On the subject of ballots, who are everyone’s top three most wanted Smash characters? Even if they’re unlikely, what’s the best argument you can come up with to support each of their inclusion?
Mine have pretty much stayed the same since Ultimate's DLC, in no particular order:
With Geno, he has a distinctive design and abilities that help him to stand out from the rest of the Mario cast, which seemingly helped to fuel his popularity in Smash speculation for roughly two decades. The recent Super Mario RPG remake shows that Square-Enix is aware that people want to see more of that game, but as the original characters like Mallow and Geno are owned by Square-Enix (which seems odd to me - it would be like if Capcom fully owned Vaati from the Legend of Zelda), it means that the only possibility for them to make appearances again seems to be in remakes/sequels of Mario RPG or games like Smash Bros. where Nintendo and Square-Enix are already working together. (plus, a good chunk of it is sentiment on my part - Mario RPG was one of the first games that I played, and the game that got me into RPGs in particular)
Dante was part of a group of Mii costumes where
Sakurai mentioned that they were characters that a lot of people wanted to see in Smash, so he's got that going for him. His franchise, Devil May Cry, is one of the pioneers of 3D action games, with each game (aside from DMC2, but we don't talk about that one) giving Dante a ton of material to work with, and while Capcom has a ton of characters to work with if they decided to add another one, Dante seems like one of the more prominent ones. (it seems like it's either him or Monster Hunter, though Dante has a better-defined moveset, appearance, etc.) Capcom's definitely pushed Devil May Cry harder in recent years, to the point where it showed up on Nintendo consoles for the first time this generation (and got what I'd argue would be the definitive version of DMC3) and a long-awaited fifth game. Plus it means that we'd get a crossover between Devil May Cry and Bayonetta in an official capacity outside of a limited-time event in a Shin Megami Tensei mobile game.
DOOM basically defined the first person shooter - it might not have been the first, but its popularity was massive, and it's still doing quite well for itself to this day. (the fact that Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out on the same day became a giant meme, and Doom: The Dark Ages comes out in a few days) Nintendo and Microsoft got along surprisingly well when it came to Smash Ultimate's DLC, and while there's plenty of competition in that regard for future games (Master Chief, Crash Bandicoot, etc.), I'd hope that Doomguy would get in at some point; the historical impact of the series alone seems to justify it, and Doom's gameplay seems like it would be interesting to translate into Smash. (since, in the Doom games, you have to stay mobile as much as possible or you'll quickly die)
