Official Smash Ultimate Discussion

[Idon]

I mean, they are.


The story sucks, but the gameplay, music, and animations are all pretty solid.

To be fair though, the story could really impact how someone could enjoy the gameplay of a game.

 

[Bee Card]

But I'm still thinking that Geno have a chance if SE forced Nintendo

 

[kirbsmash]

I want to see Kirby with an Jack Frost hat so badly.

 

[Noipoi]

Just unlocked the full roster! This should be fun!

Spoiler

Also leave Geno alone. The poor boy knows he's not getting in, be nice.

 

[Idon]

But I'm still thinking that Geno have a chance if SE forced Nintendo

Why would SE force Nintendo to include a character that neither company really gave a **** about?

I want to see Kirby with an Jack Frost hat so badly.

Here you go, friend.

 

[Luigi The President]

Just unlocked the full roster! This should be fun!

Spoiler

Also leave Geno alone. The poor boy knows he's not getting in, be nice.

RETURN TO US MY LITTLE PRINCE

Geno doesn't promote Mario because he isn't ever relevant in it. He can't promote something that he's barely tied to. With faces such as Toad and Paper Mario still not in, who have games of their own, Geno promoting Mario does not make sense imo. He doesn't give Nintendo a lot of promotion because he's way less relevant than any other pick they could choose.

Normal fans can't get hyped over a character being from Mario if they never knew the character existed. Geno's been irrelevant for two decades, a Mario logo isn't going to help with that. The Smash community doesn't make a majority of the sales and there's other characters from Square Enix that are wildly more popular. Sora for sure, if legal rights permit it. Geno is different from a Pokemon because he isn't new, he's old. Even the new Pokemon have the anime so people who don't play the games may have seen them somewhere. Geno is a "who?" to anyone who isn't in the Smash community or didn't play his one game.

Geno's appearances have all been Mario appearances. This is silly, imo-he's gonna have the Mushroom logo. You don't need much more then that.
Paper Mario has been #1 for me for years now, but he's never been requested near the scale of Geno. I've also wanted Toad, but he also isn't nearly as requested as Geno.

 

[Iridium]

Having paid attention to tournament results and the thread on it here, I can say that many characters are really having their chance already. Good to see.

 

[Noipoi]

RETURN TO US MY LITTLE PRINCE

But pres, I have returned.

Originally I was gonna make this huge "I'M BACK!" post with a comic and Santa and whatever, but I really wanted to talk about this game lol

 

[Bee Card]

Why would SE force Nintendo to include a character that neither company really gave a **** about?

If the condition to get Cloud a second time is to put Geno as a DLC.

 

[Idon]

If the condition to get Cloud a second time is to put Geno as a DLC.

Again, I ask:
Why would Square Enix put that condition there?

 

[Luigi The President]

If the condition to get Cloud a second time is to put Geno as a DLC.

But you aren't explaining why this would be the situation.

 

[Michael the Spikester]

What have I been missing?

 

[Bee Card]

Again, I ask:
Why would Square Enix put that condition there?

To get money

 

[Iridium]

What have I been missing?

Not much, aside from Ultimate and Persona talk. DLC discussion I guess as well.

 

[Noipoi]

Supposedly my PPlant code will come within 8 days, but if it doesn't i'm calling Nintendo damn it.

 

[Professor Pumpkaboo]

mmm wow Richter is.. Hes.. I like...his whip.
Yep, thats it

For me tbh the best cheesing was Cloud's Limit Break

I've never heard the words "genkai wo koeru" more in my life

I probably planted so many trees that I could make a forest

 

[Pokechu]

Geno's appearances have all been Mario appearances. This is silly, imo-he's gonna have the Mushroom logo. You don't need much more then that.
Paper Mario has been #1 for me for years now, but he's never been requested near the scale of Geno. I've also wanted Toad, but he also isn't nearly as requested as Geno.

Yeah he's a Mario character but that doesn't mean he'll be bought because of it. He's different from Waluigi or Toad or anyone else because the general fans wouldn't know who he is; this is why being a Mario character wouldn't save him from his irrelevancy. And because he hasn't been in use by any company, he wouldn't promote anything because promoting something means spreading awareness of something, making people want to get it, etc. Geno isn't in anything so he couldn't do that.

 

[Professor Pumpkaboo]

Im not gonna be fussed if I dont get Plant. I dont even wanna play as it anyway. its cool its here buuuut I aint gonna call nintendo for it

 

[Idon]

To get money

Do you not think that that also applies to every other character SE has?

And that SE has more to gain to either get another popular character like Sephiroth or a character that is both popular and can be used to promote their franchises like Erdrick?

 

[SquashiniKun]

I seriously hope that PP will be made available for those who didn't pre order.

 

[Luigi The President]

Yeah he's a Mario character but that doesn't mean he'll be bought because of it. He's different from Waluigi or Toad or anyone else because the general fans wouldn't know who he is; this is why being a Mario character wouldn't save him from his irrelevancy. And because he hasn't been in use by any company, he wouldn't promote anything because promoting something means spreading awareness of something, making people want to get it, etc. Geno isn't in anything so he couldn't do that.

Your arguments are valid but you're underselling just how many people want him.
I don't think it can really be disputed that he's the most wanted Squenix rep, maybe Sora comes kinda close but Geno's been pretty wanted for 10 years now.

 

[Michael the Spikester]

Honestly I don't think we are getting Geno. If anything I'm betting were either getting a DQ character or Sephiroth if we get a SE rep.

 

[Icedragonadam]

Dang, I've been hearing from people that World of Light is kind of terrible. Mainly some of the fights that are bull**** and the mode being a slog. Of course that's just subjective opinions. I guess I'll have to see when I get to eventually play.

With DLC trailers(excluding Piranha Plant) more or less not using renders, I think we'll see the remaining reveals earlier than we thought. I think they'll reveal the last character at E3.

 

[Iridium]

I seriously hope that PP will be made available for those who didn't pre order.

Sucks for me still, because I'm getting the physical version, and I still don't have a Switch to register anything with.

 

[Deleted member]

Olimar is a butt. Just sat there taking it and looked like he was gonna go down easy, but then he goes Ultra Instinct and juggles me to the side of his stage a down smashes me while I try to get up.

This game's AI is amazing.

 

[DaybreakHorizon]

Here's the post I've been working on and teasing for the past two days, and why I haven't been nearly as active as usual. Let me introduce you to:

THE ULTIMATE heh SQUARE ENIX CHARACTER ARGUMENT​

I'm on a month long break, and to keep my brain from rotting out of my head I've decided to write a series of in-depth speculation posts about current popular Smash Bros. Ultimate Speculation and topics that personally interest me. The idea of a Square Enix character has been prevalent in this speculation cycle since at least October, and has recently hit a climax with seemingly everyone and their mom having a source and going after information about the elusive Square Enix character. While I've argued with many about Sora, Geno, and Dragon Quest, I wanted to take an in-depth look into every potential Square Enix pick and argue the pros and cons of their inclusion, which led to this. This is a long post—likely the longest I've written and will ever write—clocking in at over 6,500 words. So buckle up, and I hope you enjoy the ride!

Spoiler: Background - On third parties

While Sakurai has commented on third parties in the past, he's been quite vague, only saying that the characters must appear on Nintendo consoles, both companies must want them and Sakurai must have some artistic license, the character must carry history with them, and (more recently) implying that third parties must have worldwide popularity

Based off of this, I'm going to argue that a third party representative must be at least one of two things: historic and iconic

So, let's take a brief look at our current third parties and how they fit this criteria (echoes are considered with their original counterpart):
Snake: Metal Gear Solid had it's starts on old-computer systems and even had an NES port, and was launched into fame thanks to the well-known Metal Gear Solid franchise headed by Hideo Kojima. Granted, Snake's inclusion was a favor to a friend, but the fact still stands that Snake falls under both criteria.
Sonic: The mascot of Sega himself once went toe-to-toe with Mario and Nintendo in one of the most iconic showdowns in gaming history, and even now that Sega's a third party Sonic is still one of the larger video game series despite it's mis-steps. He more than checks off both criteria.
Megaman: Up until Megaman 7 and Megaman X4 the Megaman series was exclusive to Nintendo, making Megaman a hallmark of early Nintendo, and he even appeared as a main character on the 1980s NES-centered cartoon Captain N. The series remained active from the NES era up until the 7th generation (Wii U, PS4, Xbox One) in one way or another before teetering off, but the series has recently been rebooted with Megaman 11 and a new Megaman X game likely in the works. He handily stands under both criteria.
Pac-Man: Dude's an arcade legend. Mostly everyone knows who Pac-Man is, or has played it in some way shape or form. He speaks for himself, 'nuff said.
Ryu: Another arcade legend, but Ryu also made a notable jump into the console market and has remained on top of the Fighting Game Genre since then. He checks off both boxes.
Cloud: Final Fantasy is undoubtedly the most popular JRPG series, and until the Nintendo 64 was synonymous with Nintendo. Final Fantasy VII is one of the most popular games of all time, and represents a moment in gaming history when Square Enix gave Nintendo a big old middle finger and moved over to Playstation. An odd piece of history to represent, but historic and iconic nonetheless.
Bayonetta: I'll admit this is a bit of an odd one to argue given that Bayonetta as a series is much more recent than the other third parties and much less popular. That being said, I'll still argue that she's iconic. The original Bayonetta was a cult classic, and when a sequel couldn't be funded, Nintendo swooped in and paid for it themselves, and she represents this weird moment in Nintendo history when Nintendo funded an M rated series for the failing Wii U. Since then, Bayonetta has (oddly enough) become synonymous with Nintendo in the modern era, making her a natural inclusion
Simon Belmont: Similar to Megaman or Final Fantasy, Castlevania is synonymous with classic Nintendo, and Simon Belmont also appeared on Captain N as a main character. The Castlevania franchise was active and renowned up until Konami canned it towards the end of the 7th generation, even spawning it's own genre of games, the Metroidvania, in it and Metroid's styles. He definitely checks off both criteria
Joker: I'm still in shock that they added him. I never thought it would happen, but it did. Persona 5 marks a distinct shift in both the series and the JRPG genre towards worldwide popularity, selling 2 million copies as of December 1st 2017 making it the highest selling Persona 5. Persona 5 also was a game of the year contender alongside Breath of the Wild and won best RPG at the Game Awards. Joker doesn't just represent Persona 5 though, he also represents Shin Megami Tensei, an iconic series with a long history of Nintendo exclusives, according to the press release for his inclusion in Smash Bros:

The Persona games are a spinoff of the popular Shin Megami Tensei franchise, which has a long and storied history in the world of video games – with many of the games appearing on Nintendo systems

In doing so, he checks off both criteria with his inclusion.

So, all of our third parties but 1 are historic and iconic, with the 1 left being iconic but also having special circumstances. This is important to consider.

Spoiler: Background - Why a Square Enix Character?

