her hair as a whip a lot, so that's an easy place to draw from for a number of moves. And, of course, she uses magic, so that sounds like an easy place to go for special moves.


Ground Attacks:
Neutral: Hair whip. Low damage, but good range and decent stunning capabilities. Can be used infinitely, similar to Marth's neutral ground attack.

Forward Tilt: A shorter ranged hair whip attack with a little more power. Can be chained into three hits (head down, head up, then spin kick). Can also be chained into her up tilt or down tilt instead.

Smash Forward: Elbow Dash. Smashes with her elbow while moving forward (similar to Wario's forward smash). I imagine this moving her about a character length forward, which I believe is more than Wario's version moves him.

Up Tilt: Lean forward and kick straight up. Can be chained into her forward tilt or down tilt, or press the button again to add an upward hair whip attack as she spins back into her neutral position.

Up Smash: Two kicks with a back flip. The kicks would be some of her more powerful knock-away attacks, and their range would be mostly in front of her and weaker damage above her. This also puts her into the air the height of a normal jump--the second kick is made from the air. (This could be particularly potent if the first kick knocks an opponent up and the second kick knocks them away.)

Down Tilt: Sweep kick. Can be chained into a second kick, moving her forward slightly. Can also be chained into her up tilt or forward tilt instead.

Down Smash: Split kicks (similar to Fox). As a flavor difference, if you charge the smash, she spins in place (so she would be facing backward about half way through). She can kick facing the other way (which makes no difference mechanically) and then would finish the spin as part of her animation returning to her neutral position.

Crouching Attack: Hair whip, similar to neutral attack.

Running Attack: A quick leap forward and a hit with the elbow. Damage isn't high, but knock away has a good punch. With a little timing, can be chained into her up tilt or down tilt.

Note: When I mention up, forward, and down tilt chaining into each other, I'm thinking that the first attack from one would go into the second attack from another. This gives you similar options to Marth's Dancing Blade attack. For instance, up tilt, down tilt, forward tilt would become kick straight up, second leg sweep, spin kick (focused in the forward direction).


Aerial Attacks:
Neutral: Spin in the air, causing multiple minor hits (similar to Olimar's neutral air attack). Her hair is a sweet spot for this attack, causing more damage (other damage is very minor).

Forward: Hair whip, similar to her neutral ground attack. This version might cause a bit more damage to open up for some tricky strategies.

Backward: A quick whip with her hair, done by just tilting her head downward and letting her hair fly up. Short range, but is quick, does decent damage, and has a little extra punch for knock away.

Up: A quick backflip kick focused upward. Nothing special, and much weaker than the kicks from her up smash.

Down: A spiral kick that brings her down quickly (similar to Sonic or Zero Suit Samus). Different in that it does multiple hits and doesn't knock away very well.


Special Attacks:
Standard: Storm Puff. A cloud appears and floats upward. It begins firing lightning bolts at three spots (directly below it, below it to the left, and below it to the right, cycling through the three), disappearing after a few cycles. These lightning bolts do multiple hits (4 for a single bolt) and briefly stun their targets (as typical electric attacks do). Each hit does 5% before move decay, so being caught in an entire bolt would do 20%. A bolt lasts about half a second from start to finish. Only the last hit from a bolt would knock the target away. Any character (herself included) can attack the cloud to move it around (before or after it starts striking). Originally the clouds only moved horizontally, but I think it would be fair to have these clouds move vertically (although each hit should move it either much more horizontally than vertically or much more vertically than horizontally). Only one can be used at a time--using a new one makes the previous one disappear.

Side: Fireball. A long range attack with about 10% initial damage. A bit slow to recover from after using, so it's hard to spam and leaves you a bit open. Can be charged for about a second before using (similar to Zero Suit Samus's neutral special)--this doesn't increase damage, but causes her to launch three fireballs: one going straight forward, one going forward and upward, and one going forward and downward. She gains just a bit of height and falls more slowly while using this attack in midair.

Up: Twirl. She spins around, causing multiple hits with her hair (similar to Link's spin attack in the air). Used alone, this gives her just a bit of height and moves her a good distance forward quickly. If you continue pressing the button, it causes her to spin faster, increasing her distance upward, but cutting her horizontal distance short. This attack leaves her helpless until she lands after using it.

