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I'm hoping that Legends Arceus doesn't go copypaste with all the characters and we see some original-looking characters, but Cynthia getting a Legends version or a very similar version is a guarantee with how frickin' popular she is.
Obviouslyly Sora
Now where's the link to make one of these?
Okay I guess. If I had the choice between the two I would pick Rayman since I could consider him an actual character instead of a cardboard box.
I mean, not really?
Sari
) I did say SNK was a good choice for a dark horse pick. Overall, for this game at least I feel I have a good head on my shoulders in terms of where things are going. Why do I bring all that up now? Because right now, I have the same gut feeling that we are going to get one big character at E3 and one smaller third party character afterwards. If I had to bet, I would say that our E3 character is probably going to be Crash at the end of the day.
), who failed to transition well overseas, Crash was a huge success in Japan back in the day. While sales numbers are a bit harder to pinpoint, Activision clearly sees Japan as a market to expand Crash, seeing as they have not only kept up the traditional “cute crash” boxart up until Crash 4, they also are even advertising him like the old Crash commercials. Crash as a result is one of the few Western characters with any strong Japanese demand, from what information I could find on the Japanese smash speculation scene, at least according to what I heard from
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Ayumi Tachibana
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Cranky is historically important and may as well be a newcomer at some point. Him becoming playable in Tropical Freeze is the whole point. Mr. Resetti will always be a staple of Animal Crossing and could bring a unique playstyle like Cranky.
Well, Bandana Dee (for one) is just as important to his own franchise. HAL's been treating him as one of the main characters ever since his playable debut in Return to Dream Land, with him making consistent appearances ever since.
By "historically important", I assume you're referring to the old Rare lore of Cranky being the original DK?
I enjoyed reading your writeup btw, and this is actually a point I heavily agree with in theory. While I personally don’t believe Crash is really part of that field (not expecting any big new third party companies to get involved) I think our options are a bit more confined as the misc Mii costumes pile up and the trends continue to favor companies involved with FP1. I honestly feel like we’ve discussed so many characters where it’s gonna be hard to surprise everyone to the same extent as before anyway.
I would hardly call Resetti a staple at this point. The controversy that arose from parents contacting Nintendo telling them Resetti upset their children literally led to City Folk's European release having a disclaimer warning in the manual about him, followed by an ever-diminishing presence in future games. I don't think it's a coincidence his Assist Trophy was removed after Brawl as well, despite seemingly not being a technical issue.
I mean, I am of the belief that until we do get a tangible double dip, they are on the unlikely side. It just seems to me like it would potentially make negotiations for Nintendo awkward next time, where other companies might try to leverage a double dip as well. If we do get a double dip, that's cool. Chief would be awesome and I am one of the biggest Neku supporters on the site. But at the end of the day, it has not happened in 4's DLC, FP1, or FP2 so far, so with only two spots left I am leaning against a double dip. I personally did not put in a double dip paragraph because I thought most of the community was hesitant of double dips on here as well.
Personally I've never really got the idea on why people thinking double dips wouldn't happen, the logic doesn't make sense. Do you really think Nintendo would care on how much promotion a company got in the same pass? Especially when (in Microsoft's case) that company is very friendly atm.
What a great writeup! I'm excited for the next one.So, we really are nearing the end huh?
E3 is right around the corner, so I figured I would share what I would expect. I so far have been working on two essays of sorts to discuss what I think is going to go down in terms of the roster. Right now, this is focused primarily on E3. There will be a second one discussing CP11 and the potential bonus spot.
I usually display a bit of skepticism when I make a big claim for Smash. I usually hold my tongue as to who I would say is the outright frontrunner or the most likely character. But there have been a few times where I had that gut feeling that someone was coming. I had it for Ridley, K Rool, Hero (although to be fair the datamines and leaks made that an easy assumption), and XC2 content. I also was one of the few people saying everyone was sleeping on Sephiroth and after doing my research (thanks
Full disclaimer, this might end up being wrong. While I am trying to use as much evidence to support my hypothesis that Crash is in Smash, I could be wrong. For all I know, this could just end up being a big nothing burger. E3 is the best spot to reveal Crash. While I personally think he will be there, if he is not Crash is far from the front runner anymore. E3 is the best spot to reveal Crash for a number of reasons. But to be brief, E3 is Crash’s best spot due to Nintendo preferring to show “bigger” reveals there in terms of Smash and his global appeal, albeit stronger Western support. Most of this stuff I will elaborate on further, so I will not go too far in depth here.
Part 1: The field is easy to whittle down.
This part was never going to be fun to write. 99.99999% of the time it is not fun to rub salt in someone’s wounds and say their most wanted is unlikely. But I think, at least in my opinion, the field is a lot smaller than most people give credit. Now before I go deeper, I want to stress that this is my opinion. No one likes anyone telling them their most wanted is not that likely. I will try to back up what I am saying with circumstantial evidence, but at the end of the day this is my opinion. I could easily end up wrong. But I think that personally first parties and most third parties already involved in some way shape or form are not exactly safe bets.
First off, I am skeptical of any first parties coming at this point. Most of the main candidates that would seem like a slam dunk for a slot, such as Officer Howard, Ring Fit, and a Gen 8 Mon, have all been spirited away through Spirit events. I personally think getting a spirit event is a death knell. Why would Nintendo not just…save the spirits for a spirit board. We can further support this argument with the fact Three Houses got nothing in terms of spirits until Byleth got added. Gen 8 is the only major candidate that had it’s spirit event before FP2 was finalized, but even then it was less than a month before it was. In terms of stuff Nintendo can shill, that leaves stuff like Famicon Detective Club, Luigi’s Mansion 3, and if you want to really squint you could push Splatoon 3 ala Octolings but I think it's too close to that ball dropping. Splatoon 3 so far has a vague 2022 release window, while it is certain this pass is ending by the end of the year. It also does not help that Nintendo loves to show off their new hotness via DLC. Using Byleth, Corrin, Min Min, and Pyra as precedent, we can see clearly that Nintendo’s main concern is representing newish stuff. Maybe you could make the case that if we get a new Kirby game this year or we get a new DK game, Dixie or Dee would be likely. But right now, I do not see it. The field of first parties is in a bit of an awkward spot, since for shilling, which is what Nintendo likes to do with DLC first party newcomers, they kind of cleared their own field.
Now, that might make you optimistic on third parties, but that field is equally cleared to an extent. We can see from this Cuphead interview on the Mii Costume that the timeline for these Mii costumes is a lot shorter than we can glean from character negotiations. In late March of 2019, Jason Moldenhauer, Cuphead's co-creator, was not under NDA. With that information, we can guess that Mii Costume negotiations take place far after character negotiations. It also is clear there is at least some preference for releasing Mii costumes with a character from that franchise or at the very least afterwards. Cuphead came after Banjo came out, the Sonic miis came with Joker, Square miis and SNK miis were exclusively with their characters. As a result, I think that getting Miis is a bad sign for a character. Why wouldn’t they just come with the character? Taking all this into account, I would say that newcomers from Konami, Capcom, Namco, Ubisoft, and Bethesda are not that likely. I think it is also safe to throw Microsoft and Square in that lot, since they already got newcomers this Fighters Pass. That just leaves Sega and SNK. SNK is easy to throw out due to how all in they went for Terry. Why wouldn’t they just save some KOF or Metal Slug content for a KOF or Metal Slug character? That just leaves Sega as the sole third party invested in the game that I would argue that a character is not that unlikely from. Eggman, arguably the biggest character Sega could put forward, has issues with the cheer theory that has been floated around. Essentially, only the Japanese, East Asian, and American teams were recontracted for S2 so far. This puts Eggman in a bind due to his different names throughout Europe. As for the rest of Sega’s catalog, I think franchises like Puyo Puyo or SMT would be more likely for CP11 than an E3 CP 10 reveal.
Part 2 E3 is kind of a big deal
This part was originally not going to be its own section, but after seeing some people attempt to say that E3=/=relatively big Smash reveal, I had to include it. Nintendo has always put at least some larger significance on E3 for reveals.
One of the two main arguments I have seen against this is Min Min being revealed last June. First off, due to obvious reasons, E3 as a whole and game development shifted significantly early last year. I think we can assume if production was not delayed, we would have at least gotten a teaser for Steve and a full release in October. But it also helps that there wasn’t even much of an E3 that year anyway, due to the pandemic. I think it is relatively safe to say due to the massive surrounding circumstances that this one gets a bit of a pass.