For one, a Square Enix character in Smash Ultimate has to be one of, if not the worst kept secret in Nintendo history. We've known about this since at least October, and the rumblings of it began as early as March when the game was first teased. While many believe that leakers have been "BTFO" with the advent of no one knowing about Joker or his impending reveal at The Game Awards, too many people have heard about this for it NOT to happen at this point. Unless Nintendo and Square Enix are playing 5 Dimensional Chess and spreading misinformation about there being a Square Enix character for ****s and giggles, we're getting one, and the misinformation is to mask who it is. Of course, we have that supposed list of 7 characters and accounts of who made it to negotiations and who didn't, but seeing as Nintendo have shown themselves capable of spreading convincing misinformation (Every insider claimed we were getting Metroid Prime and no Smash at The Game Awards only for us to get Joker) I would throw everything we know about the Square Enix character out of the window. For the sake of this post, I'll be doing just that, and I'll be arguing why we should ALL do that in my next speculation piece.

Even if the leaks are fake, I believe there's reason to believe that we're getting a Square Enix character. For one, Square Enix has been oddly liberal with their IPs as of late, adding Noctis (Final Fantasy XV) into Tekken, Behemoth (Final Fantasy) in Monster Hunter, Assassin's Creed with Final Fantasy XV, and 2B (Nier: Automata) into Soul Calibur 6. When discussing how Noctis got into Tekken, it was stated that it was due to the relationship between Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada and Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata, showing that all it takes is some good blood to get the ball rolling. Fortunately, not only is Sakurai friends with Tetsuya Normura, but Square Enix seems to be in a second golden age with Nintendo, with Octopath Traveler performing better than expected. Prior to its release, Square Enix said that if Octopath Traveler was successful, they would focus on the Switch as a console; staying true to their word Square Enix telling those present at an earnings conference to expect more games like Octopath Traveler and creating a division to specifically focus on making Switch games. Square Enix has every reason to go to Nintendo and get a character of their's in Smash; it's win-win, they get exposure for one of their series, and Nintendo gets massive press for Smash Bros.

So then the question becomes: which one?

Spoiler: Erdrick/Dragon Quest Character

This is what inspired me to write this post, given that people have argued for Sora, Geno, and other roster picks citing all of these articles but never Erdrick or another Dragon Quest character. You can thank me later @Calane

Anyways, let's begin with a history lesson. Dragon Quest is the grandfather of the entire RPG genre, with the first game in the series releasing on the NES an entire year and a half before the first Final Fantasy game. It is Square Enix's 2nd best selling series, sitting at 75 million units sold as of a year ago between its main titles and spin-offs, and has a long history with Nintendo, with every main entry in the series being playable on Nintendo consoles (only 2 of 11 main series games weren't on Nintendo consoles initially, being 7 and 8, though they later received 3DS remakes). Nintendo even published Dragon Quest I, VI, VII, VIII, and IX within Western countries. IX is notable as it was a third-party DS game published by Nintendo, something only done for Dragon Quest and Level-5 games in the DS era. Mario and co. have also crossed over with the Dragon Quest bunch multiple times in the Fortune Street series, creating a precedent for a crossover between Nintendo and Dragon Quest. More recently, Dragon Quest XI was one of the first games revealed for the Nintendo Switch, then called the Nintendo NX, and more recently has been announced to be an upgraded version named Dragon Quest XI S (appearing at this year's Jump Festa), which will include voice acting among other new features. Needless to say, the ties between Nintendo and Dragon Quest are VERY strong.

Additionally Dragon Quest's is a cultural phenomenon in Japan. This game series is so large that it's spawned an urban myth on the level of "the average human eats 8 spiders in their sleep per year" about there being a law that Dragon Quest games had to be released on weekends, or that when Dragon Quest games released it was akin to a national holiday. While there is a Dragon Quest Day, it's an unofficial holiday, and in reality, 300 kids were arrested for truancy when Dragon Quest III released and muggings of Dragon Quest games became so widespread that there were hearings about in the Japanese parliament, leading the developers to feel bad about creating a nationwide issue and moving the game's release dates to the weekend. The series is large enough to be a common conversation topic in Japan, and is considered by many within the Japanese gaming industry to be Japan's national game. I **** you not, this series is so big that it caused the entire staff of the HiatusxHiatus HunterxHunter anime to go on hiatus JUST TO PLAY DRAGON QUEST, the series has a world record in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the first game to inspire a ballet, and has an amusement park attraction at Universal Studios Japan (where Nintendo will be soon), that's is how big this series is.

Due to Dragon Quest's Japanese popularity, Sakurai talks about it quite a bit. In the Sakurai x Normura Interview Sakurai mentions game designer Yosuke Saito (who worked on Dragon Quest X) on "a list of game designers born in 1970, [where] there's quite a few big names" alongside Hideki Kamiya, Yoko Taro, and John Carmack, and participated in a roundtable discussion with series creator Yuji Horii and Junichi Masuda of Pokémon fame where they discussed Dragon Quest XI. He's notably advocated for the series twice, first in 2011 when he stood up for Dragon Quest X and expressed that he looks forward to it, and plays Devil's Advocate for the series' difficulty, also directly acknowledging the series' popularity in the process, and went far as finding a workaround to play Dragon Quest Heroes among other games while recovering from his arm injury.. Sakurai also notably lists Dragon Quest III alongside Megaman, Final Fantasy, and Ocarina of Time among others when talking about anniversaries, and COMPARES KIRBY (you know, that one character that HE CREATED AND TREATS LIKE HIS CHILD) TO THE MAIN CHARACTER OF A DRAGON QUEST GAME. Needless to say, Dragon Quest is on Sakurai's radar.

Now, to address the common counterarguments:
The first is the series' western popularity. While the series is certainly historic, and is amazingly popular in Japan, it largely lacks a presence in the West, with 3 million+ out of 4 million copies (more than 75%) of Dragon Quest XI being sold in Japan instead of the West. It's no small secret that Square Enix has been fighting a decades long battle (sometimes alongside Nintendo) to make Dragon Quest popular in the West, and it seems like they're stacking the deck to make Dragon Quest XI the game that breaks through. I believe that Square Enix would be willing to make a gamble on the inclusion of a Dragon Quest character in Smash Bros. in an attempt to boost the series' western popularity. We've seen a good amount people interested in playing Persona with the inclusion of Joker, and "the Smash effect" could similarly boost Dragon Quest's western sales in the future.

Second, the licensing. Many people cite Dragon Quest as a "licensing nightmare" in an attempt to discredit the series' inclusion, but it's not as complicated as you'd think. Dragon Quest as a whole is between four parties: Square Enix (Development, IP ownership), Armor Project (game design), Bird Studio (character design), and Koichi Sugiyama (music). Of those four, two are no problem to deal with, being Square Enix and Armor Project, run by series' director Yuji Horii, both of whom have benefitted from positive relations with Nintendo and would no doubt like to have a Dragon Quest character in Smash to boost the series' Western popularity. That leaves Bird Studio, run by Akira Toriyama, and Koichi Sugiyama as the wildcards in rights negotiation for Dragon Quest content. However, I'm willing to believe that both will cooperate. For one, Akira Toriyama worked closely alongside Arc System Works and Namco Bandai to design Android 21, an original character, for Dragon Ball Fighterz. Namco's involvement in this scenario is notable, as they're also developer Smash Bros. Ultimate, and using their connections developing the Dragon Ball games, could bring Toriyama to the negotiating table if he isn't already there. Additionally, in developing at least Fighterz, the developers worked alongside Toei Animation and Shueisha instead of Toriyama, who made slight changes to the game to fit with the Dragon Ball IP, which could be taken as Toriyama taking a back seat when it comes to adaptations of his work. Given how many Dragon Ball games have been made, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case Goku, his star character, has been licensed out on a couple of occasions to Fuji TV and is the ambassador of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games, which leaves me with little doubt he'd be willing to work with Nintendo on a Dragon Quest character for Smash Bros (one of the largest crossovers ever) and grant Sakurai the proper artistic license to make a Dragon Quest character a reasonable inclusion. As for Sugiyama? The use of midi music files has been suggested multiple times and could be a viable way to get Dragon Quest into Smash Bros. if needed. If Nintendo and Sakurai decide to go the orchestral route they might run into trouble due to either money or Sugiyama's seeming unwillingness to let us worldwide players have orchestral music (this is overblown, however, as Dragon Quest XI had a midi soundtrack worldwide instead of just in the West), which is the only problem I could viably see happening. However, Nintendo has dealt with this before and will do it again if negotiations go right, at worst we just end up with midis instead of orchestral music and remixes. As for the controversy surrounding Sugiyama, that's a nonissue, given that Square Enix has made a statement about it saying that it doesn't speak to company policy and are moving ahead with Dragon Quest anyways.

If Square Enix has the chance to push Dragon Quest, I could easily see them doing so. I see a Dragon Quest character as one of, if not the likeliest Square Enix character given that everything seems to line up for it. Dragon Quest is the most historic choice, and while not iconic worldwide, has the proper circumstances surrounding it to make up for that fact and justify it's inclusion in Smash.

Spoiler: Sora

Surprise surprise, one of the top Sora supporters here is going to post a lengthy argument for him. While many have counted him out time and time again, there is a solid case to be made for Sora. As mentioned before, I'm not going to address insider information as I believe it should be thrown out the window (I'll elaborate on this in another mini-essay).

Kingdom Hearts is one of Square Enix's more notable series, selling 24 million units worldwide as of November 2017 making it Square Enix's fourth best selling series. While this may initially seem unimpressive, this is across only 15 titles (2 of which were remakes and 5 of which were collections of previous games). Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Tomb Raider, Square Enix's top 3 best selling series, clock in at 54 titles, 29 titles, and 30 titles respectively. For Kingdom Hearts to accomplish that much in such a little amount is impressive. The series is a collaboration between Disney and Square Enix and uses both the Disney and Final Fantasy IPs alongside original characters, such as Sora. By sole merit of possessing Disney content a majority of people will know at least something about Kingdom Hearts. The series is also known for Kingdom Hearts 3, which at one point stood alongside games such as Duke Nukem Forever and Half-Life 3 as a game in a popular series trapped in development hell and became a meme within the gaming community because of this; Kingdom Hearts 3 has been teased since 2005, and ever since it's official announcement it's consistently placed within Japanese Gaming Magazine Famitsu's Weekly Most Wanted Games poll, showing Japanese popularity. On the Western front, Kingdom Hearts 3 won 16 awards out 29 nominations at E3 2018, which I believe is a good sign of Western popularity.

Stemming from Kingdom Heart's popularity, demand for Sora in Smash Bros. exists, and it's a lot larger than some would expect. Going back to the Smash Ballot era, the entire Kingdom Hearts community rallied behind Sora, with prominent Kingdom Hearts youtubers HMK and TheGamersJoint (at 36,000 and 59,000 subscribers respectively at the time) both making videos telling their fans to vote for Sora in the ballot. More recently, fans have been more vocal about their wants, with the king of Sm4sh, Zero, voicing his support for Sora and HMK telling a Disney executive to his face that the fans want Sora in Smash alongside reasons for his inclusion. Sora ranked number 1 on an Italian Smash Bros. Fighter Poll, number 5 for large Japanese magazine Inside's most anticipated Smash Bros. character, and number 5 on the Reddit Smash Ultimate Poll with 12,485 votes. Further evidence for an impressive ballot performance for Sora comes from the fact that in the Reddit Ultimate Poll: "The character with the most brigaders (was) Sora (more than half his voters came from non-reddit referrers). This shows that Kingdom Hearts fans care enough about Sora in Smash to vote on a large, unofficial Reddit poll, which would certainly translate to an official Nintendo ballot. Support for Sora even exists within Square Enix, as evidenced by this deleted tweet from series producer and Square Enix executive Shinji Hashimoto. Needless to say, there's a lot of people who want to see Sora in Smash Bros.

