If Geno isn't dlc fighter 7 we may be in trouble. That seems like the best possible spot for him since it references the game he comes from. So including piranha plant, we would have 6 fighters after this season pass, geno would logically come right after it's over... Hopefully.
I mean, would Geno as fighter number 7 be a cute little reference? Sure. Is it really such a big deal in the grand scheme of things? No. Sakurai certainly goes into a lot of detail with his characters and references, but the specific order of characters has lots of adult circumstances that dictate what gets developed when and how. #7 would have to be the first post Fighter's Pass character, so there's any number of circumstances riding on that specific character anyway that could have nothing to do with Geno, yet he still comes later down the line. I don't think there's any reason to proclaim doom and gloom if he's not #7, or even to honestly take notice of such an absence at all. The rules have changed and he can show up at any point in this extra DLC. It just all depends on any number of other things and it's potentially the element that Sakurai has the least control over.
As an aside, Master Chief would also stand to benefit from the #7 slot if we're going on important references to the base game, so in an idealistic world, either one of them would be great even though, like I said, I don't think the character's "number of DLC" matters in the least bit.
- Overwatch on Switch is cool but between being full price and the Nintendo online service being paid, this game ain't gonna thrive on the system.
Overwatch isn't really full price, it's $40 (which is the exact same as other platforms when not on sale for reference). The "physical version" (a download code, which actually makes some sense for an online only game as a cartridge will just be worthless in a few years anyway, though the waste of plastic is not appreciated) costs $40 as well and comes with 3 months of Online, so it's not that bad.
This is something I began thinking about after the Megaman series costumes were shown, but
Fatmanonice
had a great post yesterday going over why it made sense for those costumes to get revealed with pack 3 and how that may actually be a good thing for Geno’s chances. I could see them including Beware the Mushroom Forest and Battle against an Armed Boss with a costume but I also think with Cloud only getting two songs and each DQ Hero receiving 2 songs per game that may just be exactly what SE would be willing to provide to another character as annoying as that may be. The next costume pack announcements are going to be incredibly suspenseful though that’s for sure.
I still don't think the two tracks is a Square Enix specific thing, and with Yoko Shimomura being the main person behind the game's music (someone who is already extensively involved in Ultimate in addition to specifically composing the Treasure Trove Cove remix of Banjo & Kazooie's of all things), I'm really inclined to say that we would get more music with a hypothetical Geno. The Dragon Quest situation stills comes off as sort of invalidating this idea since, while, yes, it's two tracks per game, it's also eight tracks total and Square Enix were the ones to suggest using different Heroes in the first place. That sort of thing implies that Square Enix is at least somewhat more invested in Smash than some people think at times and there is a strong likelihood that Hero was going to come with more music than just two tracks prior to this decision making (I really don't think Sakurai would have been willing to walk away with only two tracks again after Cloud got so much push back from the community and he seemed disappointed in that reality). Here's the link to that Tweet just in case:
https://twitter.com/NintendoAmerica/status/1167866369724964866
Shimomura is not a Sugiyama or Uematsu level composer in terms of how guarded her musical contributions are. Uematsu and Sugiyama are famously difficult to work with and licensing is generally expensive for their stuff, so it typically comes in very limited forms. Shimomura, if anything, seems like the polar opposite and like a very reasonable and easy figure to work with. Square Enix also seems pretty open overall to Smash and working with Sakurai as well.
Of course, this operates on the presupposition that Geno gets a stage with his release... which is where things may potentially get interesting. If Geno is not intended to come with a stage, less music makes more sense. We've seen this with Corrin who came with two songs, so there's technically a small (though ultimately, not repeated due to the circumstances of every other new fighter coming with a new stage except Plant who has their own circumstances) precedent for this. As it stands, all the "slots" for stages will be filled when the Fighter's Pass concludes (given that the final one has an in-game use for Random Stage Select toggling of Custom Stages), but the character select screen? After Banjo & Kazooie, the character select screen with separated Echoes looks atrociously empty now. Terry and Fighter #5 will still leave around three spots for characters before the rectangle even completes and then there's still the issue of the Character Select Screen not even reaching the proper boarders of the screen with lots of empty space around the Fighters (It looks so awful and I'm lowkey upset that Banjo & Kazooie nuked my perfect rectangle for the foreseeable future haha). Obviously, we know menus can change and that it's not too difficult to change up the menus for new features, so it's not necessarily much to form ideas on... but I do think it makes sense to see fewer stages going forward, especially since modes also seem to be over and the focus is shifting towards characters, so that might be where two songs comes in more so than "Square Enix's policy."
It just kind of depends on the music take-down. Nintendo continues to surprise me in how blatantly and accidentally transparent they keep being with Smash. The Ultimate special edition box, mislabeling the Galaga track as Castlevania music, Stage Builder just dropping in an ad, "Brave" being the most obvious reference to Hero ever, and the SNK being added a fighter's page to ruin the surprise. My instinct with the original take down of "Megalovania" was that those actions were taken to avoid misrepresenting the brand since it was posted as "Smash music" by the uploader. But the more that I look at things, the more it strikes me as an utterly Nintendo thing to do in terms of taking down music and essentially revealing something about the future of Smash. They keep having these "oopsie" moments like this. Now, my initial instinct may still be correct and the Super Mario RPG tunes may have been taken down because they were in general targeting BrawlBRSTMs3's channel and they just got caught in the shuffle (again, I don't stand by YouTube claims holding any legal or speculative weight because they are by nature, corporation favoring and almost entirely unchecked). But it's worth reexamining in light of the new announcement and the Sans situation for sure.
TL;DR
If Geno comes with a stage, I suspect he'll come with more music than two tracks because I think Square Enix is more willing cooperate than we think, but the two tracks makes more sense if Geno just comes on his own and his music gets added to existing Mario stages. Still not convinced on the "music takedown theory," but it does warrant reexamining with Nintendo's accidentally obvious decision making with regards to Smash.
I'm guessing just individual DLC... which means I shoulda' worded that better anyway lol.
