I believe you are mistaken. When the infamous "up until now" quote has been mentioned on he Dojo, it is usually reffering to the exclusion of something/it being changed. See the handicap update. It states that the handicap system as we knew it was replaced and a new one was implemented. See the A combo update. It states that "up until now" A combos could only be done alon by rapidly pressing A, but that now you can hold A. In that instance, it states that they have REMOVED that, and REPLACED it with another one (as in prior games it could only be done only by rapidly pressing A).
Once again, I direct you towards the topic I linked to. Everything you brought up was discussed there in full detail. The handicap
update shows that the system has been changed, yes, but that particular sentence containing the "up until now" quote makes no mention of the handicap system having been changed, so you can't use the "Up until now, handicaps worked like this; now, they work like this" argument. Your reference to the combo update actually works since Sakurai actually suggests that there's a new way to perform combos (he says something to the effect of "combos have been performed primarily by pressing A").
Technicalitities aside, if they added Lucas, and gave him and identical moveset to Ness (Pk frost is a flashy new way of showing PK Flash), why would they keep Ness?
Because for one thing, they don't have identical movesets. Movesets are comprised of more than just special moves, after all; we've already seen that Lucas' standard moves (which make up the bulk of any character moveset, by the way) are very different than Ness. Regardless, Ness is still a popular character in the Mother franchise, arguably more so than Lucas, whose only video game appearance outside of Brawl was in the Japan-exclsuive Mother 3. It's debatable that Lucas has replaced Ness as the face of the series, but since when has there been a quota on how many characters can come from a single franchise?
Now, there is one thing that might support Ness, and that's the fact that the Dojo stated "Ness HAS" not "had" and they stated "AND Lucas is similar" opposed to "but". However, if translated from another language, it's pretty clear that Ness is out.
Really now? Here's that very statement translated into different languages:
French: "You know Ness since its appearance in the series Smash Bros., you will soon adopt Lucas, very similar. They belong to the same family of characters PK."
German: "In the Smash Bros. series a character named Ness appeared so far. Lucas resembles him very much."
Italian: "Lucas is very similar to Ness, a character who has always seemed so far in the series of Smash Bros. Both use the Psico powers."
Spanish: "Surely you agree Ness, a character that appeared in previous editions of Smash Bros. Well, Lucas is very similar to it. In fact, come from the same family of users of [PSI]s."
As I said, it was not a mistranslation. The quote means virtually the same thing in all languages: "Ness has appeared in all previous installments of the SSB series" -
NOT "Ness is not returning in Brawl."
But, the way that Smash Balls can be used more than once, could possibly be the same case with Ness.
The people that assumed that Final Smashes can only be performed once per match either lack basic reading comprehension skills or made a very hasty and ridiculous conclusion after reading the update. The exact quote from the DOJO:
Smash Bros. DOJO!! said:
The Final Smash is a secret skill that can be performed but once…and only after obtaining an item called the Smash Ball, which is a precious item, indeed.
Re: People suggesting that the characters mentioned will be alternate costumes of others: Wario's already been confirmed to be the only characters with an alternate costume.
