rating every Smash Bros. series symbol

idk what happened with the audio for this one either

F tier for DK is really harsh, that litterally IS the symbol used around donkey kong

I heavily disagree with Donkey Kong. DK has been heavily associated with both the series and the character since inception unlike W for Wario and SF for Street fighter. DK is such an important legacy symbol for Donkey, Diddy, Dixie, and Cranky. It’s been his logo in so many games and is on the barrels in the DKC games. And for the alternatives? A Barrel I think that could work if the DK is silhouetted on them, but drawing the lines on the barrel is too messy. Bananas would be fine but in general I feel like a giant DK is big and cartoony just like the series it is from.

Tekken's logo being a fist actually makes perfect sense and is really good representation imo. Not only is it Kazuya's glove, it also ties into the meaning of "Tekken" which is "Iron Fist" in Japanese.

Sonic’s head silhouette actually has a lot of significance. It’s the logo for Sonic Team (the dev team that made Sonic) and it’s the perspective you see Sonic’s head at in most Classic games. The symbol is also used for the lives counter, along with many other situations. It definitely should be higher

I am so disgusted with so many of the rankings in this. Was not expecting to disagree this much. Great video.

BABE WAKE UP

I do think it’s pretty inconsistent that Captain Falcon got to be in B-tier for just representing himself but the Sonic series gets to be in C-tier for doing the same thing despite the fact that Sonic’s head is way more distinctive of a logo than the falcon.

It bothers me a little bit that you suggest the Buster Sword as a strong piece of iconography for Final Fantasy while you kind of write off the Monado for Xenoblade. The Monado is significantly MORE important to Xenoblade’s branding, symbolism, and imagery than the Buster Sword is to FF.

The fists are so distinctive that I feel you judged them rather harshly

Really interesting that you gave two simple and understandable baselines by which you'd judge all the icons then went on to be as inconsistent as possible

I think the minecraft icon is pretty clearly the grass block. It’s one of the most iconic blocks in minecraft and is used in a lot of the branding, and the choice to highlight the top face of the cube seems deliberate. The next most iconic block that has something significant on the top face is the crafting table but that just doesn’t really look like the icon

I think a simple way of making the star icon for Kirby appear more outwardly representative of Kirby would just be to adjust it to make it look like a silhouette of Planet Popstar, which is to say functionally looking about the same, but with the planet's two rings. this way it still evokes the star motif as used in every basically kirby game ever while also being something specific and unique to Kirby.

About the pacman symbol: The negative space (the mouth) is exaggerated because we percieve less negative space the more the image is shrunk. It looks off when big but good when small. It's a pretty common technique for logo design. Nice video!

Tell me you've never played Donkey Kong Country without telling me you've never played it

"Ugh it's just a sword" - from man who then suggests that the FF symbol should be a sword.

The Sonic symbol makes more sense when you consider that a picture/silhouette of his head has been the picture for his life-icon ever since literally the first game.

It's a little reductive to reduce the scores of the "boring" ones simply because their franchise lacks meaningful iconography. The duck for Duck Hunt may not be particularly interesting, but it is the best possible choice for its game. It, and several other symbols, deserve some recognition for that.

Okay how are three dots better than the iconic DK logo

The Mii icon is literally in the same one used to represent them in many titles that include them, like Mii Maker. Also, the crown icon for Mii Plaza could've just been the plant icon used in the 3DS' Home Menu. I'll also argue that the DK, SF and FF text icons are appropriate because they use the same typeface as the full logo, and in DK's case it is more recognizable than bananas or barrels.