So I did some mathing and came up with this. Other people have probably already thoroughly covered this topic (and in more depth than me) but I figure I might as well post this here for you guys too. Sorry if it's a little scattered.
So I did some calculations on secret (or unlockable) characters within the series. Given the assumption that Sakurai is doing what he did with Brawl character reveals and not revealing any of the secret/unlockable characters on the website, and counting transforming/switching characters as one, this is how things pan out:
Game: Secret characters/total characters (percentage of secret/total) [total # of characters including alternate forms]
Original: 4/12 (33%) [12]
Melee: 11/25 (44%) [26]
Brawl: 14/37 (37%) [41]*
Let's take this a little further and average out these percentages.
In doing so, we get an average of 38% of the total characters being hidden ones in the series.
Let's say that Sakurai is done revealing the starter characters for Smash for Wii U/3DS (Sakurai revealed all the starter characters for Brawl on the website leading up to its release): I'm essentially saying "Let's take what we've already got."
29 characters. Let's say that Wii U follows the trend and the starters revealed so far are 62% of the cast. Using a little math we are projecting that there will be a total of 46-47 characters with 17-18 secret characters that we won't know about until release (or leaks).
Unless Sakurai severly downplays the number of characters he wants in this game, we're looking at a lot of characters.
We've also still got a few months until release, so I would be surprised if we didn't get at least one or two more character reveals. Projecting this out a bit we're coming up with a total of around 48-49 total characters, with about 19 secret ones.
*Some argue for Pokemon Trainer to be counted as one character instead of three due to his switching and fatigue mechanics, thus giving the commonly reported number of 39. For the sake of counting ALL characters, I separated them out here for a total of 41, although this doesn't factor into my percentages (I counted all transforming characters as one, since they'll be revealed together or not at all).
Sources: http://supersmashbros.wikia.com/wiki/Starter_character,http://supersmashbros.wikia.com/wiki...able_character
Addendum: It's actually 35 and not 37 characters for Brawl (derpderpderp), which means a higher percentage of secret characters, which also raises the number of secret characters I can project for Smash 4 to 19-20. But anyways. derp
Charizard looks fun to play. Hopefully having separate characters for Samus/ZSS, Zelda/Sheik and pokemon will help their balancing.
