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For decades, the Super Smash Bros. franchise has been nothing short of, well, a smash. Many gamers trace their fondness for Smash back to their childhoods to this day. The easy to learn, difficult to master game series appeals to all ages. For those who have, at this point, purposefully avoided knowing anything about Smash Bros. because it’s literally everywhere, here are some cliff notes. Smash Bros. is a fighting title that pits popular video game characters against each other. Most playable characters are Nintendo-based, although there are exceptions. At E3 this year, Nintendo gave the millions (and MILLIONS!) of Smash’s fans a peek at their newest entry: Smash Ultimate.

Smash Ultimate offers the full package

In Ultimate, the gang’s all here. Nintendo revealed that their latest Smash Bros. game will offer every single character from the entire franchise, dating back to Nintendo 64. Previous iterations of Smash omitted some characters from the roster, and altered others. Ultimate truly lives up to its name, even incorporating the non-Nintendo characters from history – such as Sonic from Sega – into the title. As the previous titles were different, this required a lot of rebalancing and tweaking of character moves and attributes. As a result, those who were able to play Smash Ultimate at E3 report that it feels faster, smoother and even more intuitive. If having every character in the franchise weren’t awesome enough, Nintendo had one major addition. An addition that already has fans losing their minds.

Enter: Ridley

That’s right. The Cunning God Of Death, himself. For some backstory, an extremely popular running request of the Smash Bros. series from the community was the addition of Ridley. Ridley is the main antagonist from the popular Metroid series and has been a reliable staple (despite the laws of biology, physics and likely many other laws) of the Nintendo universe. A notorious encounter in Metroid games, he is ranked as the sixth favorite Nintendo villain by Nintendo Power. GameDaily also ranked him the 16th greatest Nintendo character. For years, the main retort from Smash’s developers was that his size wouldn’t work in comparison to other characters. Suggestions from fans consisted of everything from adding lore that shrunk him, to adding a “mini-Ridley” to Smash in order to allow him in the series.

Cutscene of Ridley from Smash Ultimate.
Ridley has been scaled down but is still Smash’s largest character by far.

Nintendo finally decided, at E3, to give the fans what they wanted. While Nintendo scaled him down considerably (he’s usually about three to four times the size of a person) Ridley still appears to be the largest character Smash Bros. has to date. From gameplay reports, he appears to be a rather intuitive character to pick up and play with, and surprisingly agile.

This has already, of course, caused complete pandemonium amongst fans across the world. Many never thought the day they would be able to beat up Mario as an immortal space dragon would never come, but here we are.

Ridley’s Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Moves

We’ve crawled the web to bring you all of the known moves that we could find:

Three Hit Attack (press) – A three hit attack, which can be held on the final hit to do a rapid-fire tail attack

Running Attack (press A while running) – Ridley leaps forward and takes a huge bite out of his opponent.

Forward Smash (same as Mario’s) – Ridley swings open his mouth and reveals a stationary fire blast. Looks very similar to Mario’s Forward Smash.

Up Smash (Up + A) – Ridley performs a somersault and launches foes into the air.

Down Smash (Down + A) – Ridley slams the ground and hits behind and in front of him.

Neutral Air (A in air) – Ridley performs a flip in the air and hits in all directions. (similar to Kirby’s Neutral Air)

Up Air (Up then A in air) – Ridley brings his wings together and hits his foe with them.

Bouncing Fireball (press B) – Ridley shoots a bouncing fireball from his mouth, similar to his appearances in the various Metroid games. The fireball can be charged in order to shoot additional blasts. Ridley takes massive damage if he is hit while charging, just like the source material.

Forward + B – Ridley’s Forward + B is similar to Ganondorfs, where he lunges at his opponent, slams them to the ground, and throws them to the sky. Series director Masahiro Sakurai confirmed that Ridley can also jump after the attack is performed for follow-up attacks.

Fly Up + B – Ridley launches himself in any direction, nearly identically to Fox, Falco, and Wolf’s Up + B attacks.

Down + B – Ridley’s most impressive move sees him launch his tail forward at his opponent. If the attack hits the “sweet spot,” it will do massive damage and cause the affected character to drop to the ground in paralysis, where Ridley can either follow up with further attacks, or watch his foe blast into space.. If not, the move does minimal damage with no added effects.

Smash Ultimate releases on December 17, 2018, on the Nintendo Switch.