Rate Their Chances Returns! Day 194: "Predicting the Direct"

[BluePikmin11]

In his defense Brain Age is one of the newer and successful series but like with Andross, being an AT in Brawl, similar to him (floating head with hands) makes me think he'd probably be an AT.

This must be why people think he'll be an AT.

 

[Fortanono]

Dr. Kawashima:

Chance: 3%. He could be unique, but still, he's a floating head with hands. And with WFT, I doubt he'll get in.
Want: 10%. Really, I want him as a boss and a rival to WFT if there are different pre-Master Hand bosses for different characters. Playable... No.

Rosalina Prediction: 20%. With her being in the new Mario game, her chances just greatly increased.

Nominations: Sinnoh Trainer x5. C'mon, help me!

 

[Louie G.]

DR. KAWASHIMA

I've been preparing myself for this day, and it has finally arrived...

CHANCE: 5%
See, some (in other words Blue) may argue that Sakurai is trying to reach out to the casual audience this time around. That is not true. He is with the inclusion of Villager and somewhat Wii Fit Trainer, but that's probably it. With so many requested and possible newcomers, putting KAWASHIMA in there and not adding say, Ridley is a recipe for disaster. Everyone will hate him. Not that anyone is begging Sakurai for him anyway. And does he really meet Sakurai's criteria? Do people want to play as the "guy from Brain Age"? Is a generic hand-boss type character really unique? No and no. In conclusion, there's just so much competition for the Doc that he really has no shot. And if we get another surprise, it will be a retro like ROB. Not another casual series surprise lilke Wii Fit Trainer.

WANT: 2%
See, Blue has tried to convince me that Kawashima is interesting. "He's a floating head, we've never seen that before!" "He can use educational attacks!" I don't know about everyone else, but I think that sounds pretty boring. Sorry Blue, you know I love ya.

Rosalina Prediction: 14.5%
SM3DW definitely boosts her want and chances. This is the perfect time to rate Rosalina.

Noms:
Oh, why not.
BANDANA WADDLE DEE x5

 

[Deleted member]

This must be why people think he'll be an AT.

I don't blame them.
Dr. Kawashima:

Andross (Star Fox for SNES):

Andross (Star Fox Adventures):

Dr. Kawashima's aesthetics reminds me of Andross on the SNES while his design reminds me of Andross in 64 and Adventures.

 

[Fortanono]

Luvdisc? Heart scales. Luvdisc is memorable for having a use.

Mothrim on the other hand is so forgettable I almost put Qwilfish here.

But in doing so, I've remembered him. Curses.

How about the most random thing I could think of: Cherubi?

 

[BluePikmin11]

You know I even made a moveset on the Kawashima thread for the people who says he doesn't have potential.
Why not try reading it first. o-o

@Brawler610 Interesting, looking at those two Andross pictures, I can truely see why. o-o

 

[OcarinaOfDoom]

Dr. Kawashima: 0% A real life person who;s video game persona is a floating head with hands. Legal issues are a thing people. Kawashima would have paperwork equivalent to a third-party most likely
Want: 0%
Rosalina: 20% MUH RECENCY
Bandana Dee x 5

 

[BluePikmin11]

Dr. Kawashima: 0% A real life person who;s video game persona is a floating head with hands. Legal issues are a thing people. Kawashima would have paperwork equivalent to a third-party most likely

Is this is assuming an adult like Kawashima is going to give up on paperwork, I think he has went through this many times. All of us are eventually gonna to paperwork.

If the photorealistic issue somehow becomes an issue, he could alternatively use his devilish form, making him more of a fictional depiction.

 

[OcarinaOfDoom]

Is this is assuming an adult like Kawashima is going to give up on paperwork, I think he has went through this many times. All of us are eventually gonna to paperwork.

If the photorealistic issue somehow becomes an issue, he could alternatively use his devilish form, making him more of a fictional depiction.

I'm talking about that he and Nintendo would have to do paperwork for him to be playable. Sakurai can't just say, "LETS ADD KAWASHIMA" like he can with someone like Ridley or K. Rool.

 

[BluePikmin11]

I don't think he would have a problem with that, as Iwata and Kawashima are great friends, for sure he's done paperwork for Nintendo before (At least 4 times).

