Looking back at the Gematsu leak...

[Naoshi]

Still makes him a pretty big liar and mostly wrong. Never heard about him until after that E3, never believed a word, especially since I recall him saying he/his source was at E3.

?? I don't recall him saying his source came from E3. Do you have a link?

 

[vaanrose]

?? I don't recall him saying his source came from E3. Do you have a link?

He didn't.

In one of his final emails, his source outed himself as an employee at Bandai Namco.

The E3 thing was always speculation.

He was sued by NOA for like, 20 million USD, if I recall correctly.

This is completely untrue.

 

[Xevious 1]

I don't believe Gematsu leak was for real.

The only impressive thing was getting Wii Fit Trainer right, every other character in the list was an obvious choice (yes, even Villager, who was very requested even back in Brawl times)

****, WFT aside, every single character who was a surprising choice was not predicted.

Greninja was never directly mentioned. Sakurai even stated he had a placeholder for a Pokemon from X and Y

Robin and Lucina were nowhere to be seen. Lucina was a clone. Chrom was considered

Bowser Jr.? Not mentioned at all.

No Dark Pit. Clones were added in much later

What about Duck Hunt? Got me with Duck Hunt and Bowser Jr, the only excuse I could make was that they were the last new characters deveoped.

Not even Rosalina was predicted, Rosalina's reveal was in between his first leak and his second leak.

 

[κomıc]

I've said this countless times, it was nothing but outdated information that gave us an idea what some of the roster would be like. With how interviews this past year during E3 lined up with with the April leak in reference to how Greninja was referred to internally as Pokemon from X/Y, there was weight on it. I'm disappointed that Chrom and Chorus Men didn't make the cut. There's tons of classes Chrom could have undertaken and Chorus Men could have represented a new recent series alongside Shulk from Xenoblade.

In any case, I'm content with the roster and it was fun speculating. Lots of people ate crow when they disputed the ESRB leak and some cried about Pac-Man's inclusion before his reveal. It was entertaining and I'm hoping that Mewtwo won't be the only DLC character available.

Also, on a side note, WHY ISN'T MAGICANT ON WII U?!?! I was really hoping having the 3DS version would unlock some stages for the Wii U game but nope... No Reset Bomb Forest... No Magicant... No Mute City or Rainbow Road.

But I digress.

 

[LancerStaff]

?? I don't recall him saying his source came from E3. Do you have a link?

No, but I seem to remember people calling it the E3 leak in the beginning because of it. Not incredibly sure though...

 

[Naoshi]

No, but I seem to remember people calling it the E3 leak in the beginning because of it. Not incredibly sure though...

Sal posted them as "predictions" on the day before E3. I don't know when exactly he got the info though.

 

[LunarWingCloud]

The only thing that the SalRomano/Gematsu leak got right was the E3 stuff. If you remember, he even called Miis "Miis" all the way up until minutes before the Nintendo video, where he called them Mii-Fighters. That to me is proof that he had relevant info at E3, but not much else.

All of his other predictions from the April leak (Chrom, Chorus Kids) were dead wrong or easy guesses (Palutena). Even Chrom seemed like an easy guess at the time. He also didn't mention Duck Hunt or Bowser Jr at all, which I'm going to go out on a limb and say weren't late additions, considering they have completely unique movesets and trailers.

"Outdated information" works for the clones not being part of his leak, but omission of those two characters and whiffing completely on Chrom/Chorus Kids is inexplicable.

I wouldn't say that last part is true. I could agree on the Bowser Jr. and Duck Hunt part, but Chrom/Chorus Kids we've already discussed before were planned and it's not much less than obvious they were intended to be in the game. Chrom especially so as they eventually included that joke about him not making the cut. Pretttyyyy sure they had his model ready and decided to use it for Robin's FS instead.

But I do admit Hyper, you're kinda wrong. Mii Fighters really are not much different than the concept of Miis and if you're seriously gonna make long walls of texts trying to justify your point, you're wasting so much time, man. Am I saying the leaker was not legit? Actually I agree I think the leaker was very legit. Like you said you can't be 100% right when you're not the developer themself. However the idea of fighting Miis was not a new thing.

Also one GIANT hole in your argument. You mention translation stuff. So why is Mii Fighters vs Miis that big of an issue? Anyone could've said Miis would be in the game as Miis or Mii Fighters, Mii Brawlers, anything that indicates by name they would be playable in the game. So, why do you cling so tightly to that specific point when it contradicts your other point about listing names?

 

[---]

Not much to say other than they had outdated information for a couple things, and what was outdated were understandable mistakes.

Definitely didn't deserve the hard time people gave them. The internet is so black/white when it comes to demands.

In one of his final emails, his source outed himself as an employee at Bandai Namco.

The E3 thing was always speculation.

Bandai Namco? Everyone and their mom saw that one coming.

E3? 2013 or 2014?

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

I wouldn't say that last part is true. I could agree on the Bowser Jr. and Duck Hunt part, but Chrom/Chorus Kids we've already discussed before were planned and it's not much less than obvious they were intended to be in the game. Chrom especially so as they eventually included that joke about him not making the cut. Pretttyyyy sure they had his model ready and decided to use it for Robin's FS instead.

But I do admit Hyper, you're kinda wrong. Mii Fighters really are not much different than the concept of Miis and if you're seriously gonna make long walls of texts trying to justify your point, you're wasting so much time, man. Am I saying the leaker was not legit? Actually I agree I think the leaker was very legit. Like you said you can't be 100% right when you're not the developer themself. However the idea of fighting Miis was not a new thing.

