i personally think pichu wasn't that good. i mean, i think electric types are the most broken type in pokemon, but that's understandable because there is at least only three electric types in every game but how broken is pikachu's thunderbolt in brawl? almost to the point of spamming thunderbolt just to get to 50 in endless brawl. not to mention pichu HURTS himself when using ANY attack! do we need a clone of an already broken character? no. as if melee wasn't broken enough. I don't know what nintendo were on when they were thinking of new characters for Melee.
NINTENDO HEADQUARTERS: TIME OF SUPER SMASH BROTHERS: MELEE
"hurr durr let's put in another pokemanz character in melee just to **** people off. it'll be a clone of pikachu."
"didn't we already use pikachu?"
"yeh but it'll be slightly smaller and we'll call it pikachu's pre evolution, pichu!"
"i like the way you think!"