 

[KingofPhantoms]

Dr Kawashima - 5% It's true Sakurai likes to pick a surprise characrer or two for every game, but he doesn't do so to appeal to the "casual" audience. And whether you like it or not, the Dr. being based on a real person still poses to be a potential issue, as Kawashima may not want his virtual counterpart to be in a fighting game. And BluePikmin11 seems to overestimate Dr. Kawashima's potential.

Want - 0% I would make this number a NEGATIVE number if I could. Like -1000% I don't want Kawashima in at all. I'd rather have a freaking Goomba Smash Bros. in before Kawashima is. (Inb4BluePikmin likes this post)

Rosalina Prediction - 15%

x5 Count Bleck.

 

[BluePikmin11]

You sure love predicting stuff do you.

 

[OcarinaOfDoom]

I don't think he would have a problem with that, as Iwata and Kawashima are great friends, for sure he's done paperwork for Nintendo before (At least 4 times).

Yes, but it would take the work equivalent to a third-party. Sakurai isn't going to do that for such a minor character.

 

[Toxicroaker]

Dr. Kawashima: 1.3% Dat sale score...
Want: 0% Cause purple says so.

Rosalina: 13.19%

x5 EXCITEBIKIER!!! SPREAD!!! THE!!! WOOOORD!!!

 

[XStarWarriorX]

Dr. Kawashima - I'm gonna be nice and say 10% Sakurai isn't going to go crazy with the random choices, he's going to pick iconic characters that people like and want and who can get a great moveset, Dr. Kawashima has that real life problem thing, and any normal person who plays smash wouldn't want him, and he'd be a hassle to program and develop.

Want - 0% I don't want this guy, I don't care what bluepikmin says or what movesets bluepikmin did. I can easily make a moveset for master cheif and say he's viable. but I don't have to worry about this because the unexpected character of this smash bros was wii fit trainer, he isn't going to go with another.

Rosalina - 25%

Noms: x5 Waddle Dee

 

[BluePikmin11]

Yes, but it would take the work equivalent to a third-party. Sakurai isn't going to do that for such a minor character.

Dr. Kawashima is not a minor character. He is an important part of Nintendo as a whole, with his franchise very popular like Wii Fit and Animal Crossing. I feel like you guys are still not understanding Brain Age, yet you understand Wii Fit.

 

[Spears In Smash Bros.]

Dr. Kawashima: 0.5%
Is he really a fictional character? I was under the impression that he was the actual person who created the Brain Age games, which would disqualify him from being added to Smash Bros. Still, I suppose they'd choose him over Reggie Fils-Aime.

Want: 2.5%
I don't like him, seeing as how he doesn't seem to know how the word "blue" is pronounced.

Rosalina prediction: 14.6%

Nominate: Quote x5

 

[BluePikmin11]

The Brain Age series was inspired by Dr. Kawashima's work, so no he didn't actually create it.

 

[OcarinaOfDoom]

Dr. Kawashima is not a minor character. He is an important part of Nintendo as a whole, with his franchise very popular like Wii Fit and Animal Crossing. I feel like you guys are still not understanding Brain Age, yet you understand Wii Fit.

The 3DS game has sold less than 100,000 copies according to VGChartz.

 

[BluePikmin11]

The 3DS game has sold less than 100,000 copies according to VGChartz.

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/sales/software/ds.html

Try harder.

 

[OcarinaOfDoom]

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/sales/software/ds.html

Try harder.

2 games 7 years ago. Try something after Brawl came out.

 

[BluePikmin11]

2 games 7 years ago. Try something after Brawl came out.

So I guess this is assuming that characters like Shulk won't be considered.
He is going to take everything into account about the frachise you know.

 

[OcarinaOfDoom]

So I guess this is assuming that characters like Shulk won't be considered.
He is going to take everything into account you know.

why would Shulk not matter?
Brain Age had 2 big games and then it died out. Anyway, I'ma stop this now.

 

[BluePikmin11]

Stop trying to make a popular franchise seem dead.

 

[Toxicroaker]

Stop trying to make a popular franchise seem dead.

Though it is not exactly dead it is gonna be hard to get a floating head to work (even if you use the one with hands.) Though tho have me impressed with those sales... *changes chance score*

 

[BluePikmin11]

Mathematical attacks, word attacks, maybe even psychic powers since he literally is the master of mind. He has plenty of ways he can work with educational attacks creatively.

