Some people argued that my post the other day about predicting the next 5 characters went too far and, for that, I apologize… that I didn’t go far enough! So, I’ll explain my reasoning behind everything but in case you’re one of those people that wants a TL;DR version, here’s my predictions for the next 6 characters along with their expected announcement, release time frame, and general Mii costumes for 5-8.
5) Dragon Born/Dovakiin (Announced: Jan, Released: Jan, expected Mii costumes: Rathalos, Monster Hunter, Cacodemon, and probably another Bethesda Mii costume, possibly Doom Guy)
6) Purple Pie Man (Announced: Jan, Released: Feb, expected Mii costumes: four first party Mii costumes and two indies with music. Stage is releated to the four MIi costumes)
7) Geno (Announced: Jan, Released: April, expected Mii costumes: Geno, Mallow, Smithy, Chocobo, Megaman X, and Megaman EXE.)
8) Lloyd (Announced: June/E3, Released: probably July/August, expected Mii costumes: Lloyd, Heihachi, Gil, probably a mix of Tales/Namco characters for the remaining 3)
9) Crash (Announced: June/E3, Released: Probably September/October)
10) Ryu Hayabusa (Announced: September/October, Released: November/December)
So, if you’re not interested in theorycraft, feel free to bounce but, if you are, I’ll go through each of these and explain my reasoning.
For the sake of clarity, here are major theories that will be repeated:
Power of Six: Originally developed by JudgeHeihachi on GameFaqs, this Is the theory that, when the Fighter’s Pass was originally one and done, all 5 of the character packs were meant to have 6 costumes and the idea was to bring back all 15 Smash 4 third party DLC costumes across the 5 packs. The original idea may have looked like this:
Joker: 4 Persona costumes, Tails and Knuckles (All SEGA)
Hero: 4 DQ costumes, Chocobo and Geno (All Square)
Banjo: Goemon, Sans, all 4 Megaman costumes (my theory is that Rocket Grunt was a late addition) (No central theme)
Terry: Three SNK costumes, Jacky, Akira, and Heihachi (All fighting games)
5: Gil, Lloyd, Rathalos, Monster Hunter, and two new costumes (returning costumes are all fantasy RPG swordsmen, three have helmets and armor, seems intentional)
Power of Two: an offshoot of the Power of Six theory. Power of Two suggests that, once it was decided that there was going to be more DLC beyond the Fighter’s Pass, Smash 4 third party DLC costumes were added or removed in pairs. This is what this theory currently looks like:
Joker: Stays the same as the Power of Six (pair is Tails and Knuckles)
Hero: Geno and Chocobo removed (no pair)
Banjo: X and EXE removed (pair is Zero and Protoman)
Terry: Heihachi removed (pair is Akira and Jacky)
5: Gil and Lloyd removed (pair is Rathalos and Monster Hunter)
If you want to see my main thoughts on these characters, they can be found in my “Shower Thoughts” post from New Year’s Eve:
https://smashboards.com/threads/geno-
♪-return-of-the-starsend-savior.446378/page-2151#post-23759571
In this post, I’m mostly going to cover things that I didn’t cover in the last one.
5) Dragon Born/Dovakiin. Why? Papagenos finally came out and said this name the other day. He’s heard the rumors and so have I. As I said the other day, my original hypothesis back in September was that 5 was going to be a fantasy swordsman from a “new” company that didn’t have a newcomer in Smash Ultimate it based on the “remaining” Smash 4 DLC Mii costumes. Dragonborn fits perfectly into this theory. The “remaining” Mii costumes are Gil, Lloyd, Monster Hunter, and Rathalos. All four are swordsmen from medieval open world RPGs and three have armor and helmets. This pattern seems intentional. Skyrim is definitely an open world medieval RPG. Despite my original thoughts being Namco (Lloyd or Nightmare), Bethesda fits this perfectly for a lot of reason. It’s a totally new company to Smash Ultimate, just like the other Fighter’s Pass characters (Atlus, Armor Project/Bird Studio, Microsoft/RARE, and SNK) for starters. Beyond that, Skyrim was one of the first third party games announced for Switch, has been released on virtually everything, one of the few Western games to ever get a perfect score in Famitsu, won game of the year in 2011 on multiple fronts including the VGAs, was one of the showcased games during the Switch’s public presentation in January 2017, etc. Lots of reasons to have it. Announcement: January. Why? Lots of signs that a Direct is coming soon so we'll just leave it at that. Release: January. Why? One of the most consistent patterns that we have is that characters are always announced during the same months as Amiibo waves. February last year brought playable Plant and the Amiibos K. Rool, Plant, and Ice Climbers. April last year brought playable Joker and the Amiibos Daisy, Young Link, and Ken. July brought playable Hero and the Amiibos Pichu, Isabelle, and Pokemon Trainer. September last year brought playable Banjo and the Amiibos Snake, Squirtle, and Ivysaur. November brought Terry and the Amiibos Inceniroar, Simon, and Chrom. January is going to bring Dark Samus and Richter. Mii costumes: Rathalos, Monster Hunter, Cacodemon, and probably another Bethesda character. Why? My prediction is that Gil and Lloyd are now gone and that Rathalos and Monster Hunter will be the Smash 4 third party character pairing.
6) Purple Pie Man. Announce date: January. Why? Since 2013, newcomers have only ever been announced in Directs. One of the most consistent patterns that we have is that there’s only ever one main Direct before E3 each year. It’s not always the same month but it’s an extremely consistent pattern. Release date: February. Why? Past precedent. If Purple Pie Man is supposed to not only be a “bonus” and the end of the Fighter’s Pass, this lines up with a lot of characters in the past. Corrin, Bayonetta, and Plant. Costumes: 4 1st party characters unrelated to Purple Pie Man and 2 indies. Why? A rumor one of my contacts shared with me on Christmas Day. He didn’t believe a character would be attached to it but I feel like, in a weird way, having Purple Pie Man attached to these costumes would make sense. My theory is that Purple Pie Man was always planned as a bonus, like Mewtwo was for Smash 4, so the 15 Smash 4 third party DLC costumes would have already been added in the first 5 character packs.
