Takes a deep breath in
WE'RE BACK IN HERE BOIZ!
I REALLY missed coming to this thread everyday seeing what is up in speculation, and it sucked actually having a life outside of this thread, but I pulled through somehow. Let us get back to waiting for more news!
There's a Star Road discord server where the cool kids hang out, just so you're aware.
Anyway...
In a serendipitous turn of events, I noticed on the Super Mario Wiki in Geno's trivia that while every other character uses a suit of a standard playing card deck, Geno's star is not an outlier, but instead an uncommonly used symbol for the jokers of a deck. I did a quick search and it turned out to be absolutely true. I never knew!
That whole "WILDCARD: NINTENDO" thing that Jeff Grubb has on his list sure does ring of a hint, now... and Jon's Clubhouse Games post from forever ago looks even more like a hint. Big tinfoil hat hours.
So, I made this post at a time when I didn't have time to really complete it, so it feels half baked, and then Smashboards went down for 48 hours to update the likes system and add pronoun options to people's profiles (great use of time, development team, excellent return on investment!) and so this post had to sit there, stagnant for a weekend and a day without me really going ape**** on it and for that, I apologize, so allow me to go
ape****.
As I pointed out, it's totally new information to me that the Joker has been represented with a star character, and now * being used as a "wildcard" character in computing makes endless amounts of sense, I can't believe I never put two and two together until now. Maybe you can say... I never saw it coming. Which is an excellent segue into
Joker, the character, not the card, though I suppose there's no difference at all. If you're unfamiliar with Persona, it's a game about
accepting yourself building a harem mental illness controlling your feelings, and Persona 5 really, in my opinion, dropped any form of subtlety about the nature of a persona, what with ripping the ****ing mask off and all that nonsense, but that's neither here nor there - these personas, shadows of the true self, are associated with tarot cards, the popular french card game that some people got so good at playing, they used it to tell the future, which is ****ing fake, so that we're all on the same page. Notably, the main character always (at least in 3, 4 and 5) is associated with the Fool, greater arcana 0, the limitless wildcard. While other party members are stuck using the same Persona the entire game (until you social link with them and evolve it into a beefier version of itself), the main protagonist doesn't have to carry around some dumb looking **** like Arsene for the whole game, you can get rad dudes like origami samurai and literal penis chariot. That's what it means to be a wildcard.
So the symbolism here isn't lost on anyone. Joker. The Fool. Wildcard. The first DLC (**** off, Plant). "Characters you would never think would be in Super Smash Bros" - Reggie. He didn't lie to us at all, did he? Joker, a character whose only appearance on a Nintendo console outside of Smash is Q2, a spinoff on the 3DS, released like the day before Joker was revealed. Not just one Hero, but 4 Heroes, a franchise first for Dragon Quest, the most prestigious RPG Japan has to offer, fully voiced and beating the hell out of one another. Banjo and ****ing Kazooie, a character unfortunately owned by one of Nintendo's chief competitors. Terry Bogard, a character only known in Spanish speaking countries because Fatal Fury costs 25 cents to play while Street Fighter costs 50. Byleth, another god damned ****ing piece of **** Fire Emblem character. I know I never expected these people. Well, maybe Banjo. Grudgingly.
But! Something doesn't add up, and we've all questioned it at least once in our lives. Sakurai said Nintendo chose the characters, and we all remember how much that made everyone grimace at the thought of nothing but shill picks. Still, to this day, some may ask "did Nintendo
really choose the characters?". Yeah. Probably. Most of them. This was a conversation on discord the other night but I think it bears repeating and I've thought on it for a while - did Nintendo choose
all of the characters? Did Nintendo choose Terrance Bogard? Is that a Nintendo choice? Does it serve a Nintendo purpose?
Nah.
Sakurai had to have had
big sway on Terry. Probably Joker too, because let's never forget that Sakurai essentially can't shut up about Persona 5. The man beat the dickens out of the game and has like 200 hours clocked in it. He hugged Morgana. And let's also face the other fact: Nintendo
did pick Banjo. It was a PR stunt that paid dividends. Obviously Nintendo picked Byleth, and really, Nintendo probably picked Dragon Quest, too. They chased clout in both the east and the west and it
worked, only for them to immediately eviscerate that clout by putting Byleth in the game.
So, how many wildcards... how many
Jokers are in a deck? Two. And what is a Joker's symbol sometimes? That's right, baby:
And what
color are the jokers?
Black and
Red.
But what if I told you there was more? What if this went deeper? I hear you saying "what did all that tarot **** have to do with this", and we're there: the 0th arcana is the
first of the major arcana... but the Fool, being unnumbered, can also be the 22nd arcana,
the last. And you may be saying "but Terry wasn't the last", and I have good news for you, because I also said that reading the future with tarot cards is fake as ****. In the actual game involving all of these funny characters, Fool exists outside of the 21 trump cards, he serves a
different purpose. Maybe even a
higher one. Like a wild card. Also, Fool doesn't wear ****ing pants, the absolute madman.
Look at the tattered rags this beggar wears, it's really reminiscent of something that some of us are sick and ****ing tired of seeing.
"Surely, Serenade", you are saying to yourself right now, "this isn't about Geno", but oh, dear reader, remember where you
are. We are deep in my realm of madness and secretly, you enjoy every second of it. "Surely Sakurai didn't pick up tarot just to hint at Geno in the most obscure way imaginable", you scream in the absolute agony of a person who is now very frightened, and I delight in it. Of course he didn't. He never had to. You can look all of this up on wikipedia in the course of ten minutes.
We all hoped and maybe some of us
knew there would be bonuses after the Fighters Pass. We know there wasn't always going to be a second, but there very easily likely would have been a bonus or two. I guess most of us accept that Min Min or an ARMS fighter would have been a bonus, but maybe there was another. Maybe there was a Fool who would exist outside of the trump cards, who would have been the last, once all the "i"s were dotted and all the "t"s crossed, once all the wishes were granted... And speaking of
fools and speaking of
jokers...
Here in this lovely Polish deck of cards... What's that, hiding in the back? What color is that Joker...
He's ****ing blue.
In conclusion, Challenger Pack 7 comes from Clubhouse Games.