As a fairly recent konvert to the kause, and someone who's eagerly anticipating him for Smash Switch, I suppose I ought to explain where I've come from. I'm a big Donkey Kong fan, and I've always liked K. Rool, but I hadn't considered him a likely candidate for the two Smash games I've followed from announcement to release (Brawl and Sm4sh) because of that dreaded nine letter word - relevancy. I wanted him, sure, but I just never thought it'd ever happen until he was the villain of a main series Donkey Kong game again, so he never found his way into my "top characters you want in Smash" lists. When it comes to third party characters I don't mind backing longshots, 'cuz I think that's half the fun of third party characters, but with first parties I used to think Sakurai had a pattern, and that K. Rool fell outside of that pattern. I backed Diddy for Brawl because he was a no-brainer, and Dixie for Sm4sh because she's my favourite Kong and I thought Tropical Freeze meant she was a no-brainer too - though obviously I was wrong there. But it wasn't until the Fighter Ballot that I got really invested in K. Rool's inclusion, because the immensity of his popularity made it seem to me, for the first time since following the games' development cycles, that he actually had a shot. Fair's fair if you call that jumping on the bandwagon on my part, but I genuinely thought it was an impossibility until then. It was only when he was regularly bandied around as the frontrunner where it was like "damn, this cool villain who hasn't been seen in about a decade could make his triumphant return - in Smash, no less? That's rad as hell". What I thought impossible didn't seem impossible anymore, and I got excited for his inclusion... until, y'know. Mii Costume. Smash Broadcast. He was donezo.
Which brings us to now, and... call it naive on my part as a newer backer of the King, but I honestly think this is the best shot at inclusion he's ever had. His Mii costume means he's definitely on Sakurai's radar. We can only guess why he was excluded from the DLC, but it could be any number of reasons, and not all of them mean he can never be included in Smash as a whole. Trying to figure out Sakurai's mentality when it comes to adding characters is a fool's errand, especially since he changes his mind all the time (Villager, anyone?), but something that has gotten my hopes up is his comment on Geno when his Mii Fighter costume got revealed. The fact that Geno was under serious consideration from Sakurai for inclusion means that relevancy isn't the be-all and end-all that we thought it was. Even if K. Rool wasn't under consideration, a character from the same period of time with even less appearances in games was, which must count for something. We often think of "retro revival characters" as only coming from the NES era, but what constitutes a "retro" game isn't what it was when Melee came out. Ice Climbers were the retro revival of that game, and their home game was sixteen years old when Melee came out. Donkey Kong Country, by comparison, in 2018, is now twenty-four years old, and K. Rool's last role as a villain in a main series game was eighteen years ago. No doubt about it, he's retro. And that's gotta count for something regarding his appeal, in my eyes.
So yeah. I haven't been seriously backing him for nearly as long as a lot of you guys have, so I've only had the experience of being let down by his exclusion the once, with the Fighter Ballot. It might be because I'm new to this that I'm being naive about his chances, but I really think he might have a shot this time. Personally, I'm hoping for both him and Dixie, 'cuz I like both of them, and I reckon Donkey Kong is more than worthy of four reps. Maybe they could show up in the same reveal trailer...? That'd be the dream. If nothing else, the passion from his fanbase must have caught the attention of Nintendo to some extent. He'll be back in one form or another, whether it be a new Donkey Kong Country game or Smash. Time will tell. It always does.