My thoughts on Rillaboom, Cinderace, and Inteleon:
Chance that one of them will be DLC: 70-80%
First to address whether or not the Gen 8 Spirit event disconfirms and I'd say that in the case for Pokémon SwSh it's in a grey area.
-We have yet to see the first FP2 characters, we don't know for sure if FP2 will follow any pattern established by FP1.
-While other series have had their potential Smash candidates turned into spirits, Pokémon SwSh still has the starter final evolution and a few other Pokémon that they are planning to promote later.
-I'd argue that the Gen 8 Spirit event was more of an obligatory advertisement for Pokémon SwSh than "a sign of deconfirmation", Pokémon is one of the few series that I'd imagine Nintendo would give special treatment to with both a spirit event and a DLC character. I'm also bothered by the fact that we haven't gotten any new Gen 8 Pokémon spirits since the one in November, not even for Pokémon Day.
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Rillaboom :
15%
Out of these three potential candidates, Rillaboom seems to have the lowest chance of being picked, I really feel that people are overestimating this pokemon's chances.
Is it the most popular Starter? Compared to the other two, no not really according to the top 30 results for Galar in the "Pokemon of the Year" poll.
https://pokemonday.pokemon.co.jp/jp/result/galar/
https://pokemon2020.pokemon.com/en-us/
#6. Cinderace (26,892 Votes)
#10. Inteleon (20,697 Votes)
#12. Scorbunny (20,058 Votes)
#14. Sobble (17,155 Votes)
#20. Grookey (13,478 Votes)
#29. Rillaboom (8,625 Votes)
In terms of designing a moveset Sakurai would have his work cut out for him. I'd feel Sakurai would gravitate more towards Cinderace or Inteleon because they would at least have more references to draw from, Cinderace would have plenty of Soccer references to work with and there's a plethora of spy movies, games, etc. for Inteleon. Both would transition into a fighter more naturally with their tools and abilities and thus would be easier to implement into Smash.
Does Sakurai care about type representation? After he chose Incineroar and provided his reasons why, nope.
If Sakurai did picked this character I'd feel it would only be because he wanted people to stop pestering him with the constant barrage of fan complaints of "We need a final evolution grass starter!", "You owe us this much after passing up on Decidueye!", "Blah Blah Blah..."
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Cinderace :
65%
Out of the three Starters, I'd say that Cinderace has the best shot.
The Scorbunny line has received plenty of special treatment like:
-Getting 2 signature moves and interestingly enough both Greninja and Incineroar also have 2 signature moves.
-Cinderace's Pyroball having the better base damage and most amount of effort put into its animation, at least compared to the other 2 starters.
-A Hidden Ability that's functionally the same as Greninja's
-Scorbunny receiving tons of exposure in the Anime
-Scorbunny having the most prominence in the Anime promotional material.
Its also the most popular Galar Starter, according to the top 30 results for Galar in the "Pokemon of the Year" poll. It's the 6th most popular Galar pokemon with 26,892 votes (compared to Inteleon's 20,697 votes and Rillaboom's 8,625 votes) and that's just with its base form. They have yet to release Cinderace's Hidden Ability and Gigantamax form, once people can see Cinderace at its full potential this would probably be enough to propel its popularity into Galar's Top 5.
Based on this, if the Pokemon Company, Gamefreak, and Nintendo were to pick one starter that they would want to add to Smash it is very likely that they would pick Cinderace to be the playable Gen 8 Pokemon. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if they expected it to be the most popular of the 3 Galar starters and already have plans to have it serve as the face of Galar & Smash merchandise. I mean they would have a heavily incentive to do this since only about a 1/5 of Pokemon's profits comes from game sales, in reality they make most of their money from merchandise sales (Source:
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/6769...e-92-billion-tops-media-franchises/index.html).
When it comes to building a moveset, Sakurai happens to be very fickle. He needs to be able to envision how a character moves and fights before a character can even be considered. Fortunately with soccer and the Pokemon Anime there's plenty to draw from. There's even a fighting game that includes a soccer themed character (Roberto Miura from Capcom's Rival Schools franchise). Even Cinderace's Gigantamax form would be simple to implement as a final smash since it would be really easy to both design and animate, at least compared to the other 2 starters.
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Inteleon (spelled with one L not two unless you're referring to the German pronunciation):
20%
I feel that Inteleon may have a slightly higher chance than Rillaboom to get in. Depending on when the Pokémon SwSh reps were chosen Inteleon might have been able to piggyback off of the height of Sobble's popularity. There's also the distinct possibility in my mind that if it were solely up to Sakurai, that he would personally go with Inteleon to pay homage to Goldeneye, James Bond, and Perfect Dark, which have had some connection to Smash in the past.
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Of course, this is just my thoughts on the situation, Sakurai, however, is the type of man that you just can’t predict half the time. But who knows, maybe like how he likes wrestling, perhaps Sakurai is a big Soccer fan, he owns plenty of sports games after all and he’s aware of popular Soccer icons in Japan like Captain Tsubasa.
Perkilator
TKOWL
did recently), but I'm not crazy for it. Cinderace is probably more fit for mobility, if that's the right way to put it (or maybe I'm just biased towards Scorbunny line). Intelleon, though? Playstyle wise, it would probably be a spy Greninja with a slightly different playstyle, so not too big on it, either.
) and Inteleon is no exception to this. I'm not sure to else to say: nothing about Inteleon appeals to me at all and that's also when taking into account that I'm not really clamoring for another Pokemon rep.
of gen 8"? I wouldn't know. It's a fan favorite, yes but I'm not sure that matters as they would't have known by the time the lineup was decided upon.
