Little Mac is the only shoe in because he's the star of a old and well liked series, which just recently had a new game. Ridley and K.Rool are just villains in their series, and seeing as the Smash games never have had much focus on villains, but rather the main characters, Mac has much higher chances.
But why him? There are very many other characters with well-liked series and a recent game. I want him in, but the fact is that most of his series lies in the retro days. Current characters > retro characters, because Smash represents Nintendo's characters which are significant at the time of release.
I know Ridley's size shouldn't be a issue, but its still something that is very much a problem, especially since he was actually shown in a smash game being much larger than the rest of the cast. Now this of course can be delt with, but as I said, its still a very real problem for him getting in.
I won't argue this because it's been argued so many times before.
Yes K.Rool is needed for the Donkey Kong plot, but that doesn't mean he's needed for Smash. He's just a rip off of Bowser in his Super Show incarnation, looking almost the complete same, and having the dress up fetish. Being a high seller doesn't seem to be much of a factor seeing that it took three games for the DK series to get its second character, and I assure you that no one bought any of the DK games just for K.Rool. That said, there is at least one game where they bought it for Dixie, who has shown up playable for every game she's ever appeared in (Outside of Smash) and was actually planned for Brawl. And whie she certianly shouldn't be made into a clone, it wouldn't even matter if she did, seeing Wolf. >_>
You're switching arguments. Earlier you said that K. Rool is not important, and now you're saying that he just isn't necessary. K. Rool is not a ripoff of Bowser. You can't use the non-canonical TV show for an argument about canonical importance, and from what I've heard K. Rool had a whole "I'm surrounded by idiots" thing in the TV show. Yes, Donkey Kong took three games to gain another character, but it can be explained for why it didn't get another rep. In Smash 64, it didn't get another because only Mario and Pokemon were given another rep, and since Zelda, the third most important series, didn't get another, so Donkey Kong, the fourth best selling, couldn't either. In Melee, the original roster made by Sakurai lacked Dr. Mario, Falco, Pichu, Roy, Young Link and Ganondorf. They were last minute additions, added because there was time for development of six clones or one original character. The six clones were chosen, but it's a safe bet that Donkey Kong would have gotten the original character slot if that was so choosen. In the original roster, only the big 3 had multiple reps, and Donkey Kong was the cutoff point for multiple reps. We can infer that the six clones did not include a second Donkey Kong character because there was no way for Diddy to be a clone of another character on the roster. If anything, Sakurai has been eager to add more DK reps, since he added one the first chance he could.
I in fact bought all three games in the DKC series because I wanted to see who K. Rool was after seeing how much support he got, so I bought them for K. Rool. But my main point is that games are bought for gameplay, not for characters. Nobody bought DKC2 because they thought that the new monkey on the boxart looked pretty
. They bought it because the game sounded fun, or they were directed by a friend or a review to it, or they just liked the first.
Playability is a definite bonus for a character's chances, but the problem is that Dixie's playable roles have been largely meaningless. She had DKC2 and DKC3, but those were games way back in the SNES days. Her latest playable roles have been in spinoffs. In spinoffs, you have a whole cast of characters to play as, instead of one or two. If a spinoff has twenty characters in it, which is a very conservative esimate, and Dixie is one of those twenty, then that playable role is one-twentieth as significant. Playable roles in spinoffs don't make you recognized more, because you have so many other characters to choose from. It doesn't make her special, like K. Rool's significant roles have done.
Also, Dixie Kong was planned as a
partner to Diddy. She would have probably been what Nana is to Popo, a clone who just follows the leader. It certainly wouldn't have been feasible to have a Diddy/K. Rool tag team, would it?
I'm not denying that Bowser Jr. has his chances (Nor anyone here outside of K.Rool) but he's just not a shoe-in because he is a second version of a character, and I'd think that the main character of the series would get priority in such a case. Of course both could get in, and that'd be that.
If you have a problem with multiple versions of the same character, shouldn't you be having a bigger concern with Paper Mario, who can actually be seen as Mario, and when Bowser Jr. is Bowser's son? I in fact don't care about different versions of a character. Also, Paper Mario would probably represent a new series anyways.
I would agree that a new GS character would be a shoe-in, but its bad form to just say somthing like that if you don't know who. In all, I'd say wait for that game to come out, see if Isaac returns in any form, and see how fans react to the new main character, before deciding on who.
By that argument it's bad form to say anything about which characters are likely. There's a possibility that Fire Emblem will implode upon itself and never get another game after Shadow Dragon, but you don't scold people for supporting a new FE lord. Also, since all of the support has gone to Isaac as a new playable character, maybe people will want to not rock the boat and continue to support Isaac. He's still a possibility.