As a character, Sora is in an interesting place. While Sora is owned by Disney for all legal purposes, Disney and Square Enix have a gentlemen's agreement between them where Disney has to approach series director Tetsuya Normura and Square Enix to use him in any sort of marketing (source). This gentlemen's agreement is highly important, as evidenced by the canceled 2002 Kingdom Hearts cartoon series—which was canceled "so as to not jeopardize the relationship between Square Enix & Disney as they began to expand the franchise"—and more recently, the canceled Disney Kingdom Hearts game which is speculated to have been canceled due to Square Enix's disapproval. According to Disney of Japan executive Justin Scarpone, the process for negotiating Sora in Smash would go as such:

• Nintendo approaches Disney for negotiations
• Assuming fan demand exists, approval from Normura and Square Enix would be required
• Disney would then work alongside Nintendo to represent Sora accurately.

Let's go through this process bit by bit and look at some of the moving parts here.

To begin, Nintendo needs to convince Disney. This is where the most error can occur, and where the most variability in speculation exists. On one hand, you have users who have worked with Disney or know people who have worked with Disney such as @NonSpecificGuy and @PlayerOneTyler who express how difficult it is to work with Disney legal for even minor things, but you also have the claim from Scarpone that Disney "isn't restrictive, but particular," examples of Disney cross-promotion in video games, such as:

• Thanos in Fortnite in a time-exclusive game mode (one which seems to be making a return soon)
• Most recently, Wreck-It-Ralph in Fortnite
• Wreck-It-Ralph in Sonic and Sega All-Stars racing

and factors hinting that Disney may not be as soulless as some imagine them to be, such as Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3's exclusivity to Nintendo Switch (when it could make more money being multiplatform) and Normura being the one who decided to not make a Disney fighting game and not Disney. Additionally, Nintendo and Disney seem to be on good terms given the aforementioned exclusivity of Ultimate Alliance 3, the game show that the two made together about the Nintendo Switch, and the fact that Disney XD has streamed events such as the Sm4sh Wii U finals at EVO 2017 and if I recall correctly, the Invitational tournaments. Disney and Nintendo go way back past this, as far as the pre-NES era, and interestingly enough, Nintendo has also published games with Disney characters such as Epic Mickey (in Japan) and Disney's Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse, which makes Disney similar to Dragon Quest in that regard. Overall, negotiations with Disney is a coinflip, but I believe that it's possible, especially if Nintendo and Disney work out a deal outside of Smash (similar to how Ralph ended up in Sega All-Stars racing due to Sonic being in Wreck-It-Ralph).

We've established that fan demand for Sora exists. Getting Normura's approval would be easy given Sakurai's positive relationship with Normura (he even praised Normura and his team for Kingdom Heart's 15th anniversary and expressed that he was a fan of the series), and extending to Square Enix Hashimoto's support of Sora bodes well for Nintendo getting general approval for Sora. While Square Enix has proven themselves difficult to work with, I believe with pressure from inside the company it's likely they'll get approval.

Now, all Sakurai and his team need to do is work alongside Disney to faithfully represent Sora. The question here is whether Disney will give Sakurai the artistic liberty required for him to work, and I'd say that it's 75:25. I could see it going down like how Toei and Shueishi worked alongside Arc System Works for Fighterz where they only made incredibly minor changes, and I trust that if anyone can represent Sora accurately, it's Sakurai; guy's the king of accurate character representation.

Overall, I would give Sora 50/50 chances depending on whether or not Disney can play nice with Nintendo. I would say he's more likely than people think, but I acknowledge that negotiations with him could be difficult enough to consider pursuing another option. However, Sora checks off both boxes (Kingdom Hearts is both an iconic and historic crossover) and his popularity would generate a large amount of sales and press for Smash Bros.

Spoiler: Geno

What's this? tehponycorn arguing for Geno instead of against him? Surely that's impossible! Well, it is, my reputation as a supposed "Geno basher" be damned. This one goes out to my girl Luigi The President - never stop dreaming

Let's start with the most prominent point in Geno's favor: the Sakurai Interview. We all know the one.

To tell the truth, it’s because I wanted Geno to be a playable character. He has a gun for a hand, and I think he fits in really well with Smash. During Brawl, I thought it would be great if I could add him, but in the end it didn’t become a reality...He’s very popular. When talking about older characters, Geno always gets a lot of requests.

Even the interviewer acknowledges Geno's popularity, saying

Geno is also popular with our readers as well.

So, we have a direct statement from Sakurai saying that he wanted Geno in the game for Brawl and Sm4sh, and acknowledgement of his popularity. This is hands down the best point in his favor. Geno, similar to the other two members of the Holy Trinity composed of himself, Ridley, and King K. Rool—the latter two of which were newcomers for Ultimate—has managed to remain a popular speculation pick within the Smash Bros. community since Brawl, and consistently ranks high within fan polls across the core fanbase (the fan polls linked came from Twitter, Reddit, 4chan's /v/, and SourceGaming among other sources). His Mii Costume also got it's own splash screen, making it notable as no other Mii Costumes got that level of preferential treatment, and Spirits of him and Mallow are the only Square Enix spirits to appear besides Cloud, meaning that someone is pushing for his inclusion, or at least acknowledgement, in Smash Bros.

The game he's from, Super Mario RPG for the SNES, isn't a slouch in terms of notoriety. For one, it's revered to this day as a classic SNES RPG alongside Crono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6, and sold 2.14 million copies in it's original run, with rereleases on the Wii and Wii U virtual console and most recently a rerelease on the SNES classic, which has sold over 5 million units (as of March 2018).

Another argument in favor of Geno is how simple it would be to acquire the rights to him. Compared to the messes that are Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, and even Final Fantasy with it's music, all Nintendo would need to do is get the rights for Geno and Super Mario RPG content. The main composer for the game, Yoko Shimomura, is already onboard for Smash Ultimate, facilitating negotiations for music and introducing the possibilities of remixes and making for an easy process to acquire Geno and include him in Smash Bros. Geno would also represent the culmination Nintendo and Square Enix's first golden age, which is incredibly fitting seeing as they're currently entering their second one.

All that being said, there are valid counterarguments for each of the above points.

Geno's popularity cannot be denied due to Sakurai and the Nintendo Dream Interviewer's direct acknowledgement of it. If Sakurai has wanted Geno in since Brawl, however, then why hasn't he been added? Pac-Man, Villager, and Miis, all previously considered characters for Brawl similar to Geno, made the jump to playable status in Smash 4, and even Ridley, a character that Sakurai famously denied, made the jump in Smash Ultimate. So then why hasn't Geno, a character that's been seriously considered for the last two entries, made a similar jump? The most common theory currently is that Square Enix refuses to give Sakurai and co. the license to use Geno as a playable character; why add Geno when another, more relevant character could be added to promote a current series for Square Enix? Remember, Square Enix is all about cross-promotion in their crossover deals, and Geno hasn't had a game release in 20 years.

However, Square Enix did give Sakurai and co. the rights to make a mii costume and include Spirits of the characters in Smash Ultimate, so they're not completely opposed to the prospect of Geno in Smash. I imagine that negotiating for a mii costume and literal .png files is much easier than negotiating for a playable character though. The argument of "would Square Enix grant Nintendo the rights to Geno" is one that is difficult to answer because both sides are valid. It would be incredibly easy to get Geno in Smash Bros. compared to other Square Enix characters, making his inclusion the one with the least risk.

While Geno always performs well in fan polls, fan polls, by nature, are susceptible to Voluntary Response Bias, which skews statistical data when the sample size is composed of self-selected volunteers. People who participate in polls conducted by the core fanbase are more likely to vote for characters widely supported by the core fanbase, i.e. Geno. This is further evidenced by the Ultimate Reddit poll, wherein Sora and Phoenix Wright, two nonstandard picks for the core fanbase, performed very well due to the high number of brigaders for those characters. Within that same fan poll, it was stated that most of Geno's support came from the United States, showing that he isn't nearly as popular abroad as he is here. While fan polls are a great general indicator of the fanbase's wishes, they can't be relied on for hard evidence due to the bias present in them by nature. I would say that given the larger size of the Ultimate Reddit poll, it can be trusted relatively well, but it still doesn't account for the large, silent, casual fanbase, who are equally as valid as the core fanbase. While the core fanbase would be ecstatic about Geno, the casual fanbase would likely not know who he is given the low sales of his game compared to Square Enix's other series (while he did appear on the SNES Classic, it's worth noting that many purchases of the SNES Classic was marketed towards those looking to re-experience the classic SNES games of their youth, and therefore many purchases of the SNES Classic were from people who likely already knew about Geno or bought the console for another game unrelated to him). From this, while Geno's inclusion has the least risk, it also likely has the least reward.

Finally, as a miscellaneous point, multiple other Mii characters got splash screens, such as Abraham Lincoln, Elijah Wood, and Ice T alongside members of the J-Pop idol group AKB48. I also swear that Nikki from Swapnote got her own little trailer as a Mii Fighter, but was unable to find any proof of such. This may be tangental to the prominence of the splash screen for Geno's costume seeing that it's a character costume and not just a mii alongside the fact that Geno is a third party character, but I still believe it's a point worth mentioning that Geno could've just been a marketable face similar to the former characters.

Overall, I give Geno a 50/50 chance depending on whether or not Square Enix and Nintendo want to go the easy route. I personally doubt that they would, but I understand that there's a case to be made for them doing so. Despite my own biases, I acknowledge that both sides have equal weight, and Geno is truly a tossup at this point; he's historic, but it's kind of reach, and he's not iconic, but could maybe have the extenuating circumstances required to make up for that. It's truly difficult to tell.

Spoiler: Final Fantasy Character

I'm condensing every possible Final Fantasy fighter into one for the sake of my own sanity, as there are so many possible fighters here. So, I'm going to be arguing for the series' merits and then listing some characters I believe could be our second Final Fantasy rep if we get one.

Final Fantasy is Square Enix's flagship franchise, selling over 144 million units as of March 2018. That's a little under double that of Dragon Quest, Square Enix's next best selling series. This also shows in the promotion that the series receives, such as the aforementioned Noctis in Tekken, Assassin's Creed in Final Fantasy XV, and Behemoth in Tekken (see Background - Why a Square Enix Character?) alongside, you know, . Sakurai even acknowledged this within the Nintendo Dream Interview by calling it

one of the few uniquely Japanese game series revered by players around the world.

So, it would be a safe pick for Square Enix to go for another Square Enix series, given the long history the series has with Nintendo and the many iconic characters within the series. However, with that many characters, who would they choose next? I have four ideas:

Bartz Klauser
Protagonist of Final Fantasy V for the SNES, mentioned within the same interview as Cloud by Sakurai, who remarked that a moveset about switching jobs could be "interesting." Sakurai has previously dropped things within interviews that were prominent, such as how Castlevania impacted him similar to the Legend of Zelda and how excited he was to play Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow prior to Simon's reveal.