Also one GIANT hole in your argument. You mention translation stuff. So why is Mii Fighters vs Miis that big of an issue? Anyone could've said Miis would be in the game as Miis or Mii Fighters, Mii Brawlers, anything that indicates by name they would be playable in the game. So, why do you cling so tightly to that specific point when it contradicts your other point about listing names?

No, they could not have said it. Not right before the release of the trailer. That's too unrealistic. He said them at the exact moment of release, and got the other character correct too. Coincidences like that are severely beyond impossible. That's less than a 1% chance at best.

Mii Fighters is not like Goddess Palutena. They are beyond non-equivalent. One is just a character's own title that she's known for, another is a completely new character. Nobody did say they will be Mii Fighters at all. Nor has anybody who supposed said they did managed to link any proof to prove that point wrong. If you think they could've been guessed, show some proof then. You can't exactly link something to prove they were never predicted. It's a case where the burden of proof is on those clamining they're guessable entirely. It doesn't matter who brings it up, since that's the only way it's possible. Otherwise, there's no reason to not assume it's pure hindsight and unrealistic. Especially for a character that never existed till Smash. Again, that's still as beyond ridiculous as telling me Giga Bowser would exist when he never did till Smash. Mii Fighters were not listed as some conceptual fighter by Sal, they were listed as the exact playable character. Saying Palutena is not a Goddess is too ludicrous and it's beyond worth ignoring in every way. It's not a real point. Especially since we know Sal purposely translates his texts and changes it up. Him slightly giving incorrect points is to not get caught, yet it still matches up perfectly in the end, and there's still a beyond legit explanation for Chorus Men(who we really cannot say they were planned regardless. Maybe, maybe not. Chrom has some actual evidence to suggest it that isn't purely anecdotal and assumptions. However, thinking they Chorus Men were is not unreasonable likewise. That does mean that every character he listed could beyond easily match up with that).

And if he didn't know of Mii Fighters which we know to be the case at first, since they were designed mid-development, which Sakurai outright said, and he outright gave us exact information on them and listed it right before their reveal(which people don't do that unless they knew that particular reveal date. And as I said, it's possible there's a misinterpretation of Shulk. I'll go into that a bit. The other dates wrong are not really excusable, ignoring Rosalina aside), it's impossible to honestly believe he didn't know something by that point(for many people, the fact he got a completely new addition to the world as a whole perfectly is just not a guess, and really, who can blame them. This whole idea that anybody could guess a character doesn't exist just doesn't make sense. Being some generic name does not change this fact. And nobody has provided any legitimate proof beyond "I said I could" that anybody actually guessed it. Sure, if they can, I'll concede, but nobody has legitimately proved my premise wrong, just thrown off a conspiracy theory that doesn't really hold much water). Likewise, since guessing Mii Fighter is exactly the same as guessing Giga Bowser, you'd better be able to provide proof somebody thought up that exact idea too, and how it worked. The leaker only gave names, not how they worked. Don't forget he also directly said dlc will happen day one(although he slightly got that off since he said character dlc, but we did get patches and a new mode, a form of it) and said Lucas was probably going to be cut, another bit he got right. He slightly got two parts of that leak off and two parts 100% right. That's way too much in his favor here.

As for Shulk, consider the fact that Sal stopped replying later. He may not have intended to give more than one last character, and didn't know every reveal trailer. The theory that he only knew of e3 related dates does hold water and he's gotten almost all of them correct. Also, the fact that in some way, every character he mentioned is in the game, even if they weren't playable in the end, is kind of suspicious. Now, as I said before about the Rhythm Heaven bit, we don't actually know who was intended to be playable, but likely it was a character from the series in general. It could have been them, and the idea that a list could not exist just don't really make much sense. Developers makes planned lists. He admitted that directly during Brawl too. There's kind of really no reason to believe he didn't do so the rest of the time. As for Chrom, having a model that fights directly in a Final Smash, a HQ model like a playable character... it's not hard to believe he was planned at one time. That said, even with that weird translation, Considered and Planned, while actually different terms, are very similar, to the point that Sakurai could've meant them equally. If you look at many of his Miiverse posts, a lot of what was translated was slightly off too. He doesn't really speak in a similar way to what we would expect, so you kind of have to expect slight miswording at this point to understand what he means. Keep in mind for Chrom I used to believe he was never planned, but then I realized how bad translations are, and then the Greninja bit came out, pretty much making it clear he had a list by that point(just like during Brawl), since that's how developments work. Was he planned. Probably. There's little evidence to suggest otherwise. Chorus Men are harder to say. Likewise, Sakurai's Chrom interview does suggest he could've listed a FEA character. Consider the fact Goddess Palutena was used. That does mean Sal takes some liberties in what he tells us. I think it's highly possible he could've listed Chrom instead. Since it's a normal assumption most made. Chorus Men are harder to say. They were probably listed instead, however. They're not easy enough of a notable Rhythm Heaven character to guess, so...

 

[vaanrose]

Not much to say other than they had outdated information for a couple things, and what was outdated were understandable mistakes.

Definitely didn't deserve the hard time people gave them. The internet is so black/white when it comes to demands.



Bandai Namco? Everyone and their mom saw that one coming.