Outside of that, every E3 Smash has been notably big in terms of announcements for Smash. E3 2013 brought Villager and Mega Man. AC, while massive now, was still huge then and one of the biggest additions in Smash 4’s roster in terms of first parties. Mega Man meanwhile was one of, if not the most requested third party for Smash 4. While WFT is certainly smaller despite how successful Wii Fit was, those two do show strong evidence that E3 is a big deal. 2014 brought the Miis, Palutena, and Pac-Man. Nintendo clearly thought the Miis would be quite popular, given the trailer they gave them explaining them. Palutena and Pac-Man though give us much more ammo. Palutena was revealed in the Nintendo direct that year. I saw some people arguing that she was evidence that E3 was friendly for smaller reveals. I assume that they were not around in Smash 4 speculation, because Palutena was one of the most popular requests in Smash 4. And I should not have to explain why Pac-Man being at E3 was a big deal. E3 2015 Nintendo gave us Roy, a fan favorite cut veteran, and Ryu, the definitive fighting game character. Jumping to Ultimate, E3 2018 was basically a glorified smash direct for Nintendo. Everyone was here, they showed off a ton of changes they were making to the game, and arguably the biggest (no pun intended) fan request in the West showed up at E3 hitting the big time. E3 2019 also was huge. Dragon Quest is notably huge in Japan, while Banjo was one of, if not the overall, most requested newcomers for Ultimate, especially after Ridley, K Rool, and to a lesser extent Simon all got confirmed.
With this in mind, I think that we can expect something relatively big for the E3 reveal, especially given what we have gotten in the past. Whether the reveal was big for the hardcore smash fandom like Mega Man, Palutena, Ridley, Banjo, Roy, Everyone is Here, or Hero for the Japanese fans, or big for gaming as a whole like Villager, Pac-Man, Ryu, and arguably Hero, E3 is kind of a big deal.
Part 3 Crash, in a Crash write up? Blasphemy!
After setting the stage a little bit, let's begin discussing Crash. It's only fitting we start with the PS1. The original Playstation is honestly a landmark system in gaming as a whole. So many classic franchises grew their chops there. Heck, we already have a few of its biggest faces here with Cloud, Sephiroth, and Snake. The PS1 dominated its generation, outselling the N64 3 to 1 , and bullying the Saturn out of the American and European markets (although Sega making some stupid decisions did not help them out). What was originally designed as essentially a SNES CD add on would dominate the market and bring Sony to the forefront.
Bringing up the PS1 is important first because Crash is synonymous with the Playstation. While this is purely a heuristic example, I can recall dozens of times people on this forum explicitly believing he was owned by Sony to this day. That is how strong Crash’s connection to Sony is. Heck, if you wanted to nettle, you could say that the Crash 4 PS5-PS4 deal that was such a big deal it was the opening reveal of the State of Play and the timed exclusive nature of the N Sane Trilogy still shows Crash still is associated with the Sony brand to this day. Sales wise, this makes sense. Crash was up there with Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, Gran Tursimo, and Tekken in terms of sales. Heck, the numbers of the Crash games 25.53 mil) are closer to Tomb Raider (25.9 Mil) and Final Fantasy (26.39 mil). While sales figures are not everything, I think it is important to reflect on how big these sales figures are.
One thing that helped Crash out a ton in this era is that he did quite well for himself in Japan. Western franchises do not often take off in Japan. Sadly a great example of this is Spyro, which attempted to tool itself to the Japanese market and failed spectacularly. Do not look up Japanese Spyro 1, it is legit painful. Crash, however, actually did quite well for himself in Japan. Japanese Sony executives forced a redesign in order to be cuter and more appealing to Japanese fans. Sales figures, such as this one for Crash 2, show that Crash did actually do pretty good there for a Western franchise, being the highest selling Western game at the time.
Sales figures and pop culture reach is one thing, but it also helps that the Crash games were synonymous with the Playstation due to how they handled 3D. Now, it is no secret that the N64 natively handled 3D a bit better than the PS1. The PS1 often forced devs to cheat a bit to conquer long load times or other hurdles the platform had. But leave it to Naughty Dog to figure out a way to make Crash run on the PS1 so well. Naughty Dog employed a few unique programming tricks to make it so Crash could render its environments and animations well and have minimal load times for the time. In fact, people at E3 1996 did not believe that Crash was actually running on the PS1, and Naughty Dog had to have some sort of new model or computers behind its display.
Essentially, through being at the right place at the right time, Crash took up his role as one of the PS1’s defining faces. If you ask people to name franchises from the original playstation, odds are they will mention Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, Crash Bandicoot, and Metal Gear Solid first due to how synonymous they are with the platform. By the virtue of timing, pushing the system to its limits, and a good marketing campaign, Crash managed to secure his spot among the A List on the PS1.
Sadly, Crash died for 16 years after Crash Bash.
...
Ok that’s a bold faced lie, although some people love to say that. Even going by the limited sales figures we have of this era of Crash, its safe to say that Crash shipped ~14 or so million units during this timeframe. Now, opinions on the games of this era are mixed to say the least. As a personal aside, the ones that I actually like are Crash Twinsanity, Nitro Kart, and his first 2 GBA adventures which in my opinion are quite underrated. But a lot of people love to cite that Crash was functionally dead since 2000 when that just is not the case. If we were going by when a franchise was in its glory days for when it was alive, Sonic would look quite stark too. 14 million in sales is not anything to scoff at for an era. That being said, Crash would go dormant after a while due to the attempted reboot with the Titans games did not take off. While there were attempts to revive the brand, such as with Crash Landed, Crash would go dormant after Crash Mind Over Mutant.
Crash was dormant for quite a while, sitting out the Smash 4 era altogether, until in 2016 his revival was announced. Crash 1, 2 and Warped would be remastered from the ground up. I think N Sane is important to highlight just due to how well it catapulted Crash into the public eye once again. N Sane sold well over 10 million copies worldwide. For a franchise that has been dormant for almost a decade to come back in such a big way is nothing to scoff at. While it is not technically Crash, Spyro’s revival did well for itself, 5 million units is nothing to scoff at and since the two franchises are linked at the hip, it further shows N Sane’s success. CTR numbers are hard to track down, but from what we can grasp the game did well for itself. Heck, Crash 4, despite us having limited sales data for the game, still did quite well, topping the UK sales charts its month of release for instance. Crash on the Run also has done quite well for itself to boot. As of the N Sane Trilogy in 2019, Crash sold ~50 million units, and this does not factor in CTR or Crash 4. I think it is safe to say that for now at least, Crash is back.
This happened as I was in the middle of writing this, but Activision released an investors report that said that Crash 4 sold well above expectations. (page 41) Obviously, this has next to no impact on smash, but it further puts fuel on the fire that Crash is not disappearing anytime soon. There are also the large amount of info we have heard supposedly about Wumpa League, but the finer details are still unknown to the public at the time of writing.
Part 4 Crash for Smash
So after describing the whole Crash saga, why should he be seen as a front runner? Well for starters, timing wise Crash actually ends up looking good. N Sane being such a huge hit in 2017 really puts him in a perfect spot to be considered. Combine that with CTR NF being a huge hit in 2019 and the timeline looks solid for Crash already: he is a big name that clearly has come back at that point in time. Granted, timing is not everything, but the timing for Crash’s consideration is certainly something to note.
Now, I mentioned earlier how I personally think that the amount of competition that Crash might have is a lot slimmer than some people might think. But one thing almost everyone can agree is that Crash is the Activision frontrunner by a country mile. While there is some competition like say Tracer or a WoW character, Crash just stands head and shoulders for a variety of reasons. He is super popular as I will discuss shortly, but I think the bigger factor is that most of the other main frontrunners for reps have such a strong association with PC gaming. PC gaming, for a long litany of reasons, is just not the same in Japan as it is in the west, and that is to the detriment of say Tracer. The PC scene is just very different in Japan than it is in America. While PC gaming is making a comeback in Japan, the fact of the matter is that for a while it was not in the greatest shape. Now, Steve has shown that a character with strong PC roots can get into smash, but I feel that gun to my head I would bet on Crash over any other Activision character for that and for other reasons.
