SMASH 150 - 071 - PIKACHU

Not as popular as Pikablu, but a pretty well known character nonetheless.

Pikachu in Smash
It was only really in Brawl that I got into Pikachu and I used him quite a lot. Then, since there were other characters I preferred to use in Wii U/3DS Pikachu fell away from me.
But of course it's never going to go away from the series (generally referred to at 'it' despite the fact that by Pokémon's own logic this one is male) and I think he's another all-around character but be sure to use his Thunder attack wisely!

Pikachu is also ja character who has been around so long you just kind of take him for granted but if you take a step back you realise it's just a really good design. Stark yellow and black with the big red cheeks works really well!

Pikachu in Detective Pikachu
I was going to talk a little bit about Pokémon in general and how Pikachu, as mascot, tends to get more attention this his evolution Raichu, so much so that circumstances are contrived to make Pikachu more useful that Raichu or, you know, giving him different hats and stuff.

But then there's the new game Detective Pikachu. I've been playing the new Layton game recently (which I'll talk about later) but that's got a detective as a main character while not really being a detective game. I assume Detective Pikachu will have an actual detective plot and it's not at all a bad idea to make a detective costume for one of Pikachu's variants in Smash. And why not give him a new sound set to accompany it? That would be pretty good, though while I don't know if Detective Pikachu has any special abilities, I wouldn't suggest making him a separate character from this Pikachu.

Still, we'll have to wait and see what exactly happens with that game but with it's own Amiibo I expect some recognition from it.