The summer of 2018 was an exciting one for Nintendo fans. In March a teaser trailer for the newest edition of Super Smash Bros. sent tremors throughout the fandom; rumblings of characters from older iterations of the game returning, speculation of newcomers joining the roster, and general excitement. But everything erupted in June following the release of the "Everyone is here!" trailer.

Everyone is here!

That trailer was a beautiful thing. Beloved characters from dozens of different franchises rendered together and acting on the same screen as one another. One after the other characters were displayed,  their respective roster numbers displayed at the bottom of the screen. At first classic characters and then more recent. Finally Inkling, from Nintendo's hit multiplayer game Splatoon, appeared with the number 67, showing just how large this game's roster was. By the time the trailer's name crossed the screen, Solid Snake from the Metal Gear Solid franchise had been revealed, truly driving home what Nintendo meant.

Everyone is here! 

But with each shiver of excitement came an ache deep in the body. Every exclamation of joy; a scratch in the throat.

Everyone is here!

There is a virus plaguing the Smash community. It has been since Super Smash Bros. Melee first hit the shelves. Sure, a brief remission of this cancer came with the next installment in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, but inevitably it came back, and has continued to slowly kill the Smash Bros. Community.

Dr. Mario is an ulcer. A putrid, festering boil on the otherwise fresh and clear skin of a universally enjoyable franchise. A poor man's Mario (ironic given his profession), this "very dishonorable doctor" encapsulates exactly what one would not want in a crossover fighting game in which a gross amount of the appeal comes with its popular and recognizable characters.

Uninspired and just plain boring, Dr. Mario wields a bare-bones deconstruction of Mario's moveset, with no personal representation outside of his "iconic" pill, which replaces Mario's Fire Flower fireball. Because it wouldn't make sense to include F.L.U.D.D. within his arsenal, Dr. Mario's down-special is instead replaced with a simple tornado, akin to Mario's down-air attack (a vivid and thoughtful representation of Dr. Mario's source material, a medicine based puzzle game). If a Dr. Mario player were to manage a KO ingame and wanted to maybe con robots his momentum by getting inside the head of his opponent, a simple pressing of the Taunt button would have the doctor absentmindedly scratch his shoulder, a victory fanfare ad equally recognizable as Cloud's or Bayonetta's. Of course these advocating must occur center stage, as a Dr. Mario so much as within hearing distance of the risks a slow fall through the bottom of the blast zone.

The Smash Bros. Community must come together as one to "medicate" the disease ailing it and its franchise. There is a cure: a signature.

Remove Dr. Mario from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate before this illness spreads and becomes terminal.