E3? 2013 or 2014?

It was the very last email.

As I'm sure most of ya know, the leaker e-mailed me last night teasing Shulk.

He also e-mailed me again this morning saying Nintendo keeps a lot secret from Bandai Namco, and that Sakurai may change his mind as he does all the time, but that Shulk was 100%.

Whether it's fake, real or somewhere inbetween, the story is he was a Namco employee.

 

[guedes the brawler]

it makes me angry to remember it. i never believed it becaus ei was sure the Chorus Men wouldn't be in and i really hope dit wasn't true. but it had chrom on it, unlike this game's roster.

the Robin reveal ruined this game for me. a good 50 hours i'd spend playing chrom, never going to happen.

 

[ChrisP4]

I read a lot during the hype phase that Gematsu had a reasonable amount of credibility, and there would no reason to lie about such things. It was a popular counter argument, or the that the website would not even post the information if it weren't of at least some reliable source.

Post release we can see that this leak was hamfisted at best, arguably some of it may have been accurately leaked, but most definitely some of it was BSed.

So what happened to whistleblower (Romano was it?) Did he ever explain anymore about his inaccuracies or was there a "Gotcha!" moment I missed? Did he indeed lose credibility? Was there any aftermath?

"Find out on the next episode of DragonBall Z!"

 

[Smallgenie549]

Can't play Smash while at work guys, otherwise trust me, I'd be playing. We can't all remain at home the whole day playing it, as much as I'd like that. Just making conversation.

But you have time to go on a Smash Bros forum.

You know what he meant. No need to be so snippy all the time, Zipzo.

 

[Supersmashbrothers.]

People are taking this conversation way too seriously.

 

[Raijinken]

All of the predictions were pretty obvious high-demand newcomers for the series (with the obvious exceptions of ones not released at the time, I'd gotten most of those on my "wanted" lists since Melee), so I'm going to call it "Lucky guessing."

 

[Deleted member 245254]

But you have time to go on a Smash Bros forum.

You know what he meant. No need to be so snippy all the time, Zipzo.

Well it's easy to do that on my iPad away from the shifting eyes of my boss

I'm really not being snippy.

 

[Deleted member]

Since I find the "obvious choice" logic to be as much bs now as it was back then, I theorize that there was a mix of both outdated legitimate info and disinformation.
Warning to those who just go "tl;dr" and complain over long posts, that will only show me you are too lazy and didn't read it. You have no right to say anything on the matter as a result.

Lets go over the facts for each leak:
1st Segment
The following characters were to be revealed at E3 2013:
-"Animal Crossing Guy"
-Mega Man
-Wii Fit Trainer
-Little Mac
-Miis
-Pac-Man

Literally half of the listed characters ended up being revealed at E3 2013. One of which was someone Sakurai directly expressed against being playable in the past (Villager), and one that no one in their right mind would have given any serious thought to (Wii Fit Trainer).
The other three were later revealed at different times (with two ironically being revealed at E3 2014). He was right about the characters, but wrong on when they'd be revealed.

2nd Segment
-Miis and Pac-Man are still yet to be revealed, but are in fact in the game. (Little Mac had already been revealed)
-The following characters are also in the game:
-Shulk
-Palutena
-Chrom
-Chorus Men
-"Pokémon from X/Y"

Every one of the listed characters except two were accurate. It was also later confirmed by Sakurai that before Greninja was ultimately decided upon, there was essentially a placeholder "slot" for an X/Y Pokémon that would be filled out on a later date.
This leads to the theory of the informant's information being from early plans for the roster, before Greninja was chosen to fill out the slot.

Chrom was later revealed to not be playable, with Robin taking his place (though Chrom would be a part of Robin's Final Smash). While the outdated info theory would imply that Chrom was initially planned on, but was ousted in favor of Robin.
Sakurai did later discuss that Chrom was in fact considered to fill the placeholder "slot" for a character from Fire Emblem Awakening but was deemed uninteresting in contrast to Robin. However, with Sakurai's wording, it doesn't seem Chrom was ever planned, only considered. Which would leave doubt that Chrom would be listed among the roster plans the informant would have seen as opposed to another placeholder like with the X/Y Pokémon.
A feasible explanation (whether or not it's accurate cannot be verified) is that the informant did see the placeholder and make a reasonable assumption that it would refer to Chrom (unlike the Pokémon placeholder, which wouldn't really bring any specific Pokémon to mind as the obvious choice). Or Sakurai did in fact initially plan on Chrom before going with Robin instead.

The Chorus Men (known outside Japan as the Chorus Kids) are the bigger anomaly. Much like when they were initially brought up by the informant, they are entirely left-field in this. There is nothing that can be used as evidence that they were even considered, as Sakurai has not mentioned them at all nor is there any accessible data within the games themselves that shows a sign that they were to be a part of them other a simple trophy on the 3DS.
Unlike Chrom, there is no possible case of replacement, as there isn't another Rhythm Heaven character being playable instead. In fact, outside of a few trophies distributed between the two games, the only content from Rhythm Heaven is a rare enemy in Smash Run for the 3DS. Some assume that this is evidence for them when combined with the fact the Ice Climbers were planned to return but were cut due to their duo gimmick not working on the 3DS as the Chorus Men hypothetically could've also been cut for a similar reasoning since they are a trio and Ice Climber also has an enemy in Smash Run. This isn't good enough evidence, but that's straying into another subject entirely.

