With its October 3rd release date rapidly approaching, a wave of leaked images and videos may have revealed the final roster for Super Smash Bros 3DS/Wii U. Every time a new Smash Bros is announced a wave of leaks are forged so you can usually take them with a grain of salt, but the wave of evidence of this particular leak and even video proof, which is something we rarely get with those seemingly endless fake Smash Bros leaks, is enough to sway even the heaviest nay-sayers.
If you are someone who enjoys not knowing what characters are available before diving in to the game, this article will contain heavy spoilers.
The leak was posted by an anonymous 4chan user (or group of users) in three separate sets of images and later a short playlist of videos showing gameplay on a 3DS. In them, Smash Bros fans can see several well-known, but as of yet unconfirmed, fighters coming back for another round including Ganandorf, Falco, R.O.B, Mr. Game and Watch, Dr. Mario, Jigglypuff and Ness.
Newcomers shown in the video and in the various leaked screenshots include Bowser Jr, Shulk (from Xenoblade), Dark Pit and the iconic Dog and Bird from Duck Hunt. The latter might seem implausible or at the very least out-of-nowhere for a game that features a lot of the industry’s most popular modern characters, but considering Mr. Game and Watch and R.O.B have been characters in the past and Mega Man has been confirmed for this iteration, it is not a stretch to imagine that Nintendo could be bringing back another classic character that hasn’t gotten much love as of late.
Shulk, while probably not known to many gamers outside of Xenoblade fans, makes a lot of sense with the sequel Xenoblade Chronicles X coming out for the Wii U in 2015. Nintendo has a history of including players from upcoming games in Smash Bros, such as Pit in Smash Bros Brawl who was added to the game years before Kid Icarus: Uprising was even revealed. His eventual model in Brawl turned out to be very similar that in his standalone game.
Dark Pit made his first official appearance in the Nintendo universe as a minor antagonist in 2012’s Kid Icarus: Uprising and, while he was technically not a listed character, a dark colored palette swap of Pit was used in Smash Bros Brawl. He is the literal mirror image of Pit, so it will be interesting to see what developers do to differentiate him from his doppelganger. With the inclusion of Palutena and now Dark Pit, the Kid Icarus franchiseis now one of the better represented ones in the game. Not bad for a series that has one official release in the past decade.
Veteran Smash Bros players likely noticed the absence of a few key fighters in the leaked images, including Star Fox’s foe Star Wolf, and the long-time Smash Bro fighters Ice Climbers among others, but they may be coming in future DLC. The alleged leaker(s) did not provide any kind of proof for the claim that Nintendo will be offering additional characters later on, or what cost if any there would be for them, but they stated that Wolf, Ice Climbers, Lucas, Chorus Men and Snake are all slated for future DLC.
If the leaks are to be believed, this would put the final Smash Bros 3DS/Wii U roster count at 48 – up from Smash Bro Brawl’s 39 characters and Melee’s 25 – and could easily grow larger if Nintendo does in fact decide to offer DLC fighters. This all goes against the rumors when the game was first announced that Nintendo would be trimming back on the characters and even merging similar characters (such as Fox, Falco and Wolf) as palette swaps instead of separate fighters.
In a move that confirms the rumors in minds of many fans, Nintendo has since taken down the YouTube videos showing the fighters and they don’t appear to be re-hosted anywhere. Keep your eyes on MOARGeek and we’ll be sure to update this post when and if a re-hosted version ever re-surfaces.
Smash Bros 3DS is scheduled for October 3rd and the Wii U version is coming sometime this holiday season.
[button type=”link” link=”http://kotaku.com/huge-potential-leak-may-reveal-full-smash-bros-roster-1626455809″ variation=”btn-danger” target=”blank”]Source: Kotaku[/button][button type=”link” link=”http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=878858″” variation=”btn-danger” target=”blank”]Source: NeoGAF[/button]Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
