New Arms art shakes up everything we thought about the fighters’ limbs

Arms’ biggest selling point is that it’s a fighting game where each character’s body is a weapon. Ribbon Girl has arms that fan out and twirl like, well, ribbons; Spring Man’s arms should be obvious from his name; the disturbing green ... thing Helix has a pair of DNA strands for arms.

This is one of the things we had come to accept about this upcoming Nintendo Switch title, even if we didn’t completely understand it. Official artwork showing another side of the Arms universe threatens to erase everything we thought we knew.

In a picture tweeted by both Nintendo of America and the Japanese Arms Twitter account, three characters from the game are seen outside of the boxing ring. There’s Ribbon Girl, who’s autographing a T-shirt for the game’s mascot, Biff; in the back is Mechanica, seen for the first time outside of her flexible mech suit.

None of them have the stretchy, elongated arms that they’re best known for — Biff aside, that is. (This is the first time we’ve even seen Biff from the neck down.) It was fair to assume that Mechanica had an average body when she wasn’t inside her mech suit, at least. Twintelle, the only person on the roster who uses something other than her limbs to fight — she uses her hair — also has standard-length arms. But Ribbon Girl? We had no way of knowing that those arms aren’t always extended all the way out.

The reaction to the Japanese version of the tweet has been a mixture of elation and confusion.

“NORMAL ARMS !?” wrote one user. “ARMS can revert into regular arms when not in use, good,” said another. “Fan artists don’t have to draw complicated coils in art where they aren’t fighting.”

The reaction that resonates most with us is this one, however:

“This changes everything I thought about their arms.”

Arms is out on June 16, although a free multiplayer beta kicks off this weekend. We look forward to seeing how the rest of the characters look with their limbs at a shorter setting.