It also does not help that Crash is such an icon of the PS1 globally. I already stressed this earlier, but the PS1 is a huge deal in terms of gaming history, and Crash was at the center of it. To many people both here and in Japan, Crash was one of the PS1’s mascots. Unlike Spyro (
Next up, it’s the obligatory discussion on fan demand. While fan demand has been a touchy subject for Smash speculation, for Ultimate at least it seems to have had a strong effect. Obviously, with Everyone is Here, K Rool, and Ridley making it into this game, fan demand was always going to be in the back of people’s minds. But so many newcomer choices have some degree of fan demand in them. In the base game, the Belmonts, Chrom, Dark Samus, and to a lesser extent Inkling and Isabelle were either fan favorites or were in due to the ballot according to Sakurai. Even if we just go by DLC, Steve was a popular choice in many circles, last E3 was huge with Dragon Quest for Japan and Banjo for the West, and Xenoblade getting content was super popular in Japan. While they were not exactly demanded in the conventional way, Sephiroth and Joker both got rave reception. You can also lump Terry in here due to his popularity in Latin America and his positive reception after people learned who he was, but even then the numbers are kind of lopsided towards fan demand. Essentially, for this smash game at least, Sakurai and his team have a solid finger on the pulse for what the public as a whole would want. Does that mean that everyone’s most wanted will get in? No, fan demand is not infallible, as Waluigi or Geno could attest. But at the very least, fan demand and pleasing the crowd seems to be on the minds of Sakurai and the development team.
How does this benefit Crash? Well, Crash has had a slow moving coup over speculation as a whole. I have been supporting Crash since 2014, but honestly its amazing how quickly Crash has managed to grow his support as time went on. Crash over the past three years of speculation has gone from a slight dark horse to the outright front runner. Crash does exceedingly well in fan polls. Now, fan polls are not perfect, but the general trend at least suggests Crash is a big fan favorite. Heck, I know so many people in this thread are sick of talking about Crash because of how discussed he can be. Crash is almost inescapable in terms of Smash speculation. I personally like to point to Source Gaming in terms of the gold standard for polling in speculation. (Also Crash did quite well for himself on their poll) If you are looking for someone to be a huge crowd pleaser, Crash is a strong choice.
(Originally, this was going to not be in this essay, but I saw people saying that this pass had a lot of curveballs, and to that I personally disagree. I think I can say without any hesitation that the Aegis and Steve were not curveballs. While the community was predicting Rex, the fact Sakurai went over why he could not do Rex shows that the community was right on the money for XC2. Steve, while never the single most popular request, was a solid A Tier request that was quite popular and Minecraft’s place in the cultural zeitgeist can not be ignored. Finally, ARMS also benefited a lot in the early speculation on FP2 due to Sakurai’s interview where he said XC2 and ARMS barely missed the boat. Some used this interview as ammo against Rex, while others pointed to it potentially leading to more down the road. Due to the fact there was enough discussion on this, I do not view it as a curveball. That leaves the big bad himself, Sephiroth. Now full disclosure, I was one of the few people saying everyone was sleeping on Sephiroth, but I think everyone and their mother was predicting some form of Square rep anyway. Overall, I would say at least right now, this pass has been a lot easier to predict than last pass.)
As I mentioned above, Crash is also a strong choice due to his global popularity. Japanese Smash requests do tend to look different from Western smash requests, but some of the usual suspects will show up overseas. However, Crash is notable for being a somewhat frequent request. In fact, he is one of the extremely small number of Western characters discussed highly abroad, with them also seeing him as a frontrunner.
Heck, Nintendo even seems to have at least some vested interest in Crash. Nintendo put Crash in this video of big family friendly games for their platform that would be used in ads, while they have no shortage of the likes to promote. Now obviously, there was likely some sort of agreement from Activision for that ad to fly, but Nintendo didn’t need to put Crash there. There are plenty of family friendly titles they could have pushed, such as Luigi’s Mansion 3, instead of Crash.
Part 4.5 The Five Year Plan
It would not be a Crash write up if I did not mention the five year plan leak. Now, I want to stress that this has no impact on my writeup as a whole, and while Activision text leaks are common this leak is still unconfirmed. I will stress that while we do know that there was indeed a five year plan for Crash, we do not know what said five year plan was. The leak in question is a claim of what it is. According to this leak, the five year plan's rumored contents were the following.
2017: N Sane
2018: Reignited
2019: CTR
2020: Crash 4 and Crash Mobile
2021: Crash in Smash Bros
As of now, most of this stuff lines up, especially given that Crash On the Run was delayed. But at the same time, it does not mention anything else that could be happening for Crash. There is at least some evidence that Crash is getting something else this year for his anniversary, the most commonly rumored thing is “Wumpa League”. The Crash Cartoon that Activision backed out of further supports that this might not be the end all be all of Crash. Essentially, while this leak has gotten things right so far, it is not gospel. What we do know is that there was a five year plan, the contents are just what is rumored. While I think Crash is the frontrunner, this leak has nothing to do with that position. Even without the Five Year Plan I would end up saying Crash was the most likely choice. But I feel it would not be thorough if I did not at least mention it and discuss how it is not a guarantee on Crash being in.
Part 5 E3 2021
As stated in the last part, Crash is a big deal. But it also helps that at least in my eyes, a lot of other “big deal” characters either have spirits, miis, or something making their inclusion less likely. Chief has the issue of double dipping on Microsoft and Hayabusa has his interview issues, but look at our other options. Dante? Capcom Mii costumes. Rayman? Aside from his list of other issues, Ubisoft Miis in early 2020. Sol Badguy? Arc Sys spirits. The field of viable candidates shrinks to such a degree that Crash stands out even more due to who is involved in the game. Many big E3 candidates just have these overarching issues.
Here are a few other candidates that I think could show up at E3, given that imo the pool is a lot smaller than people think it is.
Honestly, the pool shrinks so much when you look at who has these massive hurdles in terms of getting in. Combined with everything I said before on the case for Crash, Crash just seems like a strong choice for E3.
- League of Legends Rep
- Fortnite Rep
- Tracer
- Sora?
Part 6 What’s next?
Well, after Crash you basically can make an argument of whoever is the ending character. You could talk about the supposed bonus slot on the Australian website and say we could get something else. You could still hold out hope for a FP3. The one thing that I will say is that I think it is almost certain CP11 will not be a big hype character.
Yes, that does mean that E3 is Crash’s best shot. Unless CP10 comes before E3, which I doubt, CP11 will not likely be a big character. So yeah, if Crash is not the E3 reveal in my opinion his chances plummet.
I actually was going to talk about CP11 in this essay, but I went so long that I ended up thinking that it would be best to do a separate essay on that. For now, here is a quick teaser…
I think I sourced everything I needed to, but I might edit in a few sources for this. I had a lot of fun trying to make this case and I hope you all enjoy it.
Wonder how many of them actually had children and it wasn't just them ticked off that they weren't alot to "cheat" at Animal Crossing without a long scolding.
Pretty good arguments you got there; it's restored some hope for me in regards to Crash Joining the Battle. :DSo, we really are nearing the end huh?
E3 is right around the corner, so I figured I would share what I would expect. I so far have been working on two essays of sorts to discuss what I think is going to go down in terms of the roster. Right now, this is focused primarily on E3. There will be a second one discussing CP11 and the potential bonus spot.
I usually display a bit of skepticism when I make a big claim for Smash. I usually hold my tongue as to who I would say is the outright frontrunner or the most likely character. But there have been a few times where I had that gut feeling that someone was coming. I had it for Ridley, K Rool, Hero (although to be fair the datamines and leaks made that an easy assumption), and XC2 content. I also was one of the few people saying everyone was sleeping on Sephiroth and after doing my research (thanks
Full disclaimer, this might end up being wrong. While I am trying to use as much evidence to support my hypothesis that Crash is in Smash, I could be wrong. For all I know, this could just end up being a big nothing burger. E3 is the best spot to reveal Crash. While I personally think he will be there, if he is not Crash is far from the front runner anymore. E3 is the best spot to reveal Crash for a number of reasons. But to be brief, E3 is Crash’s best spot due to Nintendo preferring to show “bigger” reveals there in terms of Smash and his global appeal, albeit stronger Western support. Most of this stuff I will elaborate on further, so I will not go too far in depth here.
Part 1: The field is easy to whittle down.