Onion Knight
Mentioned within the same interview as Bartz, but isn't as likely given that it was Japan-exclusive until 2006.

Terra Branford
A little bit of personal speculation on my part, but given how Final Fantasy 6 is often held as one of the best JRPGs of all time and is prominently on a Nintendo console, it would make sense for her to be our second Final Fantasy pick.

Sephiroth
Final Fantasy 7 is already on the table given Cloud's inclusion, so it'd be relatively easy to secure the character rights for him. Sephiroth is one of the most iconic villains in all of gaming history, and anyone who knows about Cloud will know about his age old rival Sephiroth.

Despite it being Square Enix's flagship franchise and having a bevy of characters to choose from, there are barriers to inclusion for a Final Fantasy character. For one, the way that licensing for Final Fantasy is handled scatters the rights to music and different components among the creators of those works. This leads to what could be costly licensing fees for Nintendo, to the point where it's simply not worth to negotiate for music. Additionally, no precedent for a series having two unique characters exists. While this is nothing but a fan rule that could easily be shattered, it's still worth noting, especially when both Bayonetta and Joker—both owned by Sega—got in over another Sonic character.

While I certainly wouldn't discount the inclusion of another Final Fantasy character given that the series is notably historic and iconic, I also wouldn't see it as the most likely scenario.

Spoiler: Lara Croft

Tomb Raider is Square Enix's third best selling series, selling 60 million units as of March 2018 and defining the action adventure genre later refined by series such as Uncharted. Tomb Raider is also notable due to its status as a cultural phenomenon, as its spawned three movies, multiple soundtracks, a TV series, and multiple comic series and novelizations over the years. The only other Square Enix series to come close to this is Dragon Quest, and even then it lacks the worldwide appeal that Tomb Raider does. Lara Croft is an iconic character, and you'd be hard pressed to find a top 10 women in video games list without her, with her even winning the world record for "most successful female video game character" within the 2010 Guinness Book of World Records. This was before the series' remake, mind you, meaning that she and her series have only become more successful since then.

There are a couple of barriers for Laura's inclusion, however. For one, she's more associated with Playstation and Xbox than Nintendo. While we do have characters more known for appearances on Playstation systems, being Snake, Cloud, and Joker, each of them have some sort of circumstance behind that, with Snake largely being a favor for a friend, and Cloud and Joker representing Final Fantasy and Shin Megami Tensei, two series with historic ties to Nintendo. Lara Croft lacks either of these circumstances, which is significant. Furthermore, she uses realistic weaponry, such as her signature dual pistols, for most of her attacks, and it is unknown whether this could translate into to Smash similar to Snake or Bayonetta, both of whom were toned down in that regard. Finally, she's a British developed character, which subjects her to the stigma against Western character which seems to be present within the series, with Diddy Kong, King K. Rool, and Dark Samus being the only character created outside of Japan.


While Lara Croft as the Square Enix character is worth being discussed as she is iconic and historic, I would say that she's the dark horse pick of the bunch and is overall unlikely. Keep her in mind though.

Spoiler: Gex

YOU THOUGHT I WAS SERIOUSLY GOING TO ARGUE FOR GEX?!

Joking aside, Gex has appeared on Nintendo consoles before, and his three games have sold a total of 15 million units worldwide, which is nothing to laugh at. I'd say it's more possible than you'd think, but still very unlikely.

Spoiler: Misc.

I acknowledge that the Square Enix character could be someone not previously argued for. So, I'm going to be doing small arguments for other character I believe could be the Square Enix rep, but wouldn't necessarily hold out hopes for.
Crono
Crono almost got his own section, but in the end I couldn't justify that as much as I could justify using him to start this section. Similar to Terra and Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger appears on many, if not every list of the greatest JRPGs of all time. However, he's in a similar place as Geno wherein he hasn't had a recent game in his series for around 20 years, but doesn't have the vocal fanbase to keep him going.

Neku Sakuraba
The World Ends With You is a critically acclaimed cult classic (that's a tongue-twister) that's appeared on the Nintendo DS and iOS/Android alongside the Nintendo Switch. That said, it's only a cult classic and has failed to establish itself as a series. I would say he has good chances as a predominantly Nintendo character, but compared to other, larger Square Enix picks he fails to compare.

Agnès Oblige
Another Square Enix character predominantly on Nintendo systems, Bravely Default 1 & 2 were critically acclaimed JRPGs on the 3DS. However, with a third entry in the series for Nintendo Switch unconfirmed, she lacks the relevance required to make her a notable pick for DLC.

2B
While 2B is a popular Square Enix character and has even made an appearance in Soul Calibur 6 as a playable character, she's never appeared on a Nintendo console and is therefore ineligible for Smash Bros. Sorry @NineS.

Spoiler: Wrap-Up: My Thoughts

If I had to bet on which Square Enix character I think will get in, I'd put all my money on Dragon Quest. Every factor seems to line up in the series' favor, and the most notable counterarguments are made up for and can't really be used against it. If I had to make a chart for it, it would go like this:

Dragon Quest >> Final Fantasy Character > Lara Croft > Geno = Sora = Crono > Neku > Anyone else

While speculation about the Square Enix representative was initially exciting, I've quickly found it to become tiring and monotonous, as speculation continues to circle around the same rehashed topics and every time we get a new piece of information we end up right where we started in terms of what we know. Hopefully this piece clears up some misconceptions and offers some closure to the circuitous arguments that the fanbase has found itself mired in. At this point I would suggest that everyone just sit back and relax, for it seems like similar to Mr. Bone, Mr. Square Enix's Wild Ride won't be ending anytime soon.

 

[Wyoming]

I seriously hope that PP will be made available for those who didn't pre order.

He will be. Just gotta pay for him.

But you can register the game to MyNintendo till the end of January to get him free.

 

[Luigi The President]

Dang, I've been hearing from people that World of Light is kind of terrible. Mainly some of the fights that are bull**** and the mode being a slog. Of course that's just subjective opinions. I guess I'll have to see when I get to eventually play.

With DLC trailers(excluding Piranha Plant) more or less not using renders, i think we'll see the remaining reveals earlier than we thought. I think they'll reveal the last character at E3.

I don't think we can just get out 4 character reveals within 6 months. That doesn't seem actually plausible imo.
I hope so though.

 

[Idon]

Here's the post I've been working on and teasing for the past two days, and why I haven't been nearly as active as usual for the last two days. Let me introduce you to:

THE ULTIMATE heh SQUARE ENIX CHARACTER ARGUMENT​

I'm on a month long break, and to keep my brain from rotting out of my head I've decided to write a series of in-depth speculation posts about current popular Smash Bros. Ultimate Speculation and topics that personally interest me within it. The idea of a Square Enix character has been prevalent in this speculation cycle since at least October, and has recently hit a climax with seemingly everyone and their mom having a source and going after information about the elusive Square Enix character. While I've argued with many about Sora, Geno, and Dragon Quest, I wanted to take an in-depth look into every potential Square Enix pick and argue the pros and cons of their inclusion, which led to this. This is a long post—likely the longest I've written and will ever write—clocking in at over 6,000 words. So buckle up, and I hope you enjoy the ride!

Spoiler: Background - On third parties

While Sakurai has commented on third parties in the past, he's been quite vague, only saying that the characters must appear on Nintendo consoles, both companies must want them and Sakurai must have some artistic license, the character must carry history with them, and (more recently) implying that third parties must have worldwide popularity

Based off of this, I'm going to argue that a third party representative must be at least one of two things: historic and iconic

So, let's take a brief look at our current third parties and how they fit this criteria (echoes are considered with their original counterpart):
Snake: Metal Gear Solid had it's starts on old-computer systems and even had an NES port, and was launched into fame thanks to the well-known Metal Gear Solid franchise headed by Hideo Kojima. Granted, Snake's inclusion was a favor to a friend, but the fact still stands that Snake falls under both criteria.
Sonic: The mascot of Sega himself once went toe-to-toe with Mario and Nintendo in one of the most iconic showdowns in gaming history, and even now that Sega's a third party Sonic is still one of the larger video game series despite it's mis-steps. He more than checks off both criteria.
Megaman: Up until Megaman 7 and Megaman X4 the Megaman series was exclusive to Nintendo, making Megaman a hallmark of early Nintendo, and he even appeared as a main character on the 1980s NES-centered cartoon Captain N. The series remained active from the NES era up until the 7th generation (Wii U, PS4, Xbox One) in one way or another before teetering off, but the series has recently been rebooted with Megaman 11 and a new Megaman X game likely in the works. He handily stands under both criteria.
Pac-Man: Dude's an arcade legend. Mostly everyone knows who Pac-Man is, or has played it in some way shape or form. He speaks for himself, 'nuff said.
Ryu: Another arcade legend, but Ryu also made a notable jump into the console market and has remained on top of the Fighting Game Genre since then. He checks off both boxes.
Cloud: Final Fantasy is undoubtedly the most popular JRPG series, and until the Nintendo 64 was synonymous with Nintendo. Final Fantasy VII is one of the most popular games of all time, and represents a moment in gaming history when Square Enix gave Nintendo a big old middle finger and moved over to Playstation. An odd piece of history to represent, but historic and iconic nonetheless.
Bayonetta: I'll admit this is a bit of an odd one to argue given that Bayonetta as a series is much more recent than the other third parties and much less popular. That being said, I'll still argue that she's iconic. The original Bayonetta was a cult classic, and when a sequel couldn't be funded, Nintendo swooped in and paid for it themselves, and she represents this weird moment in Nintendo history when Nintendo funded an M rated series for the failing Wii U. Since then, Bayonetta has (oddly enough) become synonymous with Nintendo in the modern era, making her a natural inclusion
Simon Belmont: Similar to Megaman or Final Fantasy, Castlevania is synonymous with classic Nintendo, and Simon Belmont also appeared on Captain N as a main character. The Castlevania franchise was active and renowned up until Konami canned it towards the end of the 7th generation, even spawning it's own genre of games, the Metroidvania, in it and Metroid's styles. He definitely checks off both criteria
Joker: I'm still in shock that they added him. I never thought it would happen, but it did. Persona 5 marks a distinct shift in both the series and the JRPG genre towards worldwide popularity, selling 2 million copies as of December 1st 2017 making it the highest selling Persona 5. Persona 5 also was a game of the year contender alongside Breath of the Wild and won best RPG at the Game Awards. Joker doesn't just represent Persona 5 though, he also represents Shin Megami Tensei, an iconic series with a long history of Nintendo exclusives, according to the press release for his inclusion in Smash Bros:

In doing so, he checks off both criteria with his inclusion.

So, all of our third parties but 1 are historic and iconic, with the 1 left being iconic but also having special circumstances. This is important to consider.

Spoiler: Background - Why a Square Enix Character?