If we end up finding evidence later that the Chorus Men were indeed another case like the Ice Climbers, then the outdated info logic applies. If not, then they could have very well have been a case of disinformation. Without delving too deep in the history of the X/Y leak from PokéBeach, I'll summarize it as a series of time-lapsed leaks that were almost completely true, with a few honest mistakes including:
-minor misspellings of Pokémon names (with said Pokémon being completely unknown to the public or English names of recently revealed Pokémon in CoroCoro being unknown)
-claiming Mewtwo's unrevealed version exclusive form (note: this was before Mega Evolutions were even revealed) resembled Mew more than the revealed one
-claiming your "friendly rival" gave you the final form of the starter disadvantaged to yours instead of the basic form
-swapped the secondary types of Chespin's and Froakie's then-unrevealed final forms (though this may have been disinformation as well)
-claimed Psychic resisted Fairy attacks (note: this was before Fairy type was even announced) instead of Poison
etc. There was one mistake that cannot be excused, however. The leak claimed that there were two Professors in the Kalos region, Sycamore (who gave you the Kanto starters; also unknown at the time) and Patrice (who gave you the Kalos starters). Sycamore is the only Professor in Kalos, and your Kalos starter is given to you by Trevor, who is not even close to being a Professor. This was disinformation.
Typically, leakers will throw in some disinformation within their legitimate information as an attempt to avoid detection by the companies. With this in mind, the Chorus Men could very well be the "Professor Patrice" of the Gematsu leak.

3rd Segment
-E3 2014 would be the final E3 prior to Smash's release date.
-Reaffirmation of the previously mentioning characters, with Miis notably going under the identity of Mii Fighters for the first time.
-There was internal debate on deciding which of the two Mother boys would stay. Odds were not in Lucas' favor.
-There is going to be post-release character DLC.

Honestly not much for evaluation, since it was a no-brainer that E3 2014 would be the last E3 before release, considering for it to not have been, Smash would need to have been delayed until after June of 2015, also, the characters are the same as before and there is no way to verify whether or not the claim about there being a direct debate on Ness vs. Lucas is accurate at this point.
That being said, the end result of Lucas' potential fate ended up being true (which could be entirely coincidence), Mii Fighters being the "official" collective title for the Miis was true (though Palutena isn't referred to as "Goddess Palutena" as she was listed in this one, a rather minor discrepancy), and Mewtwo proved that post-release DLC characters do exist (even if it's just Mewtwo at this time). The informant also personally found the concept to be rather greedy, which could theoretically relate to Mewtwo being used as incentive to purchase both games, though that's breaking off too much into speculation.

4th Segment
-"Enjoy my good friend Shulk!"
-"I only know what has been done, not what or when they will be made available. Sakurai may change his mind, and he does all the time. Shulk will not be changed."

If it weren't for Chrom being disconfirmed in the very trailer that wasn't Shulk's like everyone speculated even before this e-mail by the leaker, then the mistake could have been seen as another E3 2013 case where the informant got the reveal date wrong.
In fact....an e-mail the informant gave to Sal Romano the morning before Robin's trailer, he kind of backpedaled a bit with the second quote. On more than just Shulk's reveal.
Actually reading the wording over and over, it seems to me that the informant learned that Shulk would not be revealed that day, and that information he gave is no longer accurate (as in he learned of who was to be revealed), though Shulk being in the game is still true.

Just some food for thought. It's taken me about 3 hours to type this all out, so I expect to be taken seriously, even if you're deadest on Gematsu on being nothing but a complete sham.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

@GoldenYuiitusin: I thought the leaked segment that said Character DLC would be available was going to be on Day 1. However, due to the constant date mixups, maybe that was the plan, but was changed on him again? I canot remember if that's what was leaked, or if he said "planned" instead(which does seem the be the case, since Mewtwo was announced before the actual Wii U release).

 

[Deleted member]

@GoldenYuiitusin: I thought the leaked segment that said Character DLC would be available was going to be on Day 1. However, due to the constant date mixups, maybe that was the plan, but was changed on him again? I canot remember if that's what was leaked, or if he said "planned" instead(which does seem the be the case, since Mewtwo was announced before the actual Wii U release).

It didn't say "Day 1", it said "post-launch", which means anytime after the game's released.

 

[R0Y]

He didn't.

In one of his final emails, his source outed himself as an employee at Bandai Namco.

The E3 thing was always speculation.



This is completely untrue.

Obviously you can't out him, but how do you know that he outed himself? Was it accidental, did he say something else that only a Bamco employee would know, or did he just say his real name?"

 

[vaanrose]

Obviously you can't out him, but how do you know that he outed himself? Was it accidental, did he say something else that only a Bamco employee would know, or did he just say his real name?"

Check my post higher up on this page. It was Sal Romano who said he was a Bandai Namco employee. He didn't give the exact text of the email he received, but said the source said that Nintendo keeps secrets from Bandai Namco, heavily implying the source got all his information from either working for or knowing someone who works for Bandai Namco.

 

[S_B]

Is it so difficult to realize that maybe he just knew about the E3 characters and then decided to BS everything else, knowing he'd have everybody wrapped around his finger after WFT?

It is because he's still 8/10.

And hindsight is 20/20. It's the same as confirmation bias in people believing they roll more 6s on a D6 because they're trying to avoid getting 6s.

If people grunt and squint hard enough, they can say, "Well, all of the newcomers were obvious!" when nothing could be further from the truth.