This part was never going to be fun to write. 99.99999% of the time it is not fun to rub salt in someone’s wounds and say their most wanted is unlikely. But I think, at least in my opinion, the field is a lot smaller than most people give credit. Now before I go deeper, I want to stress that this is my opinion. No one likes anyone telling them their most wanted is not that likely. I will try to back up what I am saying with circumstantial evidence, but at the end of the day this is my opinion. I could easily end up wrong. But I think that personally first parties and most third parties already involved in some way shape or form are not exactly safe bets.
First off, I am skeptical of any first parties coming at this point. Most of the main candidates that would seem like a slam dunk for a slot, such as Officer Howard, Ring Fit, and a Gen 8 Mon, have all been spirited away through Spirit events. I personally think getting a spirit event is a death knell. Why would Nintendo not just…save the spirits for a spirit board. We can further support this argument with the fact Three Houses got nothing in terms of spirits until Byleth got added. Gen 8 is the only major candidate that had it’s spirit event before FP2 was finalized, but even then it was less than a month before it was. In terms of stuff Nintendo can shill, that leaves stuff like Famicon Detective Club, Luigi’s Mansion 3, and if you want to really squint you could push Splatoon 3 ala Octolings but I think it's too close to that ball dropping. Splatoon 3 so far has a vague 2022 release window, while it is certain this pass is ending by the end of the year. It also does not help that Nintendo loves to show off their new hotness via DLC. Using Byleth, Corrin, Min Min, and Pyra as precedent, we can see clearly that Nintendo’s main concern is representing newish stuff. Maybe you could make the case that if we get a new Kirby game this year or we get a new DK game, Dixie or Dee would be likely. But right now, I do not see it. The field of first parties is in a bit of an awkward spot, since for shilling, which is what Nintendo likes to do with DLC first party newcomers, they kind of cleared their own field.
Now, that might make you optimistic on third parties, but that field is equally cleared to an extent. We can see from this Cuphead interview on the Mii Costume that the timeline for these Mii costumes is a lot shorter than we can glean from character negotiations. In late March of 2019, Jason Moldenhauer, Cuphead's co-creator, was not under NDA. With that information, we can guess that Mii Costume negotiations take place far after character negotiations. It also is clear there is at least some preference for releasing Mii costumes with a character from that franchise or at the very least afterwards. Cuphead came after Banjo came out, the Sonic miis came with Joker, Square miis and SNK miis were exclusively with their characters. As a result, I think that getting Miis is a bad sign for a character. Why wouldn’t they just come with the character? Taking all this into account, I would say that newcomers from Konami, Capcom, Namco, Ubisoft, and Bethesda are not that likely. I think it is also safe to throw Microsoft and Square in that lot, since they already got newcomers this Fighters Pass. That just leaves Sega and SNK. SNK is easy to throw out due to how all in they went for Terry. Why wouldn’t they just save some KOF or Metal Slug content for a KOF or Metal Slug character? That just leaves Sega as the sole third party invested in the game that I would argue that a character is not that unlikely from. Eggman, arguably the biggest character Sega could put forward, has issues with the cheer theory that has been floated around. Essentially, only the Japanese, East Asian, and American teams were recontracted for S2 so far. This puts Eggman in a bind due to his different names throughout Europe. As for the rest of Sega’s catalog, I think franchises like Puyo Puyo or SMT would be more likely for CP11 than an E3 CP 10 reveal.
Part 2 E3 is kind of a big deal
This part was originally not going to be its own section, but after seeing some people attempt to say that E3=/=relatively big Smash reveal, I had to include it. Nintendo has always put at least some larger significance on E3 for reveals.
One of the two main arguments I have seen against this is Min Min being revealed last June. First off, due to obvious reasons, E3 as a whole and game development shifted significantly early last year. I think we can assume if production was not delayed, we would have at least gotten a teaser for Steve and a full release in October. But it also helps that there wasn’t even much of an E3 that year anyway, due to the pandemic. I think it is relatively safe to say due to the massive surrounding circumstances that this one gets a bit of a pass.
Outside of that, every E3 Smash has been notably big in terms of announcements for Smash. E3 2013 brought Villager and Mega Man. AC, while massive now, was still huge then and one of the biggest additions in Smash 4’s roster in terms of first parties. Mega Man meanwhile was one of, if not the most requested third party for Smash 4. While WFT is certainly smaller despite how successful Wii Fit was, those two do show strong evidence that E3 is a big deal. 2014 brought the Miis, Palutena, and Pac-Man. Nintendo clearly thought the Miis would be quite popular, given the trailer they gave them explaining them. Palutena and Pac-Man though give us much more ammo. Palutena was revealed in the Nintendo direct that year. I saw some people arguing that she was evidence that E3 was friendly for smaller reveals. I assume that they were not around in Smash 4 speculation, because Palutena was one of the most popular requests in Smash 4. And I should not have to explain why Pac-Man being at E3 was a big deal. E3 2015 Nintendo gave us Roy, a fan favorite cut veteran, and Ryu, the definitive fighting game character. Jumping to Ultimate, E3 2018 was basically a glorified smash direct for Nintendo. Everyone was here, they showed off a ton of changes they were making to the game, and arguably the biggest (no pun intended) fan request in the West showed up at E3 hitting the big time. E3 2019 also was huge. Dragon Quest is notably huge in Japan, while Banjo was one of, if not the overall, most requested newcomers for Ultimate, especially after Ridley, K Rool, and to a lesser extent Simon all got confirmed.
With this in mind, I think that we can expect something relatively big for the E3 reveal, especially given what we have gotten in the past. Whether the reveal was big for the hardcore smash fandom like Mega Man, Palutena, Ridley, Banjo, Roy, Everyone is Here, or Hero for the Japanese fans, or big for gaming as a whole like Villager, Pac-Man, Ryu, and arguably Hero, E3 is kind of a big deal.
Part 3 Crash, in a Crash write up? Blasphemy!
After setting the stage a little bit, let's begin discussing Crash. It's only fitting we start with the PS1. The original Playstation is honestly a landmark system in gaming as a whole. So many classic franchises grew their chops there. Heck, we already have a few of its biggest faces here with Cloud, Sephiroth, and Snake. The PS1 dominated its generation, outselling the N64 3 to 1 , and bullying the Saturn out of the American and European markets (although Sega making some stupid decisions did not help them out). What was originally designed as essentially a SNES CD add on would dominate the market and bring Sony to the forefront.
Bringing up the PS1 is important first because Crash is synonymous with the Playstation. While this is purely a heuristic example, I can recall dozens of times people on this forum explicitly believing he was owned by Sony to this day. That is how strong Crash’s connection to Sony is. Heck, if you wanted to nettle, you could say that the Crash 4 PS5-PS4 deal that was such a big deal it was the opening reveal of the State of Play and the timed exclusive nature of the N Sane Trilogy still shows Crash still is associated with the Sony brand to this day. Sales wise, this makes sense. Crash was up there with Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, Gran Tursimo, and Tekken in terms of sales. Heck, the numbers of the Crash games 25.53 mil) are closer to Tomb Raider (25.9 Mil) and Final Fantasy (26.39 mil). While sales figures are not everything, I think it is important to reflect on how big these sales figures are.
One thing that helped Crash out a ton in this era is that he did quite well for himself in Japan. Western franchises do not often take off in Japan. Sadly a great example of this is Spyro, which attempted to tool itself to the Japanese market and failed spectacularly. Do not look up Japanese Spyro 1, it is legit painful. Crash, however, actually did quite well for himself in Japan. Japanese Sony executives forced a redesign in order to be cuter and more appealing to Japanese fans. Sales figures, such as this one for Crash 2, show that Crash did actually do pretty good there for a Western franchise, being the highest selling Western game at the time.
Sales figures and pop culture reach is one thing, but it also helps that the Crash games were synonymous with the Playstation due to how they handled 3D. Now, it is no secret that the N64 natively handled 3D a bit better than the PS1. The PS1 often forced devs to cheat a bit to conquer long load times or other hurdles the platform had. But leave it to Naughty Dog to figure out a way to make Crash run on the PS1 so well. Naughty Dog employed a few unique programming tricks to make it so Crash could render its environments and animations well and have minimal load times for the time. In fact, people at E3 1996 did not believe that Crash was actually running on the PS1, and Naughty Dog had to have some sort of new model or computers behind its display.