 

[Starbound]

Chances for Dr. K: 0%
He's based on a real person, so he didn't originate in a video game. That immediately disqualifies him.

Want: 24%
"I have a brain age of 24"

 

[BluePikmin11]

It's a fictional depiction of him, he is not a floating head in real life, it does not immediately disqualify him either.
ARGGGGGHHH!!!!

 

[KingofPhantoms]

Dr. Kawashima is now officially Impa's cousin.


Anyway, Kawashima isn't getting in because his franchise is popular. Sakurai likes to put in unexpected characters from a popular franchises that have potential, yes. But Wii Fit Trainer is understandable because she/he was already chosen, (and actually had high potential) Sakurai is not going to add a bunch of unexpected characters all willy-nilly. And there is no such thing as "The casual series" in Smash. Kawashima won't complete the representation of that series as it does not even exist.

This is all I'm saying on the matter.

 

[Erimir]

As a fan of your ratings, I must express I am at a loss now that instead of pure commentary you're talking about some statistical model that I admit I find tremendously confusing.

Mostly because Sakurai doesn't follow math. We're talking about a chaotic being, so given that I miss your less math-y commentary.

First of all, I'll say that since Palutena was a re-rate, I didn't bother writing as much. I might include links to my previous ratings in the future... but you can find my original post about Palutena back there.

Anyway... if Sakurai didn't "follow math", then you wouldn't be able to get an 81% correlation by plugging these numbers into the model. Now, obviously I don't think he plugs information into a calculator to decide who gets in. But he knows which series are the money makers. Sales are also quite strongly correlated with "popularity" as well. If people like Mario, they'll buy his games, and vice versa, to some extent (I don't think people loving Zelda games has helped Tingle that much). And I'm sure he gets at least some pressure from Nintendo to promote popular/money-making characters. So, his behavior is not going to be random with respect to sales figures.

There's also the matter that I do not have access to WiiWare and Virtual Console sales figures, which means I may be significantly underestimating the appeal of some retro characters. It might be that VC sales have helped Earthbound's stature relative to some of the larger series. I also do not have access to sales figures in money, rather than copies sold, nor their profit margins. Nor do I know about money made from other merchandise (which probably helps Pokemon a large amount). So the series may be ranked differently in terms of their overall profitability and popularity (and fanbase strength rather than just size may matter as well) than the numbers I have.

Nonetheless, the correlation is pretty robust and although I haven't used the most rigorous methodology, 81%-83% correlation is far too strong of a performance to be dismissed as "chance", to say that Sakurai is a "chaotic being" and thus cannot be predicted on the basis of more objective figures. Of course, he does have some freedom to pick characters he just likes, and he may respond to characters that are more popular than their sales would suggest. Then there's the matter of the cast of characters in a series - it doesn't matter how much sales Game & Watch or Wii Sports/Mii games get, it's very safe to assume they won't get more than one character. Other series, like Pokemon, have no shortage of characters.

I also don't think that the clones in Melee followed these rules as much, and in fact, I get slightly better results if I pretend the Melee clones didn't exist.

I can break down what I said a little bit more though...


I said "Using sales (logarithm of total sales since the relation is not linear), previous slots and movesets, whether the game is a typical genre (so Zelda, Mario, Golden Sun = typical, Wii Fit, Nintendogs = atypical), or has any playable characters (in Duck Hunt and Wii Fit there isn't really any playable character), I can get about an 81% correlation with a 10-fold cross validation on slots and 83% for move sets."