WHY would he "BS everything else"? He has a gaming website to run and his credibility is on the line, and if he had just sat quietly for the remainder of SSB's development cycle, he would've been hailed as the man who leaked a sizable chunk of SSB4's roster (which is exactly what he DID do) and that would've been the end of it.

Now? He's largely regarded as a joke because of the ones he got wrong, meaning all of the goodwill he had earned is gone.

This isn't like the episode of the Simpsons when Homer accidentally saves the nuclear plant from melting down and then is revealed for being a fraud when he's asked to do it again. There WAS no "do it again" for Sal. He has EVERYTHING TO LOSE by just "guessing" characters.

And for the record, Chrom and the Chorus Kids were very likely both going to be playable at one point: Chrom's model is player-quality and there were rumors of a Fire Emblem Duo which was probably going to be Chrom and Robin. Then, duos were canned because the 3DS sucks (while Sakurai insisted the 3DS didn't hold the Wii U version back, lololololol....).

Same goes for the Chorus Kids, because there are Rhythm Heaven enemies in Smash Run, which ONLY includes enemies from playable (or once playable) Nintendo franchises and a bunch of Namco enemies (because Namco wants to remind us that they developed the game).

So yeah, Sal thought his info was good when he shared it. I suspect his leaker was found out and fired when it came to the day he thought Shulk would be revealed and wasn't (which is how Apple finds and fires leakers: feed false info to a suspected leaker. if the info gets leaked, fire them).

 

[R0Y]

Check my post higher up on this page. It was Sal Romano who said he was a Bandai Namco employee. He didn't give the exact text of the email he received, but said the source said that Nintendo keeps secrets from Bandai Namco, heavily implying the source got all his information from either working for or knowing someone who works for Bandai Namco.

Yeah, I mean, coincidences happen more often than we think, but the guy knew a heck of a lot and we know Chrom was considered.

 

[MBakhsh]

It is because he's still 8/10.

And hindsight is 20/20. It's the same as confirmation bias in people believing they roll more 6s on a D6 because they're trying to avoid getting 6s.

If people grunt and squint hard enough, they can say, "Well, all of the newcomers were obvious!" when nothing could be further from the truth.

WHY would he "BS everything else"? He has a gaming website to run and his credibility is on the line, and if he had just sat quietly for the remainder of SSB's development cycle, he would've been hailed as the man who leaked a sizable chunk of SSB4's roster (which is exactly what he DID do) and that would've been the end of it.

Now? He's largely regarded as a joke because of the ones he got wrong, meaning all of the goodwill he had earned is gone.

This isn't like the episode of the Simpsons when Homer accidentally saves the nuclear plant from melting down and then is revealed for being a fraud when he's asked to do it again. There WAS no "do it again" for Sal. He has EVERYTHING TO LOSE by just "guessing" characters.

And for the record, Chrom and the Chorus Kids were very likely both going to be playable at one point: Chrom's model is player-quality and there were rumors of a Fire Emblem Duo which was probably going to be Chrom and Robin. Then, duos were canned because the 3DS sucks (while Sakurai insisted the 3DS didn't hold the Wii U version back, lololololol....).

Same goes for the Chorus Kids, because there are Rhythm Heaven enemies in Smash Run, which ONLY includes enemies from playable (or once playable) Nintendo franchises and a bunch of Namco enemies (because Namco wants to remind us that they developed the game).

So yeah, Sal thought his info was good when he shared it. I suspect his leaker was found out and fired when it came to the day he thought Shulk would be revealed and wasn't (which is how Apple finds and fires leakers: feed false info to a suspected leaker. if the info gets leaked, fire them).

Confirmation bias works both ways; you're making an awful lot of arguments to support this leak. You look at WFT and then start coming up with reasons why the other stuff didn't happen. "Maybe Chrom was part of a duo at first!" "Maybe Chorus Kids couldn't run on 3DS either!" "Obviously!" I really have to question the notion of the leaker having "outdated information" when he comes out and says these characters are in the game a year after the initial "leak." Why not spill the beans all at once? Why would he stick around for so long and give three updates instead of making a much safer hit and run? This isn't even mentioning the fact that he had basically given away his affiliation with Bamco in the "Enjoy mah gud fren Shulk" update. Not a smart guy at all if he somehow was legit. At any rate, the important thing to note is that Sal Romano did not 100% endorse the leak and indeed asked everyone to take it with a grain of salt even after E3 2013. He's not the one who came up with the character list; only the anonymous alleged Bamco employee had credibility to lose, and of course he is anonymous so that's not exactly a big deal. So yeah, no risk for Sal by pushing "moe."

 

[ミスティック Speed]

You know, I did have a lot of faith in this guy, yet...at the same time- I'm glad he wasn't right on a lot of things. Lucina, Robin, Dr. Mario and Dark Pit are all characters that I've grown to love and adore. (Well...I already loved Dr. Mario in Melee.)
Although....I would die laughing if Chorus Kids were announced as the next DLC character. x3

 

[vaanrose]

While we know nothing about the Chorus Kids, or how far into development they may or may not have been, if we take Sakurai at his word, Chrom was only ever, at best, a name thrown onto the initial list because he was the main character of the newest game in his series. Sakurai said that he decided on Robin almost immediately after he actually played Awakening, due to him feeling the character was more unique. Many have taken this to assume Chrom was never considered, but I think there's definitely room for Chrom to have been on a "first draft" list of newcomers, and for him to have been the choice for a Fire Emblem newcomer right up until Sakurai actually sat down with Awakening to research the character.