Essentially, through being at the right place at the right time, Crash took up his role as one of the PS1’s defining faces. If you ask people to name franchises from the original playstation, odds are they will mention Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, Crash Bandicoot, and Metal Gear Solid first due to how synonymous they are with the platform. By the virtue of timing, pushing the system to its limits, and a good marketing campaign, Crash managed to secure his spot among the A List on the PS1.
Sadly, Crash died for 16 years after Crash Bash.
...
Ok that’s a bold faced lie, although some people love to say that. Even going by the limited sales figures we have of this era of Crash, its safe to say that Crash shipped ~14 or so million units during this timeframe. Now, opinions on the games of this era are mixed to say the least. As a personal aside, the ones that I actually like are Crash Twinsanity, Nitro Kart, and his first 2 GBA adventures which in my opinion are quite underrated. But a lot of people love to cite that Crash was functionally dead since 2000 when that just is not the case. If we were going by when a franchise was in its glory days for when it was alive, Sonic would look quite stark too. 14 million in sales is not anything to scoff at for an era. That being said, Crash would go dormant after a while due to the attempted reboot with the Titans games did not take off. While there were attempts to revive the brand, such as with Crash Landed, Crash would go dormant after Crash Mind Over Mutant.
Crash was dormant for quite a while, sitting out the Smash 4 era altogether, until in 2016 his revival was announced. Crash 1, 2 and Warped would be remastered from the ground up. I think N Sane is important to highlight just due to how well it catapulted Crash into the public eye once again. N Sane sold well over 10 million copies worldwide. For a franchise that has been dormant for almost a decade to come back in such a big way is nothing to scoff at. While it is not technically Crash, Spyro’s revival did well for itself, 5 million units is nothing to scoff at and since the two franchises are linked at the hip, it further shows N Sane’s success. CTR numbers are hard to track down, but from what we can grasp the game did well for itself. Heck, Crash 4, despite us having limited sales data for the game, still did quite well, topping the UK sales charts its month of release for instance. Crash on the Run also has done quite well for itself to boot. As of the N Sane Trilogy in 2019, Crash sold ~50 million units, and this does not factor in CTR or Crash 4. I think it is safe to say that for now at least, Crash is back.
This happened as I was in the middle of writing this, but Activision released an investors report that said that Crash 4 sold well above expectations. (page 41) Obviously, this has next to no impact on smash, but it further puts fuel on the fire that Crash is not disappearing anytime soon. There are also the large amount of info we have heard supposedly about Wumpa League, but the finer details are still unknown to the public at the time of writing.
Part 4 Crash for Smash
So after describing the whole Crash saga, why should he be seen as a front runner? Well for starters, timing wise Crash actually ends up looking good. N Sane being such a huge hit in 2017 really puts him in a perfect spot to be considered. Combine that with CTR NF being a huge hit in 2019 and the timeline looks solid for Crash already: he is a big name that clearly has come back at that point in time. Granted, timing is not everything, but the timing for Crash’s consideration is certainly something to note.
Now, I mentioned earlier how I personally think that the amount of competition that Crash might have is a lot slimmer than some people might think. But one thing almost everyone can agree is that Crash is the Activision frontrunner by a country mile. While there is some competition like say Tracer or a WoW character, Crash just stands head and shoulders for a variety of reasons. He is super popular as I will discuss shortly, but I think the bigger factor is that most of the other main frontrunners for reps have such a strong association with PC gaming. PC gaming, for a long litany of reasons, is just not the same in Japan as it is in the west, and that is to the detriment of say Tracer. The PC scene is just very different in Japan than it is in America. While PC gaming is making a comeback in Japan, the fact of the matter is that for a while it was not in the greatest shape. Now, Steve has shown that a character with strong PC roots can get into smash, but I feel that gun to my head I would bet on Crash over any other Activision character for that and for other reasons.
It also does not help that Crash is such an icon of the PS1 globally. I already stressed this earlier, but the PS1 is a huge deal in terms of gaming history, and Crash was at the center of it. To many people both here and in Japan, Crash was one of the PS1’s mascots. Unlike Spyro (
Next up, it’s the obligatory discussion on fan demand. While fan demand has been a touchy subject for Smash speculation, for Ultimate at least it seems to have had a strong effect. Obviously, with Everyone is Here, K Rool, and Ridley making it into this game, fan demand was always going to be in the back of people’s minds. But so many newcomer choices have some degree of fan demand in them. In the base game, the Belmonts, Chrom, Dark Samus, and to a lesser extent Inkling and Isabelle were either fan favorites or were in due to the ballot according to Sakurai. Even if we just go by DLC, Steve was a popular choice in many circles, last E3 was huge with Dragon Quest for Japan and Banjo for the West, and Xenoblade getting content was super popular in Japan. While they were not exactly demanded in the conventional way, Sephiroth and Joker both got rave reception. You can also lump Terry in here due to his popularity in Latin America and his positive reception after people learned who he was, but even then the numbers are kind of lopsided towards fan demand. Essentially, for this smash game at least, Sakurai and his team have a solid finger on the pulse for what the public as a whole would want. Does that mean that everyone’s most wanted will get in? No, fan demand is not infallible, as Waluigi or Geno could attest. But at the very least, fan demand and pleasing the crowd seems to be on the minds of Sakurai and the development team.
How does this benefit Crash? Well, Crash has had a slow moving coup over speculation as a whole. I have been supporting Crash since 2014, but honestly its amazing how quickly Crash has managed to grow his support as time went on. Crash over the past three years of speculation has gone from a slight dark horse to the outright front runner. Crash does exceedingly well in fan polls. Now, fan polls are not perfect, but the general trend at least suggests Crash is a big fan favorite. Heck, I know so many people in this thread are sick of talking about Crash because of how discussed he can be. Crash is almost inescapable in terms of Smash speculation. I personally like to point to Source Gaming in terms of the gold standard for polling in speculation. (Also Crash did quite well for himself on their poll) If you are looking for someone to be a huge crowd pleaser, Crash is a strong choice.
(Originally, this was going to not be in this essay, but I saw people saying that this pass had a lot of curveballs, and to that I personally disagree. I think I can say without any hesitation that the Aegis and Steve were not curveballs. While the community was predicting Rex, the fact Sakurai went over why he could not do Rex shows that the community was right on the money for XC2. Steve, while never the single most popular request, was a solid A Tier request that was quite popular and Minecraft’s place in the cultural zeitgeist can not be ignored. Finally, ARMS also benefited a lot in the early speculation on FP2 due to Sakurai’s interview where he said XC2 and ARMS barely missed the boat. Some used this interview as ammo against Rex, while others pointed to it potentially leading to more down the road. Due to the fact there was enough discussion on this, I do not view it as a curveball. That leaves the big bad himself, Sephiroth. Now full disclosure, I was one of the few people saying everyone was sleeping on Sephiroth, but I think everyone and their mother was predicting some form of Square rep anyway. Overall, I would say at least right now, this pass has been a lot easier to predict than last pass.)
As I mentioned above, Crash is also a strong choice due to his global popularity. Japanese Smash requests do tend to look different from Western smash requests, but some of the usual suspects will show up overseas. However, Crash is notable for being a somewhat frequent request. In fact, he is one of the extremely small number of Western characters discussed highly abroad, with them also seeing him as a frontrunner.
Heck, Nintendo even seems to have at least some vested interest in Crash. Nintendo put Crash in this video of big family friendly games for their platform that would be used in ads, while they have no shortage of the likes to promote. Now obviously, there was likely some sort of agreement from Activision for that ad to fly, but Nintendo didn’t need to put Crash there. There are plenty of family friendly titles they could have pushed, such as Luigi’s Mansion 3, instead of Crash.
Part 4.5 The Five Year Plan
It would not be a Crash write up if I did not mention the five year plan leak. Now, I want to stress that this has no impact on my writeup as a whole, and while Activision text leaks are common this leak is still unconfirmed. I will stress that while we do know that there was indeed a five year plan for Crash, we do not know what said five year plan was. The leak in question is a claim of what it is. According to this leak, the five year plan's rumored contents were the following.
2017: N Sane
2018: Reignited
2019: CTR
2020: Crash 4 and Crash Mobile
2021: Crash in Smash Bros
As of now, most of this stuff lines up, especially given that Crash On the Run was delayed. But at the same time, it does not mention anything else that could be happening for Crash. There is at least some evidence that Crash is getting something else this year for his anniversary, the most commonly rumored thing is “Wumpa League”. The Crash Cartoon that Activision backed out of further supports that this might not be the end all be all of Crash. Essentially, while this leak has gotten things right so far, it is not gospel. What we do know is that there was a five year plan, the contents are just what is rumored. While I think Crash is the frontrunner, this leak has nothing to do with that position. Even without the Five Year Plan I would end up saying Crash was the most likely choice. But I feel it would not be thorough if I did not at least mention it and discuss how it is not a guarantee on Crash being in.