• I ran predictions for both slots and move sets. Some of the models I tried performed better on move sets than slots, which is not surprising given Sakurai's comments about how he thinks of it more in those terms. More move sets are more work for that series, so a series should "merit" that additional work. But the performance is pretty similar.
• 10-fold cross validation means that the model is run 10 times, each time training the model on 90% of the data. Then that model makes predictions for the remaining 10%. The performance of the model is then based on those predictions. This is meant to approximate how well the model will perform on new data. If you train the data on all of the data and test on that, then you would tend to perform worse than expected on new data due to overfitting.
• 81% correlation means that about 81% of the variation is explained by the model.
• So, I took total sales (in millions). You can see a clear relation between a franchise's sales and the number of slots/movesets they get if you plot it on a graph. It is, however, not linear. It appears to be approximately logarithmic. This explains why the Mario and Pokemon series do not have many, many, many times more representatives than say, Fire Emblem, despite having ~60x or ~25x as many sales, respectively. A logarithmic scale instead predicts the influence of Mario's/Pokemon's sales relative to Fire Emblem's sales to only be a factor of 2.5-3x as many slots. Obviously this is still a bit off, which is why I incorporated other factors.
• Previous slots and move sets are just that. For Brawl, these numbers would be how many slots and move sets the Mario series had in Melee. For Smash 64, this is 0 for all franchises since there was no previous iteration. This decision could be criticized. I do get slightly better performance if I only consider Melee and Brawl, but it may be slightly less robust due to fewer data points.
• Typical genre deals with Sakurai's comments about what sorts of characters are considered. Obviously being from an atypical genre is not a total barrier, as seen with Animal Crossing and Wii Fit. I took this to mean series that do not involve fighting, destroying things, platforming, etc. AND which do not have plots that involve such things. This means that F-Zero, which would otherwise be atypical as a racing game, is considered "typical" since the story line involves bounty hunters and such. Meanwhile, Wave Race and Excite as pure racers are atypical. I also counted Game & Watch due to how individual Game & Watch games would mostly not qualify as typical. Brain Age is obviously atypical.
• Playable character means that there is a visible playable character in the game or in its story. F-Zero has no visible player character, but we know Captain Falcon and Goose and Samurai Goroh are "in the cars". Duck Hunt, on the other hand, is first-person. There is no hunter ever seen or anything. This is why Duck Hunt fans always suggest the dog, who is not playable. Same goes for Wii Fit, Brain Age, etc.

How much each individual factor matters depends somewhat. Running the same data through but leaving out features can tell you this. You can note that some features are correlated with each other. Since franchise sales are an influence in how many slots a series got in the previous iteration, they are correlated. But it does seem that inertia does have a strong effect, and so Earthbound continues to get slots despite not keeping up with other represented series, and most series do not have a change of more than 1 slot from one game to the next.
Correlation in various configurations:

• Removing previous slots/move sets: 73% for slots (8% decline), 72% for move sets (11% decline)
• Removing sales: 78% for slots (3% decline), 79% for move sets (4% decline)
• Previous slots/move sets and sales only: 79% for slots (2% decline), 80% for move sets (3% decline)
• Previous slots/move sets only: 76% for slots (5% decline), 79% for move sets (4% decline)
• Sales variables only (including previous sales figures): 66% for slots, 66% for move sets

So you can notice that sales and previous slots do pretty well on their own, but previous slots does quite a bit better. So, series inertia seems to be the dominant factor. Nevertheless, adding you can get a significant improvement by incorporating sales into it.

But like I said, while this explains a lot of the variation, it obviously doesn't explain all of it. But I think it is a good guideline from which to start. So when I look at, say, Fire Emblem, I can see that it doesn't have the most amazing sales, so the model doesn't predict slots to increase much, predicting about 2.16 slots and 2.43 move sets. But I can also know some other things about the series, like that it has rotating protagonists (so plenty of good candidates), that they're very well-suited for being in the game, that it had one of its best selling iterations lately, but that the series almost ended due to previous games selling poorly. These are all going to effect how I'd rate them.

But since roster inertia is the largest factor, it's pretty safe to assume that Fire Emblem will not lose slots. That already gets you pretty close to the right answer for Fire Emblem - I'm pretty willing to predict that there will be at least 2 slots for FE. So there's quite a bit of wiggle room around that final slot. But it also tells you that expecting four slots for Fire Emblem is probably going to result in disappointment, as the model only made errors that large three times (they were underestimating how many slots Mario, Zelda and Fire Emblem would get in Melee... perhaps not coincidentally, those series all got clones).
Bottom line: sales and roster inertia explain a lot of what we see.

Series with less than 1.3 million in sales have never gotten a representative. No series has gotten 2 representatives with less than 2 million in sales. No series has gotten 2 unique representatives with less than 5.5 million in sales (Lucas and Roy both being at least semi-clones). No series with less than 10 million in sales has gotten 3 representatives. No series has gotten 3 unique representatives with less than 25 million in sales. No series with less than 30 million in sales has gotten 4 representatives. No series has gotten 4 reasonably unique representatives with less than 55 million in sales. This doesn't make those things happening impossible by any means, but it certainly doesn't look like Sakurai doesn't take sales into account in some fashion (although clearly not a linear fashion).