For the longest time, I felt the only way the Gematsu information could be true was if the source worked on the game at some point in early, early production, in the two month window between when Smash Bros began active development and when Awakening was released in Japan and Sakurai could have played it, but no longer worked there when he chose to share the information, months after Chrom would have been passed over in lieu of Robin. It was how I reconciled the absence of Chrom and Chorus Kids, and the inclusion of Robin, Jr and Duck Hunt.

But more recently I'm thinking this needn't be the case. The fact that the leaker seems to have known nothing about Bowser Jr and Duck Hunt (as well as Robin, Lucina and Dark Pit) could be offered up as an explanation for why he still believed Chrom and Chorus Kids to be in the game as late as E3 2014.

If Gematsu's source is legitimate, than by his own admission Sakurai and Nintendo intentionally kept Bandai Namco in the dark about things. Since Bandai Namco are the ones that made the game, obviously Sakurai couldn't have hidden entire characters from the entire company, but there could certainly have been groups within the company that were each privy to different characters. In this scenario, the Gematsu source would know he had an incomplete picture, so if he knew Chrom and Chorus Kids were on the initial list, he'd have no reason to assume they were scrapped just because he had seen no indication of progress on them. For all he knew, they could have been handled by a different unit.

Note that in his last email, he stressed that Shulk was still 100% in the game, but didn't say a thing about the Chorus Kids, the one character from his leak still unaccounted for. If makes sense that if he personally worked on Shulk, he'd be so confident in Shulk's inclusion, but elect not to comment on the character he would not have worked on.

 

[S_B]

Confirmation bias works both ways; you're making an awful lot of arguments to support this leak. You look at WFT and then start coming up with reasons why the other stuff didn't happen. "Maybe Chrom was part of a duo at first!" "Maybe Chorus Kids couldn't run on 3DS either!" "Obviously!" I really have to question the notion of the leaker having "outdated information" when he comes out and says these characters are in the game a year after the initial "leak." Why not spill the beans all at once? Why would he stick around for so long and give three updates instead of making a much safer hit and run? This isn't even mentioning the fact that he had basically given away his affiliation with Bamco in the "Enjoy mah gud fren Shulk" update. Not a smart guy at all if he somehow was legit. At any rate, the important thing to note is that Sal Romano did not 100% endorse the leak and indeed asked everyone to take it with a grain of salt even after E3 2013. He's not the one who came up with the character list; only the anonymous alleged Bamco employee had credibility to lose, and of course he is anonymous so that's not exactly a big deal. So yeah, no risk for Sal by pushing "moe."

Thing is, it's not confirmation bias when there's evidence to support it. There was 0 evidence that WFT would be playable, and there was evidence AGAINST villager being playable.

My conclusions based upon the evidence are:

A) Sal got too much of a longshot right to be guessing (two longshots).

B) Sal has something to lose (and DID lose something). Ergo, he wasn't wrong by choice.

C) There is SOLID evidence that both Chrom and the Chorus Kids were going to be playable at one point. If Sal had said "Dixie Kong would be playable", he'd be readily full of it because there's 0 evidence to support it (I mean, Dixie isn't standing there in Diddy's win screen or part of Diddy's Fsmash).

As for the age of information, leaking info is a risky business for anyone who does it, and here's the thing: Sal could've been asked (and likely was asked) to hold onto the info he had until a later date. The reason? When it was leaked to Sal, it could've been after the first meeting where the roster was discussed at which point maybe 10 people on the development team knew about the roster at that point.

After a few months, everyone on the dev team knows the same info. Ergo, when Sal leaked it then, it could've been any of 100+ people who could've potentially leaked it.

And as I pointed out, the Shulk thing was almost certainly the leaker being discovered. This is how Steve Jobs used to find and fire leakers in apple: feed them BS info (in this case, tell them the Shulk trailer would be out that day) and see if that fact leaks out.

In summary, Sal had REAL info, I don't believe for a moment that he guessed on any of it because that would be a surefire way to make him look like an idiot, but now, he looks like an idiot anyway and his source is almost certainly gone so I doubt we can expect anything from him for SSB5.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

It didn't say "Day 1", it said "post-launch", which means anytime after the game's released.

Thanks, I was misremembering.

 

[MBakhsh]

Thing is, it's not confirmation bias when there's evidence to support it. There was 0 evidence that WFT would be playable, and there was evidence AGAINST villager being playable.

B) Sal has something to lose (and DID lose something). Ergo, he wasn't wrong by choice.

C) There is SOLID evidence that both Chrom and the Chorus Kids were going to be playable at one point. If Sal had said "Dixie Kong would be playable", he'd be readily full of it because there's 0 evidence to support it (I mean, Dixie isn't standing there in Diddy's win screen or part of Diddy's Fsmash).

In summary, Sal had REAL info, I don't believe for a moment that he guessed on any of it because that would be a surefire way to make him look like an idiot, but now, he looks like an idiot anyway and his source is almost certainly gone so I doubt we can expect anything from him for SSB5.

Since you haven't bothered to listen to anything I've said I'm not going to bother replying anymore.

I will say that there really is no solid evidence for either side, it's all pretty much conjecture. Having said that, when the original source has no modicum of credibility whatsoever, I would personally lean toward the conclusion that it's mostly bunk.