Part 5 E3 2021
As stated in the last part, Crash is a big deal. But it also helps that at least in my eyes, a lot of other “big deal” characters either have spirits, miis, or something making their inclusion less likely. Chief has the issue of double dipping on Microsoft and Hayabusa has his interview issues, but look at our other options. Dante? Capcom Mii costumes. Rayman? Aside from his list of other issues, Ubisoft Miis in early 2020. Sol Badguy? Arc Sys spirits. The field of viable candidates shrinks to such a degree that Crash stands out even more due to who is involved in the game. Many big E3 candidates just have these overarching issues.
Here are a few other candidates that I think could show up at E3, given that imo the pool is a lot smaller than people think it is.
Honestly, the pool shrinks so much when you look at who has these massive hurdles in terms of getting in. Combined with everything I said before on the case for Crash, Crash just seems like a strong choice for E3.
- League of Legends Rep
- Fortnite Rep
- Tracer
- Sora?
Part 6 What’s next?
Well, after Crash you basically can make an argument of whoever is the ending character. You could talk about the supposed bonus slot on the Australian website and say we could get something else. You could still hold out hope for a FP3. The one thing that I will say is that I think it is almost certain CP11 will not be a big hype character.
Yes, that does mean that E3 is Crash’s best shot. Unless CP10 comes before E3, which I doubt, CP11 will not likely be a big character. So yeah, if Crash is not the E3 reveal in my opinion his chances plummet.
I actually was going to talk about CP11 in this essay, but I went so long that I ended up thinking that it would be best to do a separate essay on that. For now, here is a quick teaser…
I think I sourced everything I needed to, but I might edit in a few sources for this. I had a lot of fun trying to make this case and I hope you all enjoy it.
I just wish there was just as much skepticism about double dipping as there was skepticism about a first-party not being ultra-recent. Okay, maybe not THAT much skepticism, that's too goddamn much, just a little more skepticism so we don't get disappointed when the E3 reveal isn't Chief.
I second this!
This is a good admit, though maybe it's just me, but it kinda feels a tad bit biased. Like, we know how much you love Crash, so you make some of these points sound like bigger deals than they are. That's probably just me, though.So, we really are nearing the end huh?
E3 is right around the corner, so I figured I would share what I would expect. I so far have been working on two essays of sorts to discuss what I think is going to go down in terms of the roster. Right now, this is focused primarily on E3. There will be a second one discussing CP11 and the potential bonus spot.
I usually display a bit of skepticism when I make a big claim for Smash. I usually hold my tongue as to who I would say is the outright frontrunner or the most likely character. But there have been a few times where I had that gut feeling that someone was coming. I had it for Ridley, K Rool, Hero (although to be fair the datamines and leaks made that an easy assumption), and XC2 content. I also was one of the few people saying everyone was sleeping on Sephiroth and after doing my research (thanks
Full disclaimer, this might end up being wrong. While I am trying to use as much evidence to support my hypothesis that Crash is in Smash, I could be wrong. For all I know, this could just end up being a big nothing burger. E3 is the best spot to reveal Crash. While I personally think he will be there, if he is not Crash is far from the front runner anymore. E3 is the best spot to reveal Crash for a number of reasons. But to be brief, E3 is Crash’s best spot due to Nintendo preferring to show “bigger” reveals there in terms of Smash and his global appeal, albeit stronger Western support. Most of this stuff I will elaborate on further, so I will not go too far in depth here.
Part 1: The field is easy to whittle down.
This part was never going to be fun to write. 99.99999% of the time it is not fun to rub salt in someone’s wounds and say their most wanted is unlikely. But I think, at least in my opinion, the field is a lot smaller than most people give credit. Now before I go deeper, I want to stress that this is my opinion. No one likes anyone telling them their most wanted is not that likely. I will try to back up what I am saying with circumstantial evidence, but at the end of the day this is my opinion. I could easily end up wrong. But I think that personally first parties and most third parties already involved in some way shape or form are not exactly safe bets.
First off, I am skeptical of any first parties coming at this point. Most of the main candidates that would seem like a slam dunk for a slot, such as Officer Howard, Ring Fit, and a Gen 8 Mon, have all been spirited away through Spirit events. I personally think getting a spirit event is a death knell. Why would Nintendo not just…save the spirits for a spirit board. We can further support this argument with the fact Three Houses got nothing in terms of spirits until Byleth got added. Gen 8 is the only major candidate that had it’s spirit event before FP2 was finalized, but even then it was less than a month before it was. In terms of stuff Nintendo can shill, that leaves stuff like Famicon Detective Club, Luigi’s Mansion 3, and if you want to really squint you could push Splatoon 3 ala Octolings but I think it's too close to that ball dropping. Splatoon 3 so far has a vague 2022 release window, while it is certain this pass is ending by the end of the year. It also does not help that Nintendo loves to show off their new hotness via DLC. Using Byleth, Corrin, Min Min, and Pyra as precedent, we can see clearly that Nintendo’s main concern is representing newish stuff. Maybe you could make the case that if we get a new Kirby game this year or we get a new DK game, Dixie or Dee would be likely. But right now, I do not see it. The field of first parties is in a bit of an awkward spot, since for shilling, which is what Nintendo likes to do with DLC first party newcomers, they kind of cleared their own field.
Now, that might make you optimistic on third parties, but that field is equally cleared to an extent. We can see from this Cuphead interview on the Mii Costume that the timeline for these Mii costumes is a lot shorter than we can glean from character negotiations. In late March of 2019, Jason Moldenhauer, Cuphead's co-creator, was not under NDA. With that information, we can guess that Mii Costume negotiations take place far after character negotiations. It also is clear there is at least some preference for releasing Mii costumes with a character from that franchise or at the very least afterwards. Cuphead came after Banjo came out, the Sonic miis came with Joker, Square miis and SNK miis were exclusively with their characters. As a result, I think that getting Miis is a bad sign for a character. Why wouldn’t they just come with the character? Taking all this into account, I would say that newcomers from Konami, Capcom, Namco, Ubisoft, and Bethesda are not that likely. I think it is also safe to throw Microsoft and Square in that lot, since they already got newcomers this Fighters Pass. That just leaves Sega and SNK. SNK is easy to throw out due to how all in they went for Terry. Why wouldn’t they just save some KOF or Metal Slug content for a KOF or Metal Slug character? That just leaves Sega as the sole third party invested in the game that I would argue that a character is not that unlikely from. Eggman, arguably the biggest character Sega could put forward, has issues with the cheer theory that has been floated around. Essentially, only the Japanese, East Asian, and American teams were recontracted for S2 so far. This puts Eggman in a bind due to his different names throughout Europe. As for the rest of Sega’s catalog, I think franchises like Puyo Puyo or SMT would be more likely for CP11 than an E3 CP 10 reveal.
Part 2 E3 is kind of a big deal
This part was originally not going to be its own section, but after seeing some people attempt to say that E3=/=relatively big Smash reveal, I had to include it. Nintendo has always put at least some larger significance on E3 for reveals.
One of the two main arguments I have seen against this is Min Min being revealed last June. First off, due to obvious reasons, E3 as a whole and game development shifted significantly early last year. I think we can assume if production was not delayed, we would have at least gotten a teaser for Steve and a full release in October. But it also helps that there wasn’t even much of an E3 that year anyway, due to the pandemic. I think it is relatively safe to say due to the massive surrounding circumstances that this one gets a bit of a pass.
