Character Roster Global Warming

When a video game first in the series is released, it will often have a slow, powerful fighter or two. However, as the series increases and more characters are added, the number of Mighty Glacier and Stone Wall characters often stays the same, resulting in a gigantic roster with only one or two big heavy guys. Hence, Global Warming.

Compare The Smurfette Principle, which gives this treatment to female characters.

Examples of Character Roster Global Warming include:

• Street Fighter Series:
  • Street Fighter II started with 2 out of 8 (Zangief and E. Honda), then became 3 of 12 (with Balrog being playable now) for the Dash versions, and lastly 4 out of 16 with Super and Thunder Hawk.
  • Street Fighter III started with just Alex, added Hugo and Urien in Second Impact and finally Q in Third Strike for 4 out of 20 characters, which isn't too horrible.
  • Street Fighter Alpha has Birdie, T. Hawk and Zangief, and every other character with this playstyle is fast, such as Rainbow Mika. Sodom, Balrog, and E. Honda aren't much faster, though. Ingrid and Dhalsim are slow, but not particularly strong, instead being more slippery.
  • Street Fighter IV: The original arcade release started with 3 out of 17 (Zangief, E. Honda and Balrog). The console version made that 3 out of 25. Super added T. Hawk and Hakan for 5 out of 35. Arcade Edition takes it to ridiculous levels with 5 out of 39. Hugo in Ultra manages to alleviate that a little, but it's still 6 out of 44. The game is also notable for being one of the few to break the "size reduces speed" attribute with Rufus, one of the reasons why the character is so disliked.
• Marvel Vs Capcom 2 has 56 playable characters and only six characters (Zangief, Anakaris, Colossus, Sentinel, Hulk, Juggernaut) are of the slow-and-strong type.
  • Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is a teeny bit better about this with Haggar, Dormammu, Thor, and to some extent Spencer joining Hulk and Sentinel for 6 slow but strong characters out of 38 total.
    • With the release of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and its 12 new characters, the only new additions who seem to fit this mold are Nemesis and Ghost Rider, making the final ratio 8:50.
• Guilty Gear XX: Around two dozen characters and exactly one big guy (Potemkin).
  • Likewise with Arc System Works' other games, there is only one glacier fighter (Donvalve in Battle Fantasia and Iron Tager in Blaz Blue).
    • However, Hakumen in Blaz Blue is also something of a Mighty Glacier, just the rare example of a smaller-than-usual-sized fighter in that category.
• Mortal Kombat handles this very oddly: every Mighty Glacier in the series is a boss and is only playable in the full cast games (the only exception being Shao Kahn and Goro as a part of roster of the Gamecube version of Deception and Unchained).
• Soulcalibur has four "big" characters (Astaroth, Nightmare, Siegfried, Rock) compared to more than twenty others, though in this case it's because there's only so many big weapons in the world.
  • If one could be generous, Ashlotte and Kamikirimusi (two of the five bonus characters in IV) could count too.
• Tekken usually features two heavy characters, Jack and the bears. Now contrast this with the character roster of Tekken 6 which is gigantic.
  • Ganryo (sumo), Marduk (MMA/Valetudo) and King (luchador) also count as Glaciers, so 5:36
• The King of Fighters started with Goro, Ralf, Clark, and Chang Koehan. It took them about six years to add Maxima, a year to add Seth, three more to add Tizoc, and about another six to add Raiden. Although there have been other grapplers in the series, they have generally always been Fragile Speedsters.
• Melted Glacier example: The Streets of Rage series has had only one slow guy, Max, who was promptly replaced with Lightning Bruiser Dr. Zan and Roo in the third game.
• Averted in Super Smash Bros, where the original Nintendo 64 game had ONE Mighty Glacier (Donkey Kong) out of 12 characters, Melee added two more (Bowser and Ganondorf) in a 26-character roster, and Brawl added Wario (though he's more Acrofatic), ROB, King Dedede, Charizard, Ike (even though he's a Lightning Bruiser in his games), and Solid Snake, for a total of 9 characters out of 39 total. Quite impressive. Ultimate brings us to 25 out of 84.
• Non-Fighting Game example: There's three Mighty Glacier classes in Fire Emblem (out of a dozen or so): The Generals (standard glaciers), Wyvern/Dragon Riders (flying glaciers), and Fighters/Pirates/Brigands (more of HP sponges than anything else, and the last two veer towards Lightning Bruiser). Generally, you only get 1-2 characters of each mentioned class, though if the roster is really big (like in Sword of Seals or Radiant Dawn) you might get 3, or maybe 4 in Generals' case, and some early games don't even feature playable Brigands. Every other physical class tends to have more characters in it, and aside from Paladins, they all are of the Fragile Speedster type to a degree. Also, Dragon Riders generally come from mid-game onwards, generally the last class that will join you aside from Dark Magic users (justified in that they're used by the enemy army). Considering how in Fire Emblem speed really matters, limiting their numbers isn't exactly for Competitive Balance, so...
  • The Laguz from the Tellius games avert this, to a extent: In Radiant Dawn you get a handful of new Laguz besides all the old ones in Path Of Radiance, and most of the new ones are Tigers, Lions, or Dragons, which are of the tanky type. Regular clasess play this straight, however; in fact, the one Berserker on the first Tellius game is the only playable character not coming back for the sequel, and while you get 5 Trueblades, you only get a measly two Reavers, with sentinels and Marksmen being 3 a pop. And yes, they're all "sister" classes, being especialized in a specific weapon type wach.
• Dead or Alive The DOA series only has 3 'big' characters who rely mainly on power and grapples: Bayman, Bass and Leon.
• WWE All Stars features only three "Big Man" class characters: Andre the Giant, The Big Show, and Kane. DLC adds Mark Henry. If one is willing to be generous, one might count The Undertaker and DLC's Dusty Rhodes.