Okay, this will be my writing about Toon Link and his chances of returning in Super Smash Bros for Wii U and 3DS.
During the Trailer, we got a view of one particular stage that originated from one of the Zelda game's. The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. And it featured the appearance of the main hero of that game. Link.
Now after seeing this image, many people came to the conclusion that this meant that Toon Link has been cut from the game. However, I would argue otherwise about this.
First and foremost, we had something like this happen before where a certain character in name was both a playable character and a stage element in Brawl as well. Meet Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong.
Now you will likely argue that the Donkey Kong in the 75m stage is not Donkey Kong, but Cranky Kong from the Donkey Kong Country series.
Although it is true that he is
now known as Cranky Kong, the original Arcade Cranky Kong is still called Donkey Kong to this very day and Nintendo still refers to the Arcade version as Donkey Kong and not Cranky Kong.
In other words. He is only called Cranky Kong when he looks like the way he is portrayed in the Donkey Kong Country series. Otherwise he is known as Donkey Kong and thus both Donkey Kong's have coexisted alongside each other in Brawl.
Now you will likely say that the both of them are still not the same apes and are both completely different entity's. That is true. But this also rings true for Toon Link. The Toon Link who was playable in Brawl was the one from The Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass. The one we see featured in the Spirit Train is a hero born many years after WW Link and Tetra have found the new land.
In other words, this is
not the Toon Link from Brawl!
Now that we have got that little confusion out of the way. I'd like to analyse the screenshot again in order to get a better understanding of Toon Link's chances for Smash Wii U and 3DS.
There are two things we can notice on this "Toon Link", I'll call him ST Link (Spirit Tracks Link) for now in order to avoid confusions.
Notice how he is not wearing the green tunic as he is driving the Spirit Train? Instead he is sporting the Train Conductors outfit he gets seen in at the beginning of that game. Of course it is possible to optionally wear that outfit once you have shown all the stamps to Niko. Canonically though, he went through his adventure with the Green Tunic Zelda gave to him in order to help her sneak past the guards.
There is also the fact that ST Link is very under detailed compared to what the 3DS system is actually capable of. This could show that Sakurai wanted to have ST Link the way he was shown on the DS game on this stage.
Now why do I bring these two points up? If Toon Link were to return, he will obviously be wearing his green tunic. This is common sense of course. He will also look a lot more like he does in Wind Waker and Brawl as the 3DS is more than capable to produce graphics superior to what the DS could do as you can clearly see in that image between ST Link and TP Link.
The fact that ST Link looks like this and is wearing that outfit and not the green tunic could be chosen to differentiate ST Link and WW Link in order for people to not confuse the two of them as they are playing on that stage.
In other words, even if this is evidence of Toon Link's removal. This can also be evidence of his return.
Of course I'm not saying that this means that Toon Link is
definitely coming back, but this isn't really good enough evidence of him being cut. That's all.
Hope you had a good read. I'm thinking of doing a part 2 with Toon Link and his current two rivals, Young Link and Classic Link but I'm not sure about it yet...