Outside of that, every E3 Smash has been notably big in terms of announcements for Smash. E3 2013 brought Villager and Mega Man. AC, while massive now, was still huge then and one of the biggest additions in Smash 4’s roster in terms of first parties. Mega Man meanwhile was one of, if not the most requested third party for Smash 4. While WFT is certainly smaller despite how successful Wii Fit was, those two do show strong evidence that E3 is a big deal. 2014 brought the Miis, Palutena, and Pac-Man. Nintendo clearly thought the Miis would be quite popular, given the trailer they gave them explaining them. Palutena and Pac-Man though give us much more ammo. Palutena was revealed in the Nintendo direct that year. I saw some people arguing that she was evidence that E3 was friendly for smaller reveals. I assume that they were not around in Smash 4 speculation, because Palutena was one of the most popular requests in Smash 4. And I should not have to explain why Pac-Man being at E3 was a big deal. E3 2015 Nintendo gave us Roy, a fan favorite cut veteran, and Ryu, the definitive fighting game character. Jumping to Ultimate, E3 2018 was basically a glorified smash direct for Nintendo. Everyone was here, they showed off a ton of changes they were making to the game, and arguably the biggest (no pun intended) fan request in the West showed up at E3 hitting the big time. E3 2019 also was huge. Dragon Quest is notably huge in Japan, while Banjo was one of, if not the overall, most requested newcomers for Ultimate, especially after Ridley, K Rool, and to a lesser extent Simon all got confirmed.
With this in mind, I think that we can expect something relatively big for the E3 reveal, especially given what we have gotten in the past. Whether the reveal was big for the hardcore smash fandom like Mega Man, Palutena, Ridley, Banjo, Roy, Everyone is Here, or Hero for the Japanese fans, or big for gaming as a whole like Villager, Pac-Man, Ryu, and arguably Hero, E3 is kind of a big deal.
Part 3 Crash, in a Crash write up? Blasphemy!
After setting the stage a little bit, let's begin discussing Crash. It's only fitting we start with the PS1. The original Playstation is honestly a landmark system in gaming as a whole. So many classic franchises grew their chops there. Heck, we already have a few of its biggest faces here with Cloud, Sephiroth, and Snake. The PS1 dominated its generation, outselling the N64 3 to 1 , and bullying the Saturn out of the American and European markets (although Sega making some stupid decisions did not help them out). What was originally designed as essentially a SNES CD add on would dominate the market and bring Sony to the forefront.
Bringing up the PS1 is important first because Crash is synonymous with the Playstation. While this is purely a heuristic example, I can recall dozens of times people on this forum explicitly believing he was owned by Sony to this day. That is how strong Crash’s connection to Sony is. Heck, if you wanted to nettle, you could say that the Crash 4 PS5-PS4 deal that was such a big deal it was the opening reveal of the State of Play and the timed exclusive nature of the N Sane Trilogy still shows Crash still is associated with the Sony brand to this day. Sales wise, this makes sense. Crash was up there with Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, Gran Tursimo, and Tekken in terms of sales. Heck, the numbers of the Crash games 25.53 mil) are closer to Tomb Raider (25.9 Mil) and Final Fantasy (26.39 mil). While sales figures are not everything, I think it is important to reflect on how big these sales figures are.
One thing that helped Crash out a ton in this era is that he did quite well for himself in Japan. Western franchises do not often take off in Japan. Sadly a great example of this is Spyro, which attempted to tool itself to the Japanese market and failed spectacularly. Do not look up Japanese Spyro 1, it is legit painful. Crash, however, actually did quite well for himself in Japan. Japanese Sony executives forced a redesign in order to be cuter and more appealing to Japanese fans. Sales figures, such as this one for Crash 2, show that Crash did actually do pretty good there for a Western franchise, being the highest selling Western game at the time.
Sales figures and pop culture reach is one thing, but it also helps that the Crash games were synonymous with the Playstation due to how they handled 3D. Now, it is no secret that the N64 natively handled 3D a bit better than the PS1. The PS1 often forced devs to cheat a bit to conquer long load times or other hurdles the platform had. But leave it to Naughty Dog to figure out a way to make Crash run on the PS1 so well. Naughty Dog employed a few unique programming tricks to make it so Crash could render its environments and animations well and have minimal load times for the time. In fact, people at E3 1996 did not believe that Crash was actually running on the PS1, and Naughty Dog had to have some sort of new model or computers behind its display.
Essentially, through being at the right place at the right time, Crash took up his role as one of the PS1’s defining faces. If you ask people to name franchises from the original playstation, odds are they will mention Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, Crash Bandicoot, and Metal Gear Solid first due to how synonymous they are with the platform. By the virtue of timing, pushing the system to its limits, and a good marketing campaign, Crash managed to secure his spot among the A List on the PS1.
Sadly, Crash died for 16 years after Crash Bash.
...
Ok that’s a bold faced lie, although some people love to say that. Even going by the limited sales figures we have of this era of Crash, its safe to say that Crash shipped ~14 or so million units during this timeframe. Now, opinions on the games of this era are mixed to say the least. As a personal aside, the ones that I actually like are Crash Twinsanity, Nitro Kart, and his first 2 GBA adventures which in my opinion are quite underrated. But a lot of people love to cite that Crash was functionally dead since 2000 when that just is not the case. If we were going by when a franchise was in its glory days for when it was alive, Sonic would look quite stark too. 14 million in sales is not anything to scoff at for an era. That being said, Crash would go dormant after a while due to the attempted reboot with the Titans games did not take off. While there were attempts to revive the brand, such as with Crash Landed, Crash would go dormant after Crash Mind Over Mutant.
Crash was dormant for quite a while, sitting out the Smash 4 era altogether, until in 2016 his revival was announced. Crash 1, 2 and Warped would be remastered from the ground up. I think N Sane is important to highlight just due to how well it catapulted Crash into the public eye once again. N Sane sold well over 10 million copies worldwide. For a franchise that has been dormant for almost a decade to come back in such a big way is nothing to scoff at. While it is not technically Crash, Spyro’s revival did well for itself, 5 million units is nothing to scoff at and since the two franchises are linked at the hip, it further shows N Sane’s success. CTR numbers are hard to track down, but from what we can grasp the game did well for itself. Heck, Crash 4, despite us having limited sales data for the game, still did quite well, topping the UK sales charts its month of release for instance. Crash on the Run also has done quite well for itself to boot. As of the N Sane Trilogy in 2019, Crash sold ~50 million units, and this does not factor in CTR or Crash 4. I think it is safe to say that for now at least, Crash is back.
This happened as I was in the middle of writing this, but Activision released an investors report that said that Crash 4 sold well above expectations. (page 41) Obviously, this has next to no impact on smash, but it further puts fuel on the fire that Crash is not disappearing anytime soon. There are also the large amount of info we have heard supposedly about Wumpa League, but the finer details are still unknown to the public at the time of writing.
Part 4 Crash for Smash
So after describing the whole Crash saga, why should he be seen as a front runner? Well for starters, timing wise Crash actually ends up looking good. N Sane being such a huge hit in 2017 really puts him in a perfect spot to be considered. Combine that with CTR NF being a huge hit in 2019 and the timeline looks solid for Crash already: he is a big name that clearly has come back at that point in time. Granted, timing is not everything, but the timing for Crash’s consideration is certainly something to note.
Now, I mentioned earlier how I personally think that the amount of competition that Crash might have is a lot slimmer than some people might think. But one thing almost everyone can agree is that Crash is the Activision frontrunner by a country mile. While there is some competition like say Tracer or a WoW character, Crash just stands head and shoulders for a variety of reasons. He is super popular as I will discuss shortly, but I think the bigger factor is that most of the other main frontrunners for reps have such a strong association with PC gaming. PC gaming, for a long litany of reasons, is just not the same in Japan as it is in the west, and that is to the detriment of say Tracer. The PC scene is just very different in Japan than it is in America. While PC gaming is making a comeback in Japan, the fact of the matter is that for a while it was not in the greatest shape. Now, Steve has shown that a character with strong PC roots can get into smash, but I feel that gun to my head I would bet on Crash over any other Activision character for that and for other reasons.
It also does not help that Crash is such an icon of the PS1 globally. I already stressed this earlier, but the PS1 is a huge deal in terms of gaming history, and Crash was at the center of it. To many people both here and in Japan, Crash was one of the PS1’s mascots. Unlike Spyro (
Next up, it’s the obligatory discussion on fan demand. While fan demand has been a touchy subject for Smash speculation, for Ultimate at least it seems to have had a strong effect. Obviously, with Everyone is Here, K Rool, and Ridley making it into this game, fan demand was always going to be in the back of people’s minds. But so many newcomer choices have some degree of fan demand in them. In the base game, the Belmonts, Chrom, Dark Samus, and to a lesser extent Inkling and Isabelle were either fan favorites or were in due to the ballot according to Sakurai. Even if we just go by DLC, Steve was a popular choice in many circles, last E3 was huge with Dragon Quest for Japan and Banjo for the West, and Xenoblade getting content was super popular in Japan. While they were not exactly demanded in the conventional way, Sephiroth and Joker both got rave reception. You can also lump Terry in here due to his popularity in Latin America and his positive reception after people learned who he was, but even then the numbers are kind of lopsided towards fan demand. Essentially, for this smash game at least, Sakurai and his team have a solid finger on the pulse for what the public as a whole would want. Does that mean that everyone’s most wanted will get in? No, fan demand is not infallible, as Waluigi or Geno could attest. But at the very least, fan demand and pleasing the crowd seems to be on the minds of Sakurai and the development team.