So looking at some of the franchises under consideration for Smash 4:

• Custom Robo has 1.3 million in sales, so it would be on the low end for a rep. Chibi-Robo, Xenoblade, Ouendan/Elite Beat Agents, Sin & Punishment and The Last Story all are less than a million in sales, so them getting slots would be unusual. Of those, only Xenoblade has an announced sequel, and it looks relatively high-profile and big budget, so if one was going to buck that trend, I'd guess it would be Xenoblade.
• Kid Icarus has 3 million in sales, and Pikmin has 3.8 million. Additional representatives would seem nowhere near guaranteed, but certainly possible.
• Earthbound still only has about 2 million in sales. Thinking that Ness and Lucas will stay but that Claus or Porky will get added seems a bit delusional, considering that it took 10 million to get Star Fox a couple clones, and Kirby had 25 million for actual unique characters. Fire Emblem with 8 million in sales would be on the low side, but looks a lot more plausible.
• A fourth rep for Star Fox, with only 11.5 million in sales seems pretty unlikely. Kirby, at 33.5 million, might be able to do it... maybe. But Kirby already has its major characters. Donkey Kong doesn't even have 3 reps, but yet has almost 70 million in sales and a high-profile DKC game on the way. It has by far the most sales of any series with less than four reps. Not only could they justify giving it a third rep, but they could even give it a fourth. DK getting a 3rd rep seems very likely.
• Zelda is also at about 70 million in sales, Pokemon at 220 million and Mario at 500 million. Mario and Pokemon can easily justify getting additional reps. Zelda maybe not.

 

[BluePikmin11]

Dr. Kawashima is now officially Impa's cousin.


Anyway, Kawashima isn't getting in because his franchise is popular. Sakurai likes to put in unexpected characters from a popular franchises that have potential, yes. But Wii Fit Trainer is understandable because she/he was already chosen, (and actually had high potential) Sakurai is not going to add a bunch of unexpected characters all willy-nilly.

So you still don't see the potential of Kawashima either
Edit: He is just as important to Nintendo as with franchises like Wii Fit and Animal Crossing, at least his inclusion makes sense. I think he's even a Nintendo all-star really, people just don't see it.

 

[3Bismyname]

Dr. K
prediction: 0%
want: 0%
Rosalina: 12%

 

[Erimir]

Anyway...

Sir Issac Newton Invented calculus to explain why the moon is constantly falling towards the Earth

Erimir believes he has invented a new form of math that will explain who gets into the next smash.

That being said I don't think he's played Uprising.

Linear regression is not new at all. And an 81% correlation is pretty damn good. Even the 66% correlation you can get with sales figures alone is good. Claiming that sales don't matter in the face of that just makes you look mathematically illiterate.

But you're right, Sakurai is both totally random and unpredictable and it is foolhardy for me to think that an 81% correlation means anything. But also Sakurai is practically guaranteed to put in a character you like from a game he worked on, despite leaving Kirby with only one rep for two iterations even though Kirby has 10x as many sales as Kid Icarus. Cuz that makes sense.

Have you people lost your ****ing minds? 25% for Dr. Kawashima? 5% as a "small chance"? You realize that's one in twenty? So if Sakurai rolls a critical failure, Dr. Kawashima gets in? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. I INVENTED THE KEYBOARD NECKTIE!!

Points for Mugatu references!

Also I totally agree. Giving more than 1% for Dr Kawashima is insane, IMO. 5% is not tiny.

Dr. Kawashima

Popularity: Well, Brain Age has high sales, over 35 million. Plugging that into my model, it predicts 5 representatives for Brain Age. So Dr. Kawashima is practically guaranteed to get in!

Wait, no. My model would actually only predict 1.5 reps for Brain Age, if it used sales only. Which it does not. Using more information, it would actually predict only 0.1 reps, which we could convert to a 10% chance. But that's merely a starting point, as I've said.

The more important question isn't just whether his games sell, but whether they sell to the right people. I don't think any gamer who doesn't play core Nintendo franchises will buy Smash or like it because of Dr. Kawashima. If Mario and Zelda and Pokemon aren't enough to get you interested, Dr. Kawashima won't matter.

Relevancy: Well, he's not a video game character, he's a real person. And Brain Age hasn't done much lately.