For one, a Square Enix character in Smash Ultimate has to be one of, if not the worst kept secret in Nintendo history. We've known about this since at least October, and the rumblings of it began as early as March when the game was first teased. While many believe that leakers have been "BTFO" with the advent of no one knowing about Joker or his impending reveal at The Game Awards, too many people have heard about this for it NOT to happen at this point. Unless Nintendo and Square Enix are playing 5 Dimensional Chess and spreading misinformation about there being a Square Enix character for ****s and giggles, we're getting one, and the misinformation is to mask who it is. Of course, we have that supposed list of 7 characters and accounts of who made it to negotiations and who didn't, but seeing as Nintendo have shown themselves capable of spreading convincing misinformation (Every insider claimed we were getting Metroid Prime and no Smash at The Game Awards only for us to get Joker) I would throw everything we know about the Square Enix character out of the window. For the sake of this post, I'll be doing just that, and I'll be arguing why we should ALL do that in my next speculation piece.

Even if the leaks are fake, I believe there's reason to believe that we're getting a Square Enix character. For one, Square Enix has been oddly liberal with their IPs as of late, adding Noctis (Final Fantasy XV) into Tekken, Behemoth (Final Fantasy) in Monster Hunter, Assassin's Creed with Final Fantasy XV, and 2B (Nier: Automata) into Soul Calibur 6. When discussing how Noctis got into Tekken, it was stated that it was due to the relationship between Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada and Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata, showing that all it takes is some good blood to get the ball rolling. Fortunately, not only is Sakurai friends with Tetsuya Normura, but Square Enix seems to be in a second golden age with Nintendo, with Octopath Traveler performing better than expected. Prior to its release, Square Enix said that if Octopath Traveler was successful, they would focus on the Switch as a console; staying true to their word Square Enix telling those present at an earnings conference to expect more games like Octopath Traveler and creating a division to specifically focus on making Switch games. Square Enix has every reason to go to Nintendo and get a character of their's in Nintendo; it's win-win, they get exposure for one of their series, and Nintendo gets massive press for Smash Bros.

So then the question becomes: which one?

Spoiler: Erdrick/Dragon Quest Character

This is what inspired me to write this post, given that people have argued for Sora, Geno, and other roster picks citing all of these articles but never Erdrick or another Dragon Quest character. You can thank me later @Calane

Anyways, let's begin with a history lesson. Dragon Quest is the grandfather of the entire RPG genre, with the first game in the series releasing on the NES an entire year and a half before the first Final Fantasy game. It is Square Enix's 2nd best selling series, sitting at 75 million units sold as of a year ago between its main titles and spin-offs, and has a long history with Nintendo, with every main entry in the series being playable on Nintendo consoles (only 2 of 11 main series games weren't on Nintendo consoles initially, being 7 and 8, though they later received 3DS remakes). Nintendo even published Dragon Quest I, VI, VII, VIII, and IX within Western countries. IX is notable as it was a third-party DS game published by Nintendo, something only done for Dragon Quest and Level-5 games in the DS era. Mario and co. have also crossed over with the Dragon Quest bunch multiple times in the Fortune Street series, creating a precedent for a crossover between Nintendo and Dragon Quest. More recently, Dragon Quest XI was one of the first games revealed for the Nintendo Switch, then called the Nintendo NX, and more recently has been announced to be an upgraded version named Dragon Quest XI S (appearing at this year's Jump Festa), which will include voice acting among other new features. Needless to say, the ties between Nintendo and Dragon Quest are VERY strong.

Additionally Dragon Quest's is a cultural phenomenon in Japan. This game series is so large that it's spawned an urban myth on the level of "the average human eats 8 spiders in their sleep per year" about there being a law that Dragon Quest games had to be released on weekends, or that when Dragon Quest games released it was akin to a national holiday. While there is a Dragon Quest Day, it's an unofficial holiday, and in reality, 300 kids were arrested for truancy when Dragon Quest III released and muggings of Dragon Quest games became so widespread that there were hearings about in the Japanese parliament, leading the developers to feel bad about creating a nationwide issue and moving the game's release dates to the weekend. The series is large enough to be a common conversation topic in Japan, and is considered by many within the Japanese gaming industry to be Japan's national game. I **** you not, this series is so big that it caused the entire staff of the HiatusxHiatus HunterxHunter anime to go on hiatus JUST TO PLAY DRAGON QUEST, the series has a world record in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the first game to inspire a ballet, and has an amusement park attraction at Universal Studios Japan (where Nintendo will be soon), that's is how big this series is.

Due to Dragon Quest's Japanese popularity, Sakurai talks about it quite a bit. In the Sakurai x Normura Interview Sakurai mentions game designer Yosuke Saito (who worked on Dragon Quest X) on "a list of game designers born in 1970, [where] there's quite a few big names" alongside Hideki Kamiya, Yoko Taro, and John Carmack, and participated in a roundtable discussion with series creator Yuji Horii and Junichi Masuda of Pokémon fame where they discussed Dragon Quest XI. He's notably advocated for the series twice, first in 2011 when he stood up for Dragon Quest X and expressed that he looks forward to it, and plays Devil's Advocate for the series' difficulty, also directly acknowledging the series' popularity in the process, and went far as finding a workaround to play Dragon Quest Heroes among other games while recovering from his arm injury.. Sakurai also notably lists Dragon Quest III alongside Megaman, Final Fantasy, and Ocarina of Time among others when talking about anniversaries, and COMPARES KIRBY (you know, that one character that HE CREATED AND TREATS LIKE HIS CHILD) TO THE MAIN CHARACTER OF A DRAGON QUEST GAME. Needless to say, Dragon Quest is on Sakurai's radar.

Now, to address the common counterarguments:
The first is the series' western popularity. While the series is certainly historic, and is amazingly popular in Japan, it largely lacks a presence in the West, with 3 million+ out of 4 million copies (more than 75%) of Dragon Quest XI being sold in Japan instead of the West. It's no small secret that Square Enix has been fighting a decades long battle (sometimes alongside Nintendo) to make Dragon Quest popular in the West, and it seems like they're stacking the deck to make Dragon Quest XI the game that breaks through. I believe that Square Enix would be willing to make a gamble on the inclusion of a Dragon Quest character in Smash Bros. in an attempt to boost the series' western popularity. We've seen a good amount people interested in playing Persona with the inclusion of Joker, and "the Smash effect" could similarly boost Dragon Quest's western sales in the future.

Second, the licensing. Many people cite Dragon Quest as a "licensing nightmare" in an attempt to discredit the series' inclusion, but it's not as complicated as you'd think. Dragon Quest as a whole is between four parties: Square Enix (Development, IP ownership), Armor Project (game design), Bird Studio (character design), and Koichi Sugiyama (music). Of those four, two are no problem to deal with, being Square Enix and Armor Project, run by series' director Yuji Horii, both of whom have benefitted from positive relations with Nintendo and would no doubt like to have a Dragon Quest character in Smash to boost the series' Western popularity. That leaves Bird Studio, run by Akira Toriyama, and Koichi Sugiyama as the wildcards in rights negotiation for Dragon Quest content. However, I'm willing to believe that both will cooperate. For one, Akira Toriyama worked closely alongside Arc System Works and Namco Bandai to design Android 21, an original character, for Dragon Ball Fighterz. Namco's involvement in this scenario is notable, as they're also developer Smash Bros. Ultimate, and using their connections developing the Dragon Ball games, could bring Toriyama to the negotiating table if he isn't already there. Additionally, in developing at least Fighterz, the developers worked alongside Toei Animation and Shueisha instead of Toriyama, who made slight changes to the game to fit with the Dragon Ball IP, which could be taken as Toriyama taking a back seat when it comes to adaptations of his work. Given how many Dragon Ball games have been made, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case Goku, his star character, has been licensed out on a couple of occasions to Fuji TV and is the ambassador of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games, which leaves me with little doubt he'd be willing to work with Nintendo on a Dragon Quest character for Smash Bros (one of the largest crossovers ever) and grant Sakurai the proper artistic license to make a Dragon Quest character a reasonable inclusion. As for Sugiyama? The use of midi music files has been suggested multiple times and could be a viable way to get Dragon Quest into Smash Bros. if needed. If Nintendo and Sakurai decide to go the orchestral route they might run into trouble due to either money or Sugiyama's seeming unwillingness to let us worldwide players have orchestral music (this is overblown, however, as Dragon Quest XI had a midi soundtrack worldwide instead of just in the West), which is the only problem I could viably see happening. However, Nintendo has dealt with this before and will do it again if negotiations go right, at worst we just end up with midis instead of orchestral music and remixes. As for the controversy surrounding Sugiyama, that's a nonissue, given that Square Enix has made a statement about it saying that it doesn't speak to company policy and are moving ahead with Dragon Quest anyways.

If Square Enix has the chance to push Dragon Quest, I could easily see them doing so. I see a Dragon Quest character as one of, if not the likeliest Square Enix character given that everything seems to line up for it. Dragon Quest is the most historic choice, and while not iconic worldwide, has the proper circumstances surrounding it to make up for that fact and justify it's inclusion in Smash.

Spoiler: Sora

Surprise surprise, one of the top Sora supporters here is going to post a lengthy argument for him. While many have counted him out time and time again, there is a solid case to be made for Sora. As mentioned before, I'm not going to address insider information as I believe it should be thrown out the window (I'll elaborate on this in another mini-essay).

Kingdom Hearts is one of Square Enix's more notable series, selling 24 million units worldwide as of November 2017 making it Square Enix's fourth best selling series. While this may initially seem unimpressive, this is across only 15 titles (2 of which were remakes and 5 of which were collections of previous games). Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Tomb Raider, Square Enix's top 3 best selling series, clock in at 54 titles, 29 titles, and 30 titles respectively. For Kingdom Hearts to accomplish that much in such a little amount is impressive. The series is a collaboration between Disney and Square Enix and uses both the Disney and Final Fantasy IPs alongside original characters, such as Sora. By sole merit of possessing Disney content a majority of people will know at least something about Kingdom Hearts. The series is also known for Kingdom Hearts 3, which at one point stood alongside games such as Duke Nukem Forever and Half-Life 3 as a game in a popular series trapped in development hell and became a meme within the gaming community because of this; Kingdom Hearts 3 has been teased since 2005, and ever since it's official announcement it's consistently placed within Japanese Gaming Magazine Famitsu's Weekly Most Wanted Games poll, showing Japanese popularity. On the Western front, Kingdom Hearts 3 won 16 awards out 29 nominations at E3 2018, which I believe is a good sign of Western popularity.

Stemming from Kingdom Heart's popularity, demand for Sora in Smash Bros. exists, and it's a lot larger than some would expect. Going back to the Smash Ballot era, the entire Kingdom Hearts community rallied behind Sora, with prominent Kingdom Hearts youtubers HMK and TheGamersJoint (at 36,000 and 59,000 subscribers respectively at the time) both making videos telling their fans to vote for Sora in the ballot. More recently, fans have been more vocal about their wants, with the king of Sm4sh, Zero, voicing his support for Sora and HMK telling a Disney executive to his face that the fans want Sora in Smash alongside reasons for his inclusion. Sora ranked number 1 on an Italian Smash Bros. Fighter Poll, number 5 for large Japanese magazine Inside's most anticipated Smash Bros. character, and number 5 on the Reddit Smash Ultimate Poll with 12,485 votes. Further evidence for an impressive ballot performance for Sora comes from the fact that in the Reddit Ultimate Poll: "The character with the most brigaders (was) Sora (more than half his voters came from non-reddit referrers). This shows that Kingdom Hearts fans care enough about Sora in Smash to vote on a large, unofficial Reddit poll, which would certainly translate to an official Nintendo ballot. Support for Sora even exists within Square Enix, as evidenced by this deleted tweet from series producer and Square Enix executive Shinji Hashimoto. Needless to say, there's a lot of people who want to see Sora in Smash Bros.