How does this benefit Crash? Well, Crash has had a slow moving coup over speculation as a whole. I have been supporting Crash since 2014, but honestly its amazing how quickly Crash has managed to grow his support as time went on. Crash over the past three years of speculation has gone from a slight dark horse to the outright front runner. Crash does exceedingly well in fan polls. Now, fan polls are not perfect, but the general trend at least suggests Crash is a big fan favorite. Heck, I know so many people in this thread are sick of talking about Crash because of how discussed he can be. Crash is almost inescapable in terms of Smash speculation. I personally like to point to Source Gaming in terms of the gold standard for polling in speculation. (Also Crash did quite well for himself on their poll) If you are looking for someone to be a huge crowd pleaser, Crash is a strong choice.
(Originally, this was going to not be in this essay, but I saw people saying that this pass had a lot of curveballs, and to that I personally disagree. I think I can say without any hesitation that the Aegis and Steve were not curveballs. While the community was predicting Rex, the fact Sakurai went over why he could not do Rex shows that the community was right on the money for XC2. Steve, while never the single most popular request, was a solid A Tier request that was quite popular and Minecraft’s place in the cultural zeitgeist can not be ignored. Finally, ARMS also benefited a lot in the early speculation on FP2 due to Sakurai’s interview where he said XC2 and ARMS barely missed the boat. Some used this interview as ammo against Rex, while others pointed to it potentially leading to more down the road. Due to the fact there was enough discussion on this, I do not view it as a curveball. That leaves the big bad himself, Sephiroth. Now full disclosure, I was one of the few people saying everyone was sleeping on Sephiroth, but I think everyone and their mother was predicting some form of Square rep anyway. Overall, I would say at least right now, this pass has been a lot easier to predict than last pass.)
As I mentioned above, Crash is also a strong choice due to his global popularity. Japanese Smash requests do tend to look different from Western smash requests, but some of the usual suspects will show up overseas. However, Crash is notable for being a somewhat frequent request. In fact, he is one of the extremely small number of Western characters discussed highly abroad, with them also seeing him as a frontrunner.
Heck, Nintendo even seems to have at least some vested interest in Crash. Nintendo put Crash in this video of big family friendly games for their platform that would be used in ads, while they have no shortage of the likes to promote. Now obviously, there was likely some sort of agreement from Activision for that ad to fly, but Nintendo didn’t need to put Crash there. There are plenty of family friendly titles they could have pushed, such as Luigi’s Mansion 3, instead of Crash.
Part 4.5 The Five Year Plan
It would not be a Crash write up if I did not mention the five year plan leak. Now, I want to stress that this has no impact on my writeup as a whole, and while Activision text leaks are common this leak is still unconfirmed. I will stress that while we do know that there was indeed a five year plan for Crash, we do not know what said five year plan was. The leak in question is a claim of what it is. According to this leak, the five year plan's rumored contents were the following.
2017: N Sane
2018: Reignited
2019: CTR
2020: Crash 4 and Crash Mobile
2021: Crash in Smash Bros
As of now, most of this stuff lines up, especially given that Crash On the Run was delayed. But at the same time, it does not mention anything else that could be happening for Crash. There is at least some evidence that Crash is getting something else this year for his anniversary, the most commonly rumored thing is “Wumpa League”. The Crash Cartoon that Activision backed out of further supports that this might not be the end all be all of Crash. Essentially, while this leak has gotten things right so far, it is not gospel. What we do know is that there was a five year plan, the contents are just what is rumored. While I think Crash is the frontrunner, this leak has nothing to do with that position. Even without the Five Year Plan I would end up saying Crash was the most likely choice. But I feel it would not be thorough if I did not at least mention it and discuss how it is not a guarantee on Crash being in.
Part 5 E3 2021
As stated in the last part, Crash is a big deal. But it also helps that at least in my eyes, a lot of other “big deal” characters either have spirits, miis, or something making their inclusion less likely. Chief has the issue of double dipping on Microsoft and Hayabusa has his interview issues, but look at our other options. Dante? Capcom Mii costumes. Rayman? Aside from his list of other issues, Ubisoft Miis in early 2020. Sol Badguy? Arc Sys spirits. The field of viable candidates shrinks to such a degree that Crash stands out even more due to who is involved in the game. Many big E3 candidates just have these overarching issues.
Here are a few other candidates that I think could show up at E3, given that imo the pool is a lot smaller than people think it is.
Honestly, the pool shrinks so much when you look at who has these massive hurdles in terms of getting in. Combined with everything I said before on the case for Crash, Crash just seems like a strong choice for E3.
- League of Legends Rep
- Fortnite Rep
- Tracer
- Sora?
Part 6 What’s next?
Well, after Crash you basically can make an argument of whoever is the ending character. You could talk about the supposed bonus slot on the Australian website and say we could get something else. You could still hold out hope for a FP3. The one thing that I will say is that I think it is almost certain CP11 will not be a big hype character.
Yes, that does mean that E3 is Crash’s best shot. Unless CP10 comes before E3, which I doubt, CP11 will not likely be a big character. So yeah, if Crash is not the E3 reveal in my opinion his chances plummet.
I actually was going to talk about CP11 in this essay, but I went so long that I ended up thinking that it would be best to do a separate essay on that. For now, here is a quick teaser…
I think I sourced everything I needed to, but I might edit in a few sources for this. I had a lot of fun trying to make this case and I hope you all enjoy it.
Dr. Jojo Phantasma
and concocted my own Hype Chart.
The basis is mostly just that Microsoft’s series are so vastly different than one another that it’s hard to justify dismissing one on the basis of another. SE has a little more overlap in genre and appeal but also has Lara Croft, 2B, etc. A lot of people have grown much more open to just judging series individually rather than casting that umbrella, but I guess I can understand maintaining skepticism since it hasn’t properly happened yet.
Animal crossing child here, the damn mole annoyed the **** out of me as a kid and stressed me out from his yelling and lecturing, never letting me go until I "Repeat after him" like he is my parent or something. He can stay gone
I think part of this is tied into a view (spoken or otherwise) that Nintendo in general has tended to focus on somewhat newer IP's and not so much on older franchises that aren't in the A list these days. If there's recent new high profile releases of Star Fox, Wario, or Donkey Kong, then you probably have a lot more sentiment that such characters from those are fairly likely for DLC. But that not happening in combination with the first party pass characters all being from games released released within the last four or so years, cynical expectations about any further first party content do tend to settle in.
Even if we were to get an arcade DK rep, I would imagine DK Jr would take priority. He's actually recognizable from his incarnation in the old games.
Yes, I get that, but third-party companies getting two characters in the same dev cycle has happened just as much as first-party DLC people can't call shillpicks in any way: Never. There shouldn't be "rules for thee, but not for me", Master Chief should be doubted just as much as Mach Rider.
I think the perceived profit factor is at work with that pseudo double standard. People tend to see MC breaking up a typical Smash pattern as more likely because there would be so much money from him showing up in Ultimate. More obscure Nintendo figures don't get that luxury, hence you have people believing that the pass won't include a Mach Rider because they wouldn't be prominent enough in potential earnings to offset the typical trend of what first party fighters in the pass have been.
I wonder if competitive Smash players dream about soap and deodorant a lot.
There would be if this pass never had Steve or Sephiroth.
You’re comparing apples to oranges here, as Chief is an evergreen pick who sells himself and Mach Rider is a character who barely anybody knows and has no future. And this is coming from someone who would LOVE Mach Rider. It’s a terrible comparison.
poor Mach Rider it should have been the retro rep damn it grinch leak
Because Chief fans are the ones being absolute hypocrites. They believe Chief can break the supposed rules to cater to a minority that wasn't already sold on FP2 because of Steviroth, but nothing else can, especially not first parties.