Design: He's a floating head. With hands. From a game about learning math and such. I mean, they can put something together, but yeah, this makes him quite unconventional. Even just the fact that he floats is a problem. Mewtwo might've been floaty in his movements, but he still made contact with the ground.

Roster and Competition: Yeah, there are plenty of new series they could put in instead. There are plenty of old series that they could fill out instead as well. More Mario, Pokemon, DK and Zelda would be better choices.

Wii Fit Trainer note: I think the comparison to WFT is quite off, for several reasons:

• Wii Fit Trainer is an original Nintendo creation
• Wii Fit Trainer is not based on and named after a real, living person
• Wii Fit Trainer belongs to Nintendo, Dr. Kawashima's likeness does not
• WFT only appears on Nintendo, Dr. Kawashima has been on other consoles
• WFT has a body, and does things that make more sense to translate into Smash
• Wii Fit is more game-like than Brain Age, so her appeal to bringing in new players for Smash is probably a little higher
• Wii Fit has higher sales than Brain Age
• Wii Fit has a high-profile sequel coming out, meaning it continues to be relevant and they might also hope to get Smash players to buy Wii Fit U
• Wii Fit Trainer is not based on and named after a real, living person

Dr Kawashima chances: >0.01%, so round it down to 0%
I would be shocked. You think WFT is WTF, she's got nothing on Dr Kawashima. It's not going to happen. Giving him 25% or even a 5% is ludicrous. I do not think my model knows all, and in this case, it doesn't know some relevant facts. Like the fact that Dr Kawashima is a real person, not a video game character. Ain't gonna happen.

Dr Kawashima want: 1%
No. Some part of me would be slightly pleased by the WTF factor, but no.

Rosalina prediction: 15%
Rosalina actually has a shot, and the recent news will boost her score. I'm going to guess she'll do somewhere around Toad level because why not.

Nominations:
Dr Mario x5

One time, a few years ago, I thought I might be a Dr. Mario myself. But I think I'm too burnt out on grad school to continue on for a PhD haha

 

[Al-kīmiyā']

Don't forget that every WTF character revealed decreases the chances of other WTF characters making it in.

 

[Alban712]

Dr. Kawashima
Chances: 5% - I just don't see it with so many more popular, functional and deserving characters
Want - 0% - I think he's just ridiculous. Even more than Mii's

Rosalina's prediction: 19,6%

Nomination:
Blaziken x 5 - Come on. He's cooler than all those flying heads, generic avatars and armless things we've been rating

 

[Starbound]

It's a fictional depiction of him, he is not a floating head in real life, it does not immediately disqualify him either.
ARGGGGGHHH!!!!

If I put a fictional depiction of Barack Obama into Mario Kart 8, does that mean that Obama can be a character in Smash Bros?

No because Obama is a real person, just like Dr. Kawashima is. Even if my fictional Obama is a purple haired, floating head who yells "Yes We Can!" all the time, it's still Obama.

I won't deny how much of a phenomenon Brain Age is, because it was one of the most well defined genres of the DS. If there was some sort of made up brain trainer in Brain Age instead of him, I do think we'd have a Brain Age character in Smash Bros.

 

[NickerBocker]

Dr kawashima

Chance: 1%
Good series from Nintendo, not a really feasible character.

Want: 66.6%
Andross alt costume, anyone?

Rosalina: 8.3%

Nominations
Goemon x5

 

[YoshiandToad]

Dr. Kawashima
Chance: 4%
Okay, let's not beat around the bush here. A lot of points about the good doctor have already been brought up; he's a real person, permenantly floating characters translate poorly as playable characters into Smash(they can't technically fall off the edge of a stage) and that he's akin to Andross hence why he seems more like an AT choice.

Disney tried this with their Princess franchise. If anyone remembers Enchanted, a live action film that had a cartoon version of the main actress within it's opening minutes, said cartoon version was going to be included in their ever popular Disney Princess IP. However, this plan was scrapped when it turned out they'd have to pay for her likeness for every bit of merchandise with the character on it, thus eating into the profits.

I can't see Dr. Kawashima getting included into Smash purely from a financial point of view for the same reason. He was in Brain Age, but that was because it was his work that inspired the game. He basically got paid for his work. If they had to pay him again for every single copy of Smash sold and he didn't even work on the game...well you can see why that wouldn't be a good business model.