As a character, Sora is in an interesting place. While Sora is owned by Disney for all legal purposes, Disney and Square Enix have a gentlemen's agreement between them where Disney has to approach series director Tetsuya Normura and Square Enix to use him in any sort of marketing (source). This gentlemen's agreement is highly important, as evidenced by the canceled 2002 Kingdom Hearts cartoon series—which was canceled "so as to not jeopardize the relationship between Square Enix & Disney as they began to expand the franchise"—and more recently, the canceled Disney Kingdom Hearts game which is speculated to have been canceled due to Square Enix's disapproval. According to Disney of Japan executive Justin Scarpone, the process for negotiating Sora in Smash would go as such:

• Nintendo approaches Disney for negotiations
• Assuming fan demand exists, approval from Normura and Square Enix would be required
• Disney would then work alongside Nintendo to represent Sora accurately.

Let's go through this process bit by bit and look at some of the moving parts here.

To begin, Nintendo needs to convince Disney. This is where the most error can occur, and where the most variability in speculation exists. On one hand, you have users who have worked with Disney or know people who have worked with Disney such as @NonSpecificGuy and @PlayerOneTyler who express how difficult it is to work with Disney legal for even minor things, but you also have the claim from Scarpone that Disney "isn't restrictive, but particular," examples of Disney cross-promotion in video games, such as:

• Thanos in Fortnite in a time-exclusive game mode (one which seems to be making a return soon)
• Most recently, Wreck-It-Ralph in Fortnite
• Wreck-It-Ralph in Sonic and Sega All-Stars racing

and factors hinting that Disney may not be as soulless as some imagine them to be, such as Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3's exclusivity to Nintendo Switch (when it could make more money being multiplatform) and Normura being the one who decided to not make a Disney fighting game and not Disney. Additionally, Nintendo and Disney seem to be on good terms given the aforementioned exclusivity of Ultimate Alliance 3, the game show that the two made together about the Nintendo Switch, and the fact that Disney XD has streamed events such as the Sm4sh Wii U finals at EVO 2017 and if I recall correctly, the Invitational tournaments. Disney and Nintendo go way back past this, as far as the pre-NES era, and interestingly enough, Nintendo has also published games with Disney characters such as Epic Mickey (in Japan) and Disney's Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse, which makes Disney similar to Dragon Quest in that regard. Overall, negotiations with Disney is a coinflip, but I believe that it's possible, especially if Nintendo and Disney work out a deal outside of Smash (similar to how Ralph ended up in Sega All-Stars racing due to Sonic being in Wreck-It-Ralph).

We've established that fan demand for Sora exists. Getting Normura's approval would be easy given Sakurai's positive relationship with Normura (he even praised Normura and his team for Kingdom Heart's 15th anniversary and expressed that he was a fan of the series), and extending to Square Enix Hashimoto's support of Sora bodes well for Nintendo getting general approval for Sora. While Square Enix has proven themselves difficult to work with, I believe with pressure from inside the company it's likely they'll get approval.

Now, all Sakurai and his team need to do is work alongside Disney to faithfully represent Sora. The question here is whether Disney will give Sakurai the artistic liberty required for him to work, and I'd say that it's 75:25. I could see it going down like how Toei and Shueishi worked alongside Arc System Works for Fighterz where they only made incredibly minor changes, and I trust that if anyone can represent Sora accurately, it's Sakurai; guy's the king of accurate character representation.

Overall, I would give Sora 50/50 chances depending on whether or not Disney can play nice with Nintendo. I would say he's more likely than people think, but I acknowledge that negotiations with him could be difficult enough to consider pursuing another option. However, Sora checks off both boxes (Kingdom Hearts is both an iconic and historic crossover) and his popularity would generate a large amount of sales and press for Smash Bros.

Spoiler: Geno

What's this? tehponycorn arguing for Geno instead of against him? Surely that's impossible! Well, it is, my reputation as a supposed "Geno basher" be damned. This one goes out to my girl Luigi The President - never stop dreaming

Let's start with the most prominent point in Geno's favor: the Sakurai Interview. We all know the one.

Even the interviewer acknowledges Geno's popularity, saying

So, we have a direct statement from Sakurai saying that he wanted Geno in the game for Brawl and Sm4sh, and acknowledgement of his popularity. This is hands down the best point in his favor. Geno, similar to the other two members of the Holy Trinity composed of himself, Ridley, and King K. Rool—the latter two of which were newcomers for Ultimate—has managed to remain a popular speculation pick within the Smash Bros. community since Brawl, and consistently ranks high within fan polls across the core fanbase (the fan polls linked came from Twitter, Reddit, 4chan's /v/, and SourceGaming among other sources). His Mii Costume also got it's own splash screen, making it notable as no other Mii Costumes got that level of preferential treatment, and Spirits of him and Mallow are the only Square Enix spirits to appear besides Cloud, meaning that someone is pushing for his inclusion, or at least acknowledgement, in Smash Bros.

The game he's from, Super Mario RPG for the SNES, isn't a slouch in terms of notoriety. For one, it's revered to this day as a classic SNES RPG alongside Crono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6, and sold 2.14 million copies in it's original run, with rereleases on the Wii and Wii U virtual console and most recently a rerelease on the SNES classic, which has sold over 5 million units (as of March 2018).

Another argument in favor of Geno is how simple it would be to acquire the rights to him. Compared to the messes that are Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, and even Final Fantasy with it's music, all Nintendo would need to do is get the rights for Geno and Super Mario RPG content. The main composer for the game, Yoko Shimomura, is already onboard for Smash Ultimate, facilitating negotiations for music and introducing the possibilities of remixes and making for an easy process to acquire Geno and include him in Smash Bros. Geno would also represent the culmination Nintendo and Square Enix's first golden age, which is incredibly fitting seeing as they're currently entering their second one.

All that being said, there are valid counterarguments for each of the above points.

Geno's popularity cannot be denied due to Sakurai and the Nintendo Dream Interviewer's direct acknowledgement of it. If Sakurai has wanted Geno in since Brawl, however, then why hasn't he been added? Pac-Man, Villager, and Miis, all previously considered characters for Brawl similar to Geno, made the jump to playable status in Smash 4, and even Ridley, a character that Sakurai famously denied, made the jump in Smash Ultimate. So then why hasn't Geno, a character that's been seriously considered for the last two entries, made a similar jump? The most common theory currently is that Square Enix refuses to give Sakurai and co. the license to use Geno as a playable character; why add Geno when another, more relevant character could be added to promote a current series for Square Enix? Remember, Square Enix is all about cross-promotion in their crossover deals, and Geno hasn't had a game release in 20 years.

However, Square Enix did give Sakurai and co. the rights to make a mii costume and include Spirits of the characters in Smash Ultimate, so they're not completely opposed to the prospect of Geno in Smash. I imagine that negotiating for a mii costume and literal .png files is much easier than negotiating for a playable character though. The argument of "would Square Enix grant Nintendo the rights to Geno" is one that is difficult to answer because both sides are valid. It would be incredibly easy to get Geno in Smash Bros. compared to other Square Enix characters, making his inclusion the one with the least risk.

While Geno always performs well in fan polls, fan polls, by nature, are susceptible to Voluntary Response Bias, which skews statistical data when the sample size is composed of self-selected volunteers. People who participate in polls conducted by the core fanbase are more likely to vote for characters widely supported by the core fanbase, i.e. Geno. This is further evidenced by the Ultimate Reddit poll, wherein Sora and Phoenix Wright, two nonstandard picks for the core fanbase, performed very well due to the high number of brigaders for those characters. Within that same fan poll, it was stated that most of Geno's support came from the United States, showing that he isn't nearly as popular abroad as he is here. While fan polls are a great general indicator of the fanbase's wishes, they can't be relied on for hard evidence due to the bias present in them by nature. I would say that given the larger size of the Ultimate Reddit poll, it can be trusted relatively well, but it still doesn't account for the large, silent, casual fanbase, who are equally as valid as the core fanbase. While the core fanbase would be ecstatic about Geno, the casual fanbase would likely not know who he is given the low sales of his game compared to Square Enix's other series (while he did appear on the SNES Classic, it's worth noting that many purchases of the SNES Classic was marketed towards those looking to re-experience the classic SNES games of their youth, and therefore many purchases of the SNES Classic were from people who likely already knew about Geno or bought the console for another game unrelated to him). From this, while Geno's inclusion has the least risk, it also likely has the least reward.

Finally, as a miscellaneous point, multiple other Mii characters got splash screens, such as Abraham Lincoln, Elijah Wood, and Ice T alongside members of the J-Pop idol group AKB48. I also swear that Nikki from Swapnote got her own little trailer as a Mii Fighter, but was unable to find any proof of such. This may be tangental to the prominence of the splash screen for Geno's costume seeing that it's a character costume and not just a mii alongside the fact that Geno is a third party character, but I still believe it's a point worth mentioning that Geno could've just been a marketable face similar to the former characters.

Overall, I give Geno a 50/50 chance depending on whether or not Square Enix and Nintendo want to go the easy route. I personally doubt that they would, but I understand that there's a case to be made for them doing so. Despite my own biases, I acknowledge that both sides have equal weight, and Geno is truly a tossup at this point; he's historic, but it's kind of reach, and he's not iconic, but could maybe have the extenuating circumstances required to make up for that. It's truly difficult to tell.

Spoiler: Final Fantasy Character

I'm condensing every possible Final Fantasy fighter into one for the sake of my own sanity, as there are so many possible fighters here. So, I'm going to be arguing for the series' merits and then listing some characters I believe could be our second Final Fantasy rep if we get one.

Final Fantasy is Square Enix's flagship franchise, selling over 144 million units as of March 2018. That's a little under double that of Dragon Quest, Square Enix's next best selling series. This also shows in the promotion that the series receives, such as the aforementioned Noctis in Tekken, Assassin's Creed in Final Fantasy XV, and Behemoth in Tekken (see Background - Why a Square Enix Character?) alongside, you know, . Sakurai even acknowledged this within the Nintendo Dream Interview by calling it

So, it would be a safe pick for Square Enix to go for another Square Enix series, given the long history the series has with Nintendo and the many iconic characters within the series. However, with that many characters, who would they choose next? I have four ideas:

Bartz Klauser
Protagonist of Final Fantasy V for the SNES, mentioned within the same interview as Cloud by Sakurai, who remarked that a moveset about switching jobs could be "interesting." Sakurai has previously dropped things within interviews that were prominent, such as how Castlevania impacted him similar to the Legend of Zelda and how excited he was to play Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow prior to Simon's reveal.