7) Geno. Announce date: January. Why? Again, characters are only ever announced during Directs and we have almost a decade’s worth of precedent that there’s only one General Direct before E3 each year. Based on Sakurai’s statements about “the budget” in the fall of 2019, a full on Smash Direct doesn’t seem likely and other games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons will probably get one instead. This means that Geno would either need to be announced in the January Direct or the E3 Direct in June. My prediction is the January Direct. Release date: April. Why? Again, precedent. Just as February had multiple character releases in the past, so has April. Mewtwo was the first DLC character released for Smash 4 in 2015 and Joker was the first full pack for Ultimate in 2019. Mii costumes: Geno, Smithy, Mallow, Chocobo, Megaman X, and Megaman EXE. Why? I fully believe the Mii costume leak from July seeing how it managed to thread the needle to get all of Banjo’s correctly. I also believe that, given the precedent of characters like Chrom, Inkling, and K. Rool getting their Mii costumes back, I believe Lloyd and Geno will too (plus it’s technically less work for the developers). Why Megaman X and EXE? Shooty blue bois. Square’s pretty notorious for doing the bare minimum so only two brand new SMRPG characters wouldn’t surprise me. Also, one of the rumors that I received from one of my contacts on Christmas Day is that an SNES game dump would happen "soon" and, despite not telling me the list, he said he had strong feelings that at least 2 of the SNES games would have major announcements tied to them in the January Direct. Based on this, I think SMRPG may be one of them but, again, that's only my own speculation.
8) Lloyd. Announce date: June/E3. Why? Like I said in the last essay, lots of signs that are almost identical to Banjo in 2018. I also feel like the mysterious Tales game that Nintendo has teased since September will probably finally be announced too. Release date: July/August. Why? Same time frame as Hero. Simply seems right. Mii costumes: Lloyd, Gil, Heihachi, and a dump of Namco or Tales characters. Why? Three Smash 4 costumes and three new characters makes sense because we’ve already seen this sort of pattern before in Terry’s pack. If it had gone by the original plan for the Fighter’s Pass, it would have been three SNK costumes and three Smash 4 costumes.
9) Crash. Announce date: June/E3. Why? Again, similar circumstances to Banjo in 2018. Papagenos made the joke earlier this year that insiders often assume that the characters that they hear are often coming soon but I have a totally different theory. Crash rumors were first heard around E3 2019. Based on ForsakenM’s timeline theory, we can theorize that Season 2 was probably fully greenlit by that time. What does this mean? This means that this is when Crash’s “security” would have been at its weakest. Based on things like the Seven Squares Scandal, we have somewhat of an idea that the easiest time to figure out things about possibly planned characters is around the time that they are first pitched/proposed. This lines up with rumors that Banjo was probably first negotiated around E3 2018, for him to be announced the following year. In this sense, Crash being proposed around E3 2019 to be announced at E3 2020 makes sense. Release date: September/October. Why? Again, precedent. If we keep going on this theorized schedule, characters will have similar release dates to the First Fighter’s Pass: April- Joker and Geno, July- Hero and Lloyd, September- Banjo and Crash. It seems potentially deliberate based on the patterns established.
10) Ryu Hayabusa) Announce date: September/October. Why? Again, precedent. If Banjo and Crash truly line up, Terry and Ryu would too. Why Ryu though? While I was running with my wife yesterday, something clicked when I was considering what Brew had publicly mentioned the other day. Brew trusted his contact and swore that they were reliable and… I believe him but I believe his contact made a common mistake that I notice Smash insiders often make. Just like the “Crash guy”, Brew’s contact assumed that because Ryu was the character that he had heard the most recently that Ryu was going to be next or “soon.” Going back to my “defense theory”, Brew’s contact probably heard about Ryu because this is when the character truly started development/was green lit. ForsakenM’s timeline theory puts the “proposal” stage of around November/December 2018. Geno, Lloyd, Purple Pie Man, and Ryu were all characters heard by insiders during this timeframe. The reason for this is because the development team probably had a list of characters that they were already really interested in working with as soon as the Fighter’s Pass was finalized and plans for more began. These four already belonged to companies working on Ultimate: Square, Namco, Nintendo, and Tecmo. Like Banjo, Crash belongs to a Western company and probably needed more to be negotiated, especially in the light that Sakurai has said working with Western companies often required more work because of the language barriers. As for why Ryu? I’ll go into that another day because I have plenty o’time to get into that. Release date: November/December. Why? One final time, precedent. Terry was released in November so, going off this pattern, Ryu would be released in a similar time frame.
Now, in conclusion, I want to include something from the Geno Essay, the definition of Speculation: the forming of a theory or conjecture without firm evidence. When working with speculation, it is virtually impossible to prove things without a shadow of a doubt because the evidence being worked with may be subjective or incomplete. This is why speculation is often like trying to put together a puzzle and why, more often than not, wrong conclusions are drawn. For speculation, the best you can do is have confidence in your theories but, as many people have shown for me and Hero and my past predictions for 5, new objective evidence can topple subjective conclusions so, that all said, it’s food for thought and likely won’t be 100% correct nor should be treated as absolute Gospel. It’s just one man’s thoughts on the future of a video game based on observable patterns that go back nearly 7 years so take what you want from it if you will.
