Lucas

Lucas (, Lucas) is a character in the universe. He is the protagonist of the Japan-only Mother 3 for the Game Boy Advance.

Origin
Lucas' existence had been documented long before Mother 3 was actually finished and given a proper release. A design for the character was first revealed in January 1997 through magazines and a Satellaview broadcast, and a redesign that looks more like his final design was revealed the following June through magazines and E3. The design he ended up having was unveiled with the game's release in April 2006.

The son of and, Lucas is characterized as more timid than his twin brother,. Despite being young, however, he was forced to face a broken family following the death of Hinawa and the disappearance of Claus. While playable briefly during the of Mother 3, he is an NPC for the first three chapters of the game, with Flint,, and  being the main characters of those chapters. After reappearing in the climax of against the, he becomes the main playable character after the three-year time skip to , and retains this role for the remainder of the game.

While he initially leaves his hometown of to locate Duster, he quickly becomes involved in a greater struggle against the. He learns, and his ability to use sets him into a chase against the  to pull the  to awaken the  living under the. Lucas' main party of allies includes Kumatora, Duster, and his beloved pet dog Boney.

In battle, Lucas fills the same archetype as his predecessor Ness did in EarthBound, being somewhat slow, but having a strong basic attack and access to a variety of PSI techniques such as stat boosts,, PK Flash, and the aforementioned PK Love. Whereas the previous Mother protagonists wielded s, Lucas generally wields s.

Lucas' appearances in the Super Smash Bros. series have helped considerably boost his public image but not to the same extent as Ness, though this can be attributed to Lucas appearing only since Brawl. Despite this fact, Lucas became more or less of a mainstream character in gaming culture rather than remaining a curious cult character who would be known only to the highly devoted Nintendo fandom.

In Super Smash Bros. Melee
Masahiro Sakurai planned to replace with Lucas in Super Smash Bros. Melee. This did not happen since Mother 3 for the Nintendo 64 was cancelled, and Ness was retained in Melee instead.

Actually, at first, I planned to change him [Ness] into the protagonist of Mother 3 [Lucas], but for various reasons during the delay, I settled back on the original idea.

Both Ness and Lucas would ultimately appear as playable characters in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

As a playable character
Lucas makes his Super Smash Bros. series debut, and by extension his international debut, in Brawl. His special moves are similar to, but with some key differences. For example, Lucas' PK Thunder goes through opponents and can deal multiple hits, whereas Ness' version disappears on contact. Lucas' Final Smash is PK Starstorm, which he shares with Ness. Lucas also has near-identical physics to Ness. However, the majority of Lucas' moves completely differ from Ness, thus rendering him as a pseudo-clone of his fellow EarthBound series fighter.

Lucas is ranked 30th out of 38 on the tier list, placing him in the E tier. His lower mid-tier placing is primarily due to the additional 10 frames he gets when grab released (a trait he shares with Ness), which makes him vulnerable to grab release follow-ups from every character, including zero-death chain grabs from and.

As a playable character
Although Lucas was not present in the final roster upon Super Smash Bros. 4's initial worldwide release, he was later released as a DLC character on June 14th, 2015. Prior to this, his non-fighter trophy appeared in both versions of the game, while his special moves became available as custom variations for ' respective specials.

Lucas is ranked 28th out of 55 on the tier list, placing him in the C tier. In addition to tying him with, this placing renders him as a high-tier character. Like Ness, Lucas no longer possesses the 10 extra grab release frames, a main contributor to his lower mid-tier position in Brawl.

Rope Snake has become significantly more useful in two ways: the changes to hitstun canceling grant his modified down throw excellent combo potential, while his tether recovery is more reliable thanks to SSB4's new edge mechanics preventing edge-hogging. On a related note, update 1.1.3 presented a significant upgrade to Lucas' grab game, as now his tether grab has noticeably less ending lag, making it reasonably fast for a grab of its nature.

However, Lucas received various nerfs to his damage output, knockback and range, while his useful Magnet Pull and Zap Jump techniques were removed. Overall, Lucas is considerably more viable than he was in Brawl, and he has gained a dedicated playerbase and decent results in competitive play.

As a playable character
Lucas returns as a playable character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as fighter #37. Unlike his previous appearances, he is now an unlockable character.

In his transition from SSB4, Lucas has received a mix of buffs and nerfs. His combo game was toned down due to his down throw having more end lag and footstools being techable. He has received buffs, however, such as PK Freeze launching opponents horizontally making it a lethal edge-guarding technique, furthermore Ultimate's engine indirectly buffed him as the return of directional air dodges allow Lucas to have a reliable mixup in place of PK Thunder.

Initially, Lucas's results and representation were scarce, especially compared to his fellow fighter. However, his playerbase has slowly expanded as the metagame has progressed, with the likes of, , , , and  achieving respectable results at regional and even national tournaments.

Trivia

 * None of Lucas' special moves are used by him in Mother 3. Rather, they are all learned by Kumatora instead. This is similar to Ness, who uses three special moves that he could not learn in EarthBound, but were instead learned by Paula and Poo. However, Lucas's up smash closely resembles the animation used in Mother 3 for him pulling the Seven Needles, a skill associated with PK Love, his signature move.
 * Lucas' normal PSI-based attacks emit hexagonal blasts of PSI, whereas Ness' emit circular blasts.
 * Lucas is the only character to have been a starter (Brawl), DLC (SSB4), and an unlockable character (Ultimate).
 * He, Pokémon Trainer and the Ice Climbers are also the only starter characters to have been cut, and additionally, he is the only character to have been cut from a roster without skipping an installment.
 * Due to being a pseudo-clone, he is also the first clone of any kind to be available by default, announced as DLC, and to not be added late in development prior to debuting in the Super Smash Bros. series.
 * Lucas' home village is transcribed as Tazumili in the NTSC Brawl, but Mother 3 creator Shigesato Itoi stated that the village is Tazmily when written in the Latin alphabet. This was corrected in the PAL release of Brawl and its subsequent installments.
 * In Japanese, Lucas' name is read "Ryuka", which is derived from the French pronunciation of the name, [lyka] ("Lu-ka"). However, the Japanese versions of each game consistently use the English pronunciation /ˈluːkəs/ ("Lu-kis"). This is unlike similar characters such as Lucina and Richter, whose names use differing pronunciations in Japanese.
 * Although Mother 3 never released outside of Japan, Lucas is ironically voiced by Lani Minella, an American actress.
 * Lucas, Ness, Min Min and Kazuya are the only characters to have a reflector outside of special moves. Coincidentally, all (except Kazuya's) are a smash attack.
 * In all of his playable appearances, Lucas is the only character so far with a move (Up smash) that grants both intangibility and invincibility frames.
 * Lucas was the most recently debuted playable character at the time of Brawl's release, with a debut of April 2006.