Onion Knight
Mentioned within the same interview as Bartz, but isn't as likely given that it was Japan-exclusive until 2006.

Terra Branford
A little bit of personal speculation on my part, but given how Final Fantasy 6 is often held as one of the best JRPGs of all time and is prominently on Nintendo console, it would make sense for her to be our second Final Fantasy pick.

Sephiroth
Final Fantasy 7 is already on the table given Cloud's inclusion, so it'd be relatively easy to secure the character rights for him. Sephiroth is one of the most iconic villains in all of gaming history, and anyone who knows about Cloud will know about his age old rival Sephiroth.

Despite it being Square Enix's flagship franchise and having a bevy of characters to choose from, there are barriers to inclusion for a Final Fantasy character. For one, the way that licensing for Final Fantasy is handled scatters the rights to music and different components among the creators of those works. This leads to what could be costly licensing fees for Nintendo, to the point where it's simply not worth to negotiate for music. Additionally, no precedent for a series having two unique characters exists. While this is nothing but a fan rule that could easily be shattered, it's still worth noting, especially when both Bayonetta and Joker—both owned by Sega—got in over another Sonic character.

While I certainly wouldn't discount the inclusion of another Final Fantasy character, I also wouldn't see it as the most likely scenario.

Spoiler: Lara Croft

Tomb Raider is Square Enix's third best selling series, selling 60 million units as of March 2018 and defining the action adventure genre later refined by series such as Uncharted. Tomb Raider is also notable due to its status as a cultural phenomenon, as its spawned three movies, multiple soundtracks, a TV series, and multiple comic series and novelizations over the years. The only other Square Enix series to come close to this is Dragon Quest, and even then it lacks the worldwide appeal that Tomb Raider does. Lara Croft is an iconic character, and you'd be hard pressed to find a top 10 women in video games list without her, with her even winning the world record for "most successful female video game character" within the 2010 Guinness Book of World Records. This was before the series' remake, mind you, meaning that she and her series have only become more successful since then.

There are a couple of barriers for Laura's inclusion, however. For one, she's more associated with Playstation and Xbox than Nintendo. While we do have characters more known for appearances on Playstation systems, being Snake, Cloud, and Joker, each of them have some sort of circumstance behind that, with Snake largely being a favor for a friend, and Cloud and Joker representing Final Fantasy and Shin Megami Tensei, two series with historic ties to Nintendo. Lara Croft lacks either of these circumstances, which is significant. Furthermore, she uses realistic weaponry, such as her signature dual pistols, for most of her attacks, and it is unknown whether this could translate into to Smash similar to Snake or Bayonetta, both of whom were toned down in that regard. Finally, she's a British developed character, which subjects her to the stigma against Western character which seems to be present within the series, with Diddy Kong, King K. Rool, and Dark Samus being the only character created outside of Japan.


While Lara Croft as the Square Enix character is worth being discussed, I would say that she's the dark horse pick of the bunch and is overall unlikely. Keep her in mind though.

Spoiler: Gex

YOU THOUGHT I WAS SERIOUSLY GOING TO ARGUE FOR GEX?!

Joking aside, Gex has appeared on Nintendo consoles before, and his three games have sold a total of 15 million units worldwide, which is nothing to laugh at. I'd say it's more possible than you'd think, but still very unlikely.

Spoiler: Misc.

I acknowledge that the Square Enix character could be someone not previously argued for. So, I'm going to be doing small arguments for other character I believe could be the Square Enix rep, but wouldn't necessarily hold out hopes for.
Crono
Crono almost got his own section, but in the end I couldn't justify that as much as I could justify using him to start this section. Similar to Terra and Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger appears on many, if not every list of the greatest JRPGs of all time. However, he's in a similar place as Geno wherein he hasn't had a recent game in his series for around 20 years, but doesn't have the vocal fanbase to keep him going.

Neku Sakuraba
The World Ends With You is a critically acclaimed cult classic (that's a tongue-twister) that's appeared on the Nintendo DS and iOS/Android alongside the Nintendo Switch. That said, it's only a cult classic and has failed to establish itself as a series. I would say he has good chances as a predominantly Nintendo character, but compared to other, larger Square Enix picks he fails to compare.

Agnès Oblige
Another Square Enix character predominantly on Nintendo systems, Bravely Default 1 & 2 were critically acclaimed JRPGs on the 3DS. However, with a third entry in the series for Nintendo Switch unconfirmed, she lacks the relevance required to make her a notable pick for DLC.

2B
While 2B is a popular Square Enix character and has even made an appearance in Soul Calibur 6 as a playable character, she's never appeared on a Nintendo console and is therefore ineligible for Smash Bros. Sorry @NineS.

Spoiler: Wrap-Up: My Thoughts

If I had to bet on which Square Enix character I think will get in, I'd put all my money on Dragon Quest. Every factor seems to line up in the series' favor, and the most notable counterarguments are made up for and can't really be used against it. If I had to make a chart for it, it would go like this:

Dragon Quest >> Final Fantasy Character > Lara Croft > Geno = Sora = Crono > Neku > Anyone else

While speculation about the Square Enix representative was initially exciting, I've quickly found it to become tiring and monotonous, as speculation continues to circle around the same rehashed topics and every time we get a new piece of information we end up right where we started in terms of what we know. Hopefully this piece clears up some misconceptions and offers some closure to the circuitous arguments that the fanbase has found itself mired in. At this point I would suggest that everyone just sit back and relax, for it seems like similar to Mr. Bone, Mr. Square Enix's wild ride won't be ending anytime soon.

I'm not going to read all this, but I appreciate the effort.

 

[Luigi The President]

Here's the post I've been working on and teasing for the past two days, and why I haven't been nearly as active as usual for the last two days. Let me introduce you to:

THE ULTIMATE heh SQUARE ENIX CHARACTER ARGUMENT​

I'm on a month long break, and to keep my brain from rotting out of my head I've decided to write a series of in-depth speculation posts about current popular Smash Bros. Ultimate Speculation and topics that personally interest me within it. The idea of a Square Enix character has been prevalent in this speculation cycle since at least October, and has recently hit a climax with seemingly everyone and their mom having a source and going after information about the elusive Square Enix character. While I've argued with many about Sora, Geno, and Dragon Quest, I wanted to take an in-depth look into every potential Square Enix pick and argue the pros and cons of their inclusion, which led to this. This is a long post—likely the longest I've written and will ever write—clocking in at over 6,000 words. So buckle up, and I hope you enjoy the ride!

Spoiler: Background - On third parties

While Sakurai has commented on third parties in the past, he's been quite vague, only saying that the characters must appear on Nintendo consoles, both companies must want them and Sakurai must have some artistic license, the character must carry history with them, and (more recently) implying that third parties must have worldwide popularity

Based off of this, I'm going to argue that a third party representative must be at least one of two things: historic and iconic

So, let's take a brief look at our current third parties and how they fit this criteria (echoes are considered with their original counterpart):
Snake: Metal Gear Solid had it's starts on old-computer systems and even had an NES port, and was launched into fame thanks to the well-known Metal Gear Solid franchise headed by Hideo Kojima. Granted, Snake's inclusion was a favor to a friend, but the fact still stands that Snake falls under both criteria.
Sonic: The mascot of Sega himself once went toe-to-toe with Mario and Nintendo in one of the most iconic showdowns in gaming history, and even now that Sega's a third party Sonic is still one of the larger video game series despite it's mis-steps. He more than checks off both criteria.
Megaman: Up until Megaman 7 and Megaman X4 the Megaman series was exclusive to Nintendo, making Megaman a hallmark of early Nintendo, and he even appeared as a main character on the 1980s NES-centered cartoon Captain N. The series remained active from the NES era up until the 7th generation (Wii U, PS4, Xbox One) in one way or another before teetering off, but the series has recently been rebooted with Megaman 11 and a new Megaman X game likely in the works. He handily stands under both criteria.
Pac-Man: Dude's an arcade legend. Mostly everyone knows who Pac-Man is, or has played it in some way shape or form. He speaks for himself, 'nuff said.
Ryu: Another arcade legend, but Ryu also made a notable jump into the console market and has remained on top of the Fighting Game Genre since then. He checks off both boxes.
Cloud: Final Fantasy is undoubtedly the most popular JRPG series, and until the Nintendo 64 was synonymous with Nintendo. Final Fantasy VII is one of the most popular games of all time, and represents a moment in gaming history when Square Enix gave Nintendo a big old middle finger and moved over to Playstation. An odd piece of history to represent, but historic and iconic nonetheless.
Bayonetta: I'll admit this is a bit of an odd one to argue given that Bayonetta as a series is much more recent than the other third parties and much less popular. That being said, I'll still argue that she's iconic. The original Bayonetta was a cult classic, and when a sequel couldn't be funded, Nintendo swooped in and paid for it themselves, and she represents this weird moment in Nintendo history when Nintendo funded an M rated series for the failing Wii U. Since then, Bayonetta has (oddly enough) become synonymous with Nintendo in the modern era, making her a natural inclusion
Simon Belmont: Similar to Megaman or Final Fantasy, Castlevania is synonymous with classic Nintendo, and Simon Belmont also appeared on Captain N as a main character. The Castlevania franchise was active and renowned up until Konami canned it towards the end of the 7th generation, even spawning it's own genre of games, the Metroidvania, in it and Metroid's styles. He definitely checks off both criteria
Joker: I'm still in shock that they added him. I never thought it would happen, but it did. Persona 5 marks a distinct shift in both the series and the JRPG genre towards worldwide popularity, selling 2 million copies as of December 1st 2017 making it the highest selling Persona 5. Persona 5 also was a game of the year contender alongside Breath of the Wild and won best RPG at the Game Awards. Joker doesn't just represent Persona 5 though, he also represents Shin Megami Tensei, an iconic series with a long history of Nintendo exclusives, according to the press release for his inclusion in Smash Bros:

In doing so, he checks off both criteria with his inclusion.

So, all of our third parties but 1 are historic and iconic, with the 1 left being iconic but also having special circumstances. This is important to consider.

Spoiler: Background - Why a Square Enix Character?

For one, a Square Enix character in Smash Ultimate has to be one of, if not the worst kept secret in Nintendo history. We've known about this since at least October, and the rumblings of it began as early as March when the game was first teased. While many believe that leakers have been "BTFO" with the advent of no one knowing about Joker or his impending reveal at The Game Awards, too many people have heard about this for it NOT to happen at this point. Unless Nintendo and Square Enix are playing 5 Dimensional Chess and spreading misinformation about there being a Square Enix character for ****s and giggles, we're getting one, and the misinformation is to mask who it is. Of course, we have that supposed list of 7 characters and accounts of who made it to negotiations and who didn't, but seeing as Nintendo have shown themselves capable of spreading convincing misinformation (Every insider claimed we were getting Metroid Prime and no Smash at The Game Awards only for us to get Joker) I would throw everything we know about the Square Enix character out of the window. For the sake of this post, I'll be doing just that, and I'll be arguing why we should ALL do that in my next speculation piece.

