In the latest issue of Famitsu, the director of Super Smash Bros., Masahiro Sakurai, has shared some details regarding the character roster and different release dates for the 3DS and Wii U versions of the game.
According to Sakurai, the absence of fan favorites the Ice Climbers was due to 3DS’s hardware limitations. It seems like the characters were running in the Wii U version, but had some troubles working flawlessly on Nintendo’s latest portable console. On top of that, the priority for including the Ice Climbers wasn’t as high, considering the characters’ obscure nature and lack of recent installments in their series.
Additionally, Sakurai mentioned that the decision to release the 3DS and Wii U versions at different times was made for debugging purposes. In other words, it was done to avoid there being too much of a difference between the two games.
Source: Nintendo Everything
They also left out Wario, which really burns my beezy. He’s a pretty staple character.
No, they didn’t. He’s in there. :)