How is this not blatant bias? You did not refute any of his points, yet his argument is only "halfway acceptable".
That's not my whole arguement though. Why should Geno be considered viable?
1. Super Mario RPG was the first platform game that was developed by a third party that Nintendo played a role in. Square Enix developed the game and some of Nintendo's big-wigs like Shigeru Miyamoto played decent roles in the development process. This is a pretty significant event, why? It's because, before this time, Nintendo was very protective of it's first party franchises and the only ones they had allowed were games on the PC developed by Phillips (which helped developed the technology for the N64 and the PS1 but that's another story). After this game, Nintendo opened up a lot during the N64 era. For example, Hudson Soft developed the Mario Party games and Treasure developed Sin and Punishment. This expanded even further during the Game Cube era when games like Star Fox Assualt (Namco), DK Jungle Beat (also Namco), F-Zero GX (SEGA), Legend of Zelda the Minish Cap (Capcom) and Mario Hoops 3 on 3 (Square Enix) came about. As you can see, this was a significant event in Nintendo's history especially when the company now has very close ties with companies like SEGA and Hudson.
2. Originally, when Brawl was announced at E3 06, there was an offical poll that was released and we thought that this played a role in which characters got in. Later on, when Brawl actually came out, we found out this was the truth... in the form of cameos, that is. At GDC 08, Sakurai announced that all of Brawl's playable characters (except for Sonic), had been decided within three days after Iwata pitched the idea at him at E3 05; a whole year before the poll even came out. What does this have to do with anything? I'll tell you...
Upon this discovery, it was then noticed that most of the characters that became playable in Brawl were some of the most popular choices that didn't make it into Melee. Here are the poll results from the Melee poll:
Super Mario series
(1) Koopa: 169 (Bowser)
(2) Princess Peach: 66
(3) Wario: 65
(4) Kinopio: 27 (Toad)
(5) Nokonoko: 9 (Koopa Troopa)
(6) Kamec: 8 (Magikoopa)
(7) Kuribou: 7 (Goomba)
(8 Mallow (Mario RPG): 5
(8 Geno (Mario RPG): 5
(10) Baby Mario: 3
Pocket Monsters series
(1) Mewtwo: 35
(2) Mew: 24
(3) Satoshi (main character): 18
(4) someone from Pokemon: 12
(5) Lugia: 11
(6) Nyarth: 8 (Meowth)
(7) Raichu: 7
(8 Maril: 5
(8 Fushigidane: 5 (Bulbasaur)
(8 Togepy: 5
Legend of Zelda series
(1) Ganon (including Ganondorf): 36
(2) Young Link: 8
(2) Princess Zelda: 8
(2) Sheik: 8
(5) Darunia: 2
Kirby of the Stars series
(1) Great King Dedede: 46
(2) Gooey: 17
(3) Meta Knight: 11
(4) someone of Kirby's comrades: 10
(5) Waddle Dee: 3
Mother series
(1) Dosei-san: 18 (Mr. Saturn)
(2) Poo: 6
(3) main character of Mother 2, etc: 4 (Earthbound)
(3) Paula: 4
(5) Starman: 3
(5) Jeff: 3
Star Fox
(1) Falco: 7
(2) Slippy: 5
(3) Wolf: 4
(4) Peppy: 2
Fire Emblem series
(1) Marth: 21
(2) someone from Fire Emblem: 18
(3) Oguma: 8
(4) Celice: 4
(5) Siglud: 2
(5) Leaf: 2
related to the Rare company
(1) 007 James Bond: 35
(2) Banjo & Kazooie: 18
(3) Diddy Kong: 15
(4) Blast Dozer robot (nothing specific): 2 (Blast Corps)
(4) 006 Trevelyan: 2
various Famicom / Super Famicom forces (NES / SNES)
(1) Sukapon (Joy Mecha Fight): 15
(2) Lip (Panel de Pon): 9
(3) Prince Richard (The Bell Tolls for the Frog): 8
(4) Metroid (Metroid series): 6
(4) Blacky (Wrecking Crew): 6 (Spike)
(6) Pit-kun (Parthena's Mirror): 5 ((Kid Icarus))
(6) main character of Shin Onigashima: 5
(6) main characters of Marvelous: 5
(9) Samurai Goroh (F-ZERO): 4
(9) Popo & Nana (Ice Climber): 4
(9) main character of Balloon Fight: 4
these are non-Nintendo forces
(1) Chocobo: 9
(2) Doraemon: 7
(3) Bomberman: 5
(4) Crash Bandicoot: 4
(5) Sonic: 3
(5) Rockman: 3 (Mega Man)
Pay attention to the people I highlighted in green and look at their rankings compared to the people who actually made it in Melee. Now, this just leaves Snake, Ike, Olimar, Lucario, and ROB. In 2003, Hideo Kojima (creator of the Metal Gear series) said that he wanted Snake to appear in Melee but developed was too far along to include him. Ike represents the most recent Fire Emblem game as of July 2005, Path of Radiance. Lucario represents the most recent generation of pokemon and was introduced about three months before E3 05. Pikmin was the only new character based Nintendo franchise to premiere on the Gamecube and was the only Miyamoto franchise not represented yet and, like Game and Watch in Melee, ROB was one of Sakurai's "WTF" characters to confuse the crap out of everyone.
Why should I care about Melee, we're talking about Brawl!?! I'm getting to that. Anyways, Sakurai released a public journal that had 290 entries showing off his and his staff's favorite entries that he updated on the site for about a month after Brawl was announced. Most of these entries consisted of characters that people wanted to see and these were the most noteworthy characters:
1. Geno (5 entries)
2. King Dedede (5 entries)
3. Ike (4 entries)
4. Diddy Kong (4 entries)
5. Ridley (4 entries)
6. Krystal (3 entries)
7. Captain Olimar (3 entries)
8. Toon Link (called "Cat eyed Link" in the journal) (3 entries)
9. Takamaru (3 entries)
10. Megaman (2 entries, the only third party character besides Geno that was mentioned more than once)
Again, notice the highlighted characters and where they rank. Five of these 10 characters ended up becoming playable while the rest, except Megaman, were referenced in some form (Super Mario RPG was credited, Ridley was a boss, Krystal had multiple cameos and Takamaru was a sticker). Now notice how highly the characters that Sakurai's team had already picked ranked. What does this say exactly? It shows that Sakurai and his staff favored these characters even when some of them had already made the cut.
Now take what I said earlier about the Melee poll and something will become decently clear: if there is another Smash Bros game, the characters that didn't make it from this list will more than likely be first pick for the next game. Sakurai said at GDC 08 that the characters were the first things that were decided because they took up so much of the development time so, naturally, to save time like he did with Brawl, he'd look back to help him with the picking process. As the Brawl poll showed, many of the characters that had been popular 5 years before were just as popular when it was time to make the sequel.
I'll add more to this later because it is a lot to read and I'll be back with the other parts later.