I think the whole mess is fake. And that's coming from someone who believes the Sal leak.
My reasons for this are multiple.
- The shape of the roster just seems off to me. 17x3? I know we live in a widescreen era now, but that would make all those icons super tiny on the screen, and I don't like that.
- To me, stuff looks pixelated. I'm not saying that automatically disproves it. I'm just saying that a professional game like Smash 4 hasn't looked pixelated anywhere else. Why in the character select screen?
- Not showing Ridley initially immediately raised my suspicions. If you're a leaker and you want to prove it's real, get some hard-hitting evidence to prove that. You're TWO INCHES from the monitor. Angle that camera like 10 degrees to the left AND SHOW RIDLEY
- The water/stain marks on the monitor reek of home computer to me.
- So far nothing is conclusive proof that these are real. Sure there's the possibility, but it's also completely possible someone is good with Photoshop, made a mock-up character select screen, and is trolling everyone.
- I like the locks idea, but I do think it looks odd like that. Sakurai doesn't give us exact numbers to figure out. From these images, we can say "hey there are 50 characters total!" "Hey, there are five Zelda characters." Sakurai has never in the past done that. He may show question marks, like Melee, but even then things shift around and move, almost as if Sakurai was planning it the whole time and saying "aaaah! fooled you! hah!"
I don't have any concrete evidence against these leaks, but you just get that gut feeling, you know? As much as I want to believe these, there's just something about them that screams fake to me. They look professional to a degree, but break it down to a professional level like Nintendo and it falls flat.