 

[Tino]

Some of y'all are taking this **** way too damn seriously...

 

[S_B]

I'm not going to bother replying anymore.

Which is exactly what people making poor arguments should do, thank you.

I will say that there really is no solid evidence for either side, it's all pretty much conjecture. Having said that, when the original source has no modicum of credibility whatsoever, I would personally lean toward the conclusion that it's mostly bunk.

There's plenty of solid evidence behind Gematsu: Chrom's player-quality model IN game, Rhythm Heaven enemies in Smash Run when NO other non-repped Nintendo franchise has enemies, WFT and villager being a million to one guess (or worse).

Your refusal to accept it for what it is is no more relevant than people refusing to accept that the earth is round (and those people actually exist...).

Also, last I checked, the Pokemon X/Y leaker got WAY more stuff wrong than Sal and everyone's A-okay with him...

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

Oh, please. The Rhyman Heaven enemy is not "solid" evidence whatsoever. It is possible, but you're making a severe assumption that Sakurai will never put in enemies from a series that doesn't have a playable character. We need something better than that. Like data files of them being playable. But since that does not exist, we have unprovable theories.

Chrom being a high quality model is severely irrelevant. He's a very notable character and could've had that due to his importance. The actual interview is the only reason we even know Chrom could potentially have been planned. And that's still up for question.
Villager was definitely not as hard to guess as you think it is. We know Sakurai has changed his mind before. And somebody did guess WFT first. Doesn't matter if it was more of a joke, they still did. Of course, I do not believe they predicted those two in combination either.

There's way too many assumptions being made to fit in Chorus Men(who have very little evidence to prove they were in, just to suggest they could've been in. Two very different things) and Chrom(the interview is iffy and he may have been on the list, if the list even named a character in the Fire Emblem section, that is. He could damn well be an assumption on Sal's leaker's part). In reality, Chrom and Chorus Men do not have strong enough evidence to say they've been planned at all. An interview that is kind of vague due not just translation issues, but the fact that Sakurai didn't made one mention of Chrom actually being playable at all. A high quality model means pretty little. Even if he had the idea of making him playable, he may have never gotten past the modeling stage.

Frankly, Smash_Brother, using the two things he got wrong as somehow proof he's right is a very bad move. They will always be wild cards, but cannot really prove him right. It still means he didn't know the final product in the end, but that's pretty evident of his lack of knowledge on tons of characters. I do not know why you cannot accept that the leaker was clearly left in the dark in some instances. He was not perfect. But no leaker is(not counting data dumps, and even then, the final copy tends to be modified, leaving the credibility of those dumps as murky). I do believe he's legit, but I really don't have any strong reason to believe Chorus Men got beyond the "I like this idea" stage. If even that. If even them specifically. It's too up in the air. Chrom has a bit more, but that's due to him being used in a form of gameplay, but the interview is still too oddly worded and doesn't specify he was ever playable, so we can not legitimately say he was outside of a pure theory. Both will always be up in the air unless Sakurai heavily specifies. Till then, there is no indefinite answer.

 

[S_B]

Frankly, Smash_Brother, using the two things he got wrong as somehow proof he's right is a very bad move.

I don't even NEED to: getting the WFT and villager were already WAY outside the realm of guessable possibility. No one even considered WFT to BE a friggin' character before she was revealed, and villager had already been blacklisted by Sakurai from Brawl.

Again, Gematsu is 8 of 10 right, which as I said is still more accurate than the Pokemon leak yet no one tries to angrily dismiss that guy. 8 of 10 is a passing grade on any test that I know of. I give Sal credit for giving us a sizable chunk of the roster long before it was revealed.

Not to mention the fact that the ENTIRE reason Shulk was so popular in fake leaks was because of Gematsu...

As Vanrose pointed out, the leaker could've been on one part of the dev team that didn't know what the others were doing and could've seen the HD Chrom model and assumed.

And why don't you explain the logic behind EVERY OTHER NINTENDO-MADE SMASH RUN ENEMY COMING FROM A PLAYABLE FRANCHISE, except for the ones from RH. Why is Rhythm Heaven so special that it gets representation in smash run while not having a playable character? Why not any of the DOZENS of more popular Nintendo franchises that could've also been represented via smash run?

Once again, it's not like Sal predicted Dixie Kong, Lip, Professor Layton etc. and we're insisting that THOSE characters (with no evidence to support them whatsoever) were just honest mistakes and Sal should be forgiven for them. We're talking about stuff that HAS genuine evidence that points to it was either playable or could legitimately be mistaken for playable.

 

[Deleted member 245254]

I don't even NEED to: getting the WFT and villager were already WAY outside the realm of guessable possibility. No one even considered WFT to BE a friggin' character before she was revealed, and villager had already been blacklisted by Sakurai from Brawl.

Again, Gematsu is 8 of 10 right, which as I said is still more accurate than the Pokemon leak yet no one tries to angrily dismiss that guy. 8 of 10 is a passing grade on any test that I know of. I give Sal credit for giving us a sizable chunk of the roster long before it was revealed.

Not to mention the fact that the ENTIRE reason Shulk was so popular in fake leaks was because of Gematsu...

As Vanrose pointed out, the leaker could've been on one part of the dev team that didn't know what the others were doing and could've seen the HD Chrom model and assumed.