Down: Pike Ball. This attack requires charging, and the charge can be stored (similar to DK's Giant Punch or Samus's cannon). When used, this causes one to three metal balls to surround her which cause about 8% damage each before move decay. Charging the attack does not make it more powerful or make the balls last longer, but adds more balls to the attack. As a flavor difference, one ball just looks like a gray sphere, two looks like red balls with spikes on them, and three looks like blue balls with razor blades on them (similar to their appearance in Risky's Revenge). The pike balls last about 4 seconds, and she can move and attack normally while they're around. They knock enemies back a fair bit, though, making it difficult to use other attacks at the same time. Using the button combo again while the balls are present cancels them.


Grabs:
A ranged grab performed rolling her head back and flinging her hair forward to trap an opponent. Can be used to grab a ledge (which I think would look hilarious to see her hanging from her hair).

Damage: Attacks a grabbed foe by kicking them.

Forward Throw: Smashes the foe with her elbow for a short range throw. (Not as strong as her forward smash.)

Backward Throw: Rolls backwards with the foe still wrapped in her hair. The foe is thrown when they touch the ground. This throw gets more distance than her forward throw. She moves back a short distance while doing this.

Upward Throw: Spins around and sends opponent spinning straight up (similar to Jigglypuff's upward throw).

Downward Throw: Drops the opponent on the ground and kicks them rapidly (similar to Kirby's downward throw). A flavor difference might be 5 kicks that do 2% each rather than 10 kicks that do 1% each.


Taunts:
Side: Perform two dance moves from her original game (possibly chosen based on the direction she's facing).

Down: Drink a red or green potion in a way similar to Young Link drinking milk (which is actually the way she drinks them in the game, probably as a homage to that).

Up: Float a bit and spin around quickly, like when she gets a Magic Seal in Risky's Revenge.


Final Smash:
I can think of three (which would mean it would be nice if future games give you your choice between a few Final Smashes at the beginning of a fight), and since I'm not sure which is best, here they are:

Monkey Dance: Transforms other players into monkeys briefly. This gives them slightly below-average movement and jumping and makes them unable to do any strong attacks or special attacks (I'm imagining a pre-determined move set similar to the fighting polygons/wireframes/alloys, but weaker). The transformation continues until the duration is over, even if players are K.O.ed.

Elephant Dance: Changes into an elephant, which is slightly bigger than any other character unless Ridley is present. She wouldn't be very maneuverable like this, so I think it's fair to give her invincibility for the duration. Use the attack button to charge forward for an attack with big damage and big knock away. With a jump, just being touched by her feet as she comes down does the same thing. This would probably be faster and jump higher than the same transformation in her own games, but I think that's justified by it being a Final Smash.

Mermaid Dance: Changes into a mermaid, jumps into the air from where she's standing, and hangs there for a few seconds while spinning around and rapidly firing bubbles in different directions. I imagine the bubbles doing 10% damage (maybe more) and exploding on contact with people or objects.


Misc:
In her own games, she's shown to run more quickly than an athletic person (who is admittedly a zombie). I think Mario's running speed would be appropriate for her. I don't see any reason to have different than average jumping ability either (yay blandness), although she should be able to move somewhat easily through the air since the moves I've come up with seem to revolve around maneuverability. I feel like her mid-air jump could represent Float Muffins from her first game, but there isn't much there to represent. I imagine she'd be a bit lightweight as far as being knocked away herself. Her crouching animation is a bit famous among her fans, and she can crawl slowly in her games, so she should probably be able to crawl slowly here as well. She has a backward dash in Risky's Revenge that could pretty easily be represented in her dodges and rolls.


And... I think that's all! I would just about die with joy if she was included in a Smash Bros game. It seems just possible enough that it could happen, but just unlikely enough that I don't expect it to happen any time soon (as well-loved as she is by her fans, she's really obscure). Still a lot of fun to think about and write up, though!

EDIT: It occurs to me that a down tilt attack and a crouching attack are normally the same thing. I still like both of the choices here, so let's say the down tilt is used if you press the button quickly after/while tilting down, and the crouching attack is used if you crouch for a moment first, shall we? It's fine for the tilt attack to have a small window of activation--players could certainly get used to the difference as they play, and they could always chain a different tilt into the second down tilt attack.

Ahh cool I like your ideas, they were even similar to mine. I would have her Up Special as her upward attack in the original game where she does the upward kick and backflips into the air, and then make it so that while going upward you could press down attack to do the spiral kick, pretty much the way the whole combo worked in the original (this would also be kind of similar to Sonic since his Up Special works the same way.)

I know her hair twirl was supposed to be the most powerful attack she had in the original, but for a game like Smash Bros I feel that it would fit better as a dash attack.