The issue is less about paper work, and more about him eating into the potential profits should he be included. It COULD still happen if Nintendo believe Dr. Kawashima's inclusion will sell more copies of Smash than would be sold without his inclusion, or if Kawashima took only a very small percentage from the profits but Nintendo most likely would have to pay him for every copy sold.

Want: 8%
If I'm honest, it's only because Bluepikmin11 pushes him forward as much as he does it's even this high. I gotta admire their passion. I don't think I'd of even thought about him otherwise.

That said unfortunately I don't think he'd translate to Smash well:

• Huge target(I can't imagine him as anything but Andross size) that would take up far too much room on the stage(#toobig)
• Permenantly flies/floats thus is unable to fall off the stage
• I don't know about all of you but I'd feel pretty bad kicking a real person's likeness in the face. Especially someone who is a respected Doctor and a glasses wearer to boot. Not as bad as I'd feel about kicking Nintendog in the face, but still pretty bad.

Still a better choice than a lot we've rated of recent.

Rosalina: 20.2%
With her as the 'secret' 5th character in 3D World(or 6th if you include single player's Captain Toad) Rosalina has shot up from a no hope contender to being on par with Waluigi. She'll still most likely do worse than Bowser Jr or Paper Mario though.

Nominations:
Captain Syrup X 5

 

[jaytalks]

Dr. Kawashima
Chances: 0%
He's a real person. He's not getting in.
Want: 0%
I don't want to beat up a real person in the game.
Rosalina: 15.15%
Nominations:
Matthew (GS) x 5

 

[Glaciacott]

Extensively long quote about a mathematical model that predicts additions to the roster.

I think you need to step back for a moment and look at what you're doing. You're writing a dissertation on a mathematical model that essentially just boils down to "sales are good/bad, but these other factors matter too so I guess this rating is valid." It's like that whole mathematical cult of people who spend their lives predicting and tracing patterns in every thing imaginable even if it's really just based on the whims of people.

Seriously, we can make model of correlation all we want, but at the end of the day everyone here is already doing that without some needlessly complicated mathematical system. Our brains are already designed to detect patterns through observations, and your model doesn't seem to be doing anything different. And even then the fact remains your model of sort is based around figuring out the mind and decisions of a clearly random individual. You yourself mentioned before how Wii Fit Trainer "surprises" your model. So how in the name of Arceus is that reliable?
All of this doesn't make you sound more objective or informed, at least to me, it just comes out as all-out obsessive and absurd.

And I don't say this out of spite, I seriously just happen to be concerned about you. You're crossing the line into guy-from-the-movie-Pi territory. Like I said before, I normally saw your posts as the beacon of reason in the middle of absurd percentage ratings, but now everytime I read what you say I can't help but think of WTF IS GOING ON.

And on that note:
----------------------------
Dr. Kawashima
Chance - 0%
I understand being biased towards characters you like, but 60%? What in the actual f***. Like others said, 5% alone is pushing it, that people are rating Kawashima higher just speaks miles of how absurdly people are thinking after Wii Fit Trainer.
Yes, WFT opens the door to a lot of characters. Personally, one of the main reasons I'm psyched about a possible Rhythm Heaven inclusion is that Wii Fit is not a traditional game and yet it got some representation, so heck, maybe it could happen for other similar series.
However, Brain Age is taking this concept and blowing it up to a f*ckton degrees. Of course it's iconic, no one is saying it isn't. That series really moved some consoles. But expecting it to have a fighter is like expecting a tetris block to suddenly be a character, and given how Tetris was so much bigger even that makes more sense.
All this aside, there's also the fact this is a real person we're talking about. It was clearly stated that characters that didn't originate in a video game are NOT happening. Kawashima didn't originate in a video game, and his floating head likeness, devil form or not, is still his likeness in the end.
Add to that the fact that as a floating head with hands having this thing fight is absurd. Design-wise it's a horrible idea when there's so many other characters that have bodies and could be designed much more simply. Seriously, you really want some educational game representation? DK. Jr math. Unlikely, but so much simpler and more elegant than a floating head with horns that constantly talks at you.

Want 0%
No. If I had to choose, I'd rather have Omastar. If this thing genuinely happens, I'll severely begin to doubt the mental faculties of Sakurai.

Prediction
Rosalina - 16.5%
Her chances will probably go from Waluigi level to Toad level after the reveal from the direct.

Nominations
x5 Rhythm Heaven Rep