And why don't you explain the logic behind EVERY OTHER NINTENDO-MADE SMASH RUN ENEMY COMING FROM A PLAYABLE FRANCHISE, except for the ones from RH. Why is Rhythm Heaven so special that it gets representation in smash run while not having a playable character? Why not any of the DOZENS of more popular Nintendo franchises that could've also been represented via smash run?

Once again, it's not like Sal predicted Dixie Kong, Lip, Professor Layton etc. and we're insisting that THOSE characters (with no evidence to support them whatsoever) were just honest mistakes and Sal should be forgiven for them. We're talking about stuff that HAS genuine evidence that points to it was either playable or could legitimately be mistaken for playable.

Honestly, I no longer subscribe to the "If it's different or unique from the others of its ilk, it MUST be special" mindset, especially after Ridley. People did everything they could to argue that there was absolutely no coincidence between Ridley and the other "shown but not confirmed" characters, that it HAD to mean Ridley was unique or special. He wasn't. He was a boss, like everyone thought he'd be. Sometimes things ARE just black and white.

 

[Arcadenik]

And why don't you explain the logic behind EVERY OTHER NINTENDO-MADE SMASH RUN ENEMY COMING FROM A PLAYABLE FRANCHISE, except for the ones from RH. Why is Rhythm Heaven so special that it gets representation in smash run while not having a playable character? Why not any of the DOZENS of more popular Nintendo franchises that could've also been represented via smash run?

Find Mii had a ghost enemy in Smash Run but no characters specifically from Find Mii (not Mii Fighters - I mean characters with the Find Mii crown icon) are playable... Wandering Heroes confirmed!!!

But yeah, I think it would be cool if SSB5 had newcomers from Rhythm Heaven (Chorus Kids) and Find Mii (Wandering Heroes).

I don't even NEED to: getting the WFT and villager were already WAY outside the realm of guessable possibility. No one even considered WFT to BE a friggin' character before she was revealed, and villager had already been blacklisted by Sakurai from Brawl.

Imagine the chaos if that first leak included Duck Hunt Dog...

 

[Kashology]

Guys, guys, guys, I think you have it all wrong!

The guy might be a psychic, maybe he has a type of clairvoyance to be exact, which might be why there is no public record of legal action taken. I mean have you people even considered the supernatural at all? It's entirely irrational to rule it out. ESP has not been disproved to exist exactly; so, for all we know this guy could have been a psychic.

 

[S_B]

Honestly, I no longer subscribe to the "If it's different or unique from the others of its ilk, it MUST be special" mindset, especially after Ridley. People did everything they could to argue that there was absolutely no coincidence between Ridley and the other "shown but not confirmed" characters, that it HAD to mean Ridley was unique or special. He wasn't. He was a boss, like everyone thought he'd be. Sometimes things ARE just black and white.

How was Ridley "special"?

The only thing that ever made him special that I saw was the amount of straw grasping to suggest that he might be playable.

Also, when it comes to Smash Run, we're looking at simple pattern recognition, here.

The ice climbers were planned but cut when they discovered the 3DS couldn't handle them, but the polar bear remains in Smash Run.

It stands to reason that the very same thing was likely true for the Chorus Kids who also must've been at least two characters because their name is plural.

But yeah, I think it would be cool if SSB5 had newcomers from Rhythm Heaven (Chorus Kids) and Find Mii (Wandering Heroes). .

I wish Sakurai would just swallow his damn pride, admit that the 3DS isn't powerful enough to handle the ICs/CCs and release them both on the Wii U as DLC anyway...

Guys, guys, guys, I think you have it all wrong!

The guy might be a psychic, maybe he has a type of clairvoyance to be exact, which might be why there is no public record of legal action taken. I mean have you people even considered the supernatural at all? It's entirely irrational to rule it out. ESP has not been disproved to exist exactly; so, for all we know this guy could have been a psychic.

You can't sue someone for leaking information about a video game unless they were under contract to not do so (which Sal wasn't).

Besides, if Nintendo sued Sal, all it would be doing is confirming that he's right...

And there are absolutely no undeniable facts to support Gematsu. Only a list of characters that anyone can conjure up. Again, I myself predicted more correctly than Gematsu, without inside info. So who's to say Sal Romano isn't just a faker who did almost as well with his predictions as myself? He certainly hasn't provided us with ANYTHING to suggest he is anything more than that.

Wow, I missed this little gem...

Can you link where you "predicted" the secret characters BEFORE E3 2013 and got any number of them right without getting a ton wrong as well?

Yeah, anyone can predict 100 newcomers and PROBABLY get all of the newcomers in that group, but they'll also get close to 85 characters wrong.

Sal "guessed" 10 and got 8 of them right, and the last two have extenuating circumstances which could explain their absence.

But even if you don't want to believe that, 8 of 10 is still more than credible.

 

[S_B]

double post

 

[Kashology]

How was Ridley "special"?

You can't sue someone for leaking information about a video game unless they were under contract to not do so (which Sal wasn't).

Besides, if Nintendo sued Sal, all it would be doing is confirming that he's right...

Didn't they sue the guy who leaked the 3DS version or screeshot from it? In any case, we can at least agree that the guys is a psychic, right?

 

[Wanderer from Roseyard]

All we know is that what he told us didn't come to pass as stated. What characters may have existed but were scrapped during development are unknowable to us right now, so there's no way to defend the rumor as "right but outdated."