Even if the leaks are fake, I believe there's reason to believe that we're getting a Square Enix character. For one, Square Enix has been oddly liberal with their IPs as of late, adding Noctis (Final Fantasy XV) into Tekken, Behemoth (Final Fantasy) in Monster Hunter, Assassin's Creed with Final Fantasy XV, and 2B (Nier: Automata) into Soul Calibur 6. When discussing how Noctis got into Tekken, it was stated that it was due to the relationship between Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada and Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata, showing that all it takes is some good blood to get the ball rolling. Fortunately, not only is Sakurai friends with Tetsuya Normura, but Square Enix seems to be in a second golden age with Nintendo, with Octopath Traveler performing better than expected. Prior to its release, Square Enix said that if Octopath Traveler was successful, they would focus on the Switch as a console; staying true to their word Square Enix telling those present at an earnings conference to expect more games like Octopath Traveler and creating a division to specifically focus on making Switch games. Square Enix has every reason to go to Nintendo and get a character of their's in Nintendo; it's win-win, they get exposure for one of their series, and Nintendo gets massive press for Smash Bros.

So then the question becomes: which one?

Spoiler: Erdrick/Dragon Quest Character

This is what inspired me to write this post, given that people have argued for Sora, Geno, and other roster picks citing all of these articles but never Erdrick or another Dragon Quest character. You can thank me later @Calane

Anyways, let's begin with a history lesson. Dragon Quest is the grandfather of the entire RPG genre, with the first game in the series releasing on the NES an entire year and a half before the first Final Fantasy game. It is Square Enix's 2nd best selling series, sitting at 75 million units sold as of a year ago between its main titles and spin-offs, and has a long history with Nintendo, with every main entry in the series being playable on Nintendo consoles (only 2 of 11 main series games weren't on Nintendo consoles initially, being 7 and 8, though they later received 3DS remakes). Nintendo even published Dragon Quest I, VI, VII, VIII, and IX within Western countries. IX is notable as it was a third-party DS game published by Nintendo, something only done for Dragon Quest and Level-5 games in the DS era. Mario and co. have also crossed over with the Dragon Quest bunch multiple times in the Fortune Street series, creating a precedent for a crossover between Nintendo and Dragon Quest. More recently, Dragon Quest XI was one of the first games revealed for the Nintendo Switch, then called the Nintendo NX, and more recently has been announced to be an upgraded version named Dragon Quest XI S (appearing at this year's Jump Festa), which will include voice acting among other new features. Needless to say, the ties between Nintendo and Dragon Quest are VERY strong.

Additionally Dragon Quest's is a cultural phenomenon in Japan. This game series is so large that it's spawned an urban myth on the level of "the average human eats 8 spiders in their sleep per year" about there being a law that Dragon Quest games had to be released on weekends, or that when Dragon Quest games released it was akin to a national holiday. While there is a Dragon Quest Day, it's an unofficial holiday, and in reality, 300 kids were arrested for truancy when Dragon Quest III released and muggings of Dragon Quest games became so widespread that there were hearings about in the Japanese parliament, leading the developers to feel bad about creating a nationwide issue and moving the game's release dates to the weekend. The series is large enough to be a common conversation topic in Japan, and is considered by many within the Japanese gaming industry to be Japan's national game. I **** you not, this series is so big that it caused the entire staff of the HiatusxHiatus HunterxHunter anime to go on hiatus JUST TO PLAY DRAGON QUEST, the series has a world record in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the first game to inspire a ballet, and has an amusement park attraction at Universal Studios Japan (where Nintendo will be soon), that's is how big this series is.

Due to Dragon Quest's Japanese popularity, Sakurai talks about it quite a bit. In the Sakurai x Normura Interview Sakurai mentions game designer Yosuke Saito (who worked on Dragon Quest X) on "a list of game designers born in 1970, [where] there's quite a few big names" alongside Hideki Kamiya, Yoko Taro, and John Carmack, and participated in a roundtable discussion with series creator Yuji Horii and Junichi Masuda of Pokémon fame where they discussed Dragon Quest XI. He's notably advocated for the series twice, first in 2011 when he stood up for Dragon Quest X and expressed that he looks forward to it, and plays Devil's Advocate for the series' difficulty, also directly acknowledging the series' popularity in the process, and went far as finding a workaround to play Dragon Quest Heroes among other games while recovering from his arm injury.. Sakurai also notably lists Dragon Quest III alongside Megaman, Final Fantasy, and Ocarina of Time among others when talking about anniversaries, and COMPARES KIRBY (you know, that one character that HE CREATED AND TREATS LIKE HIS CHILD) TO THE MAIN CHARACTER OF A DRAGON QUEST GAME. Needless to say, Dragon Quest is on Sakurai's radar.

Now, to address the common counterarguments:
The first is the series' western popularity. While the series is certainly historic, and is amazingly popular in Japan, it largely lacks a presence in the West, with 3 million+ out of 4 million copies (more than 75%) of Dragon Quest XI being sold in Japan instead of the West. It's no small secret that Square Enix has been fighting a decades long battle (sometimes alongside Nintendo) to make Dragon Quest popular in the West, and it seems like they're stacking the deck to make Dragon Quest XI the game that breaks through. I believe that Square Enix would be willing to make a gamble on the inclusion of a Dragon Quest character in Smash Bros. in an attempt to boost the series' western popularity. We've seen a good amount people interested in playing Persona with the inclusion of Joker, and "the Smash effect" could similarly boost Dragon Quest's western sales in the future.

Second, the licensing. Many people cite Dragon Quest as a "licensing nightmare" in an attempt to discredit the series' inclusion, but it's not as complicated as you'd think. Dragon Quest as a whole is between four parties: Square Enix (Development, IP ownership), Armor Project (game design), Bird Studio (character design), and Koichi Sugiyama (music). Of those four, two are no problem to deal with, being Square Enix and Armor Project, run by series' director Yuji Horii, both of whom have benefitted from positive relations with Nintendo and would no doubt like to have a Dragon Quest character in Smash to boost the series' Western popularity. That leaves Bird Studio, run by Akira Toriyama, and Koichi Sugiyama as the wildcards in rights negotiation for Dragon Quest content. However, I'm willing to believe that both will cooperate. For one, Akira Toriyama worked closely alongside Arc System Works and Namco Bandai to design Android 21, an original character, for Dragon Ball Fighterz. Namco's involvement in this scenario is notable, as they're also developer Smash Bros. Ultimate, and using their connections developing the Dragon Ball games, could bring Toriyama to the negotiating table if he isn't already there. Additionally, in developing at least Fighterz, the developers worked alongside Toei Animation and Shueisha instead of Toriyama, who made slight changes to the game to fit with the Dragon Ball IP, which could be taken as Toriyama taking a back seat when it comes to adaptations of his work. Given how many Dragon Ball games have been made, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case Goku, his star character, has been licensed out on a couple of occasions to Fuji TV and is the ambassador of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games, which leaves me with little doubt he'd be willing to work with Nintendo on a Dragon Quest character for Smash Bros (one of the largest crossovers ever) and grant Sakurai the proper artistic license to make a Dragon Quest character a reasonable inclusion. As for Sugiyama? The use of midi music files has been suggested multiple times and could be a viable way to get Dragon Quest into Smash Bros. if needed. If Nintendo and Sakurai decide to go the orchestral route they might run into trouble due to either money or Sugiyama's seeming unwillingness to let us worldwide players have orchestral music (this is overblown, however, as Dragon Quest XI had a midi soundtrack worldwide instead of just in the West), which is the only problem I could viably see happening. However, Nintendo has dealt with this before and will do it again if negotiations go right, at worst we just end up with midis instead of orchestral music and remixes. As for the controversy surrounding Sugiyama, that's a nonissue, given that Square Enix has made a statement about it saying that it doesn't speak to company policy and are moving ahead with Dragon Quest anyways.

If Square Enix has the chance to push Dragon Quest, I could easily see them doing so. I see a Dragon Quest character as one of, if not the likeliest Square Enix character given that everything seems to line up for it. Dragon Quest is the most historic choice, and while not iconic worldwide, has the proper circumstances surrounding it to make up for that fact and justify it's inclusion in Smash.

Spoiler: Sora

Surprise surprise, one of the top Sora supporters here is going to post a lengthy argument for him. While many have counted him out time and time again, there is a solid case to be made for Sora. As mentioned before, I'm not going to address insider information as I believe it should be thrown out the window (I'll elaborate on this in another mini-essay).

Kingdom Hearts is one of Square Enix's more notable series, selling 24 million units worldwide as of November 2017 making it Square Enix's fourth best selling series. While this may initially seem unimpressive, this is across only 15 titles (2 of which were remakes and 5 of which were collections of previous games). Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Tomb Raider, Square Enix's top 3 best selling series, clock in at 54 titles, 29 titles, and 30 titles respectively. For Kingdom Hearts to accomplish that much in such a little amount is impressive. The series is a collaboration between Disney and Square Enix and uses both the Disney and Final Fantasy IPs alongside original characters, such as Sora. By sole merit of possessing Disney content a majority of people will know at least something about Kingdom Hearts. The series is also known for Kingdom Hearts 3, which at one point stood alongside games such as Duke Nukem Forever and Half-Life 3 as a game in a popular series trapped in development hell and became a meme within the gaming community because of this; Kingdom Hearts 3 has been teased since 2005, and ever since it's official announcement it's consistently placed within Japanese Gaming Magazine Famitsu's Weekly Most Wanted Games poll, showing Japanese popularity. On the Western front, Kingdom Hearts 3 won 16 awards out 29 nominations at E3 2018, which I believe is a good sign of Western popularity.

Stemming from Kingdom Heart's popularity, demand for Sora in Smash Bros. exists, and it's a lot larger than some would expect. Going back to the Smash Ballot era, the entire Kingdom Hearts community rallied behind Sora, with prominent Kingdom Hearts youtubers HMK and TheGamersJoint (at 36,000 and 59,000 subscribers respectively at the time) both making videos telling their fans to vote for Sora in the ballot. More recently, fans have been more vocal about their wants, with the king of Sm4sh, Zero, voicing his support for Sora and HMK telling a Disney executive to his face that the fans want Sora in Smash alongside reasons for his inclusion. Sora ranked number 1 on an Italian Smash Bros. Fighter Poll, number 5 for large Japanese magazine Inside's most anticipated Smash Bros. character, and number 5 on the Reddit Smash Ultimate Poll with 12,485 votes. Further evidence for an impressive ballot performance for Sora comes from the fact that in the Reddit Ultimate Poll: "The character with the most brigaders (was) Sora (more than half his voters came from non-reddit referrers). This shows that Kingdom Hearts fans care enough about Sora in Smash to vote on a large, unofficial Reddit poll, which would certainly translate to an official Nintendo ballot. Support for Sora even exists within Square Enix, as evidenced by this deleted tweet from series producer and Square Enix executive Shinji Hashimoto. Needless to say, there's a lot of people who want to see Sora in Smash Bros.

As a character, Sora is in an interesting place. While Sora is owned by Disney for all legal purposes, Disney and Square Enix have a gentlemen's agreement between them where Disney has to approach series director Tetsuya Normura and Square Enix to use him in any sort of marketing (source). This gentlemen's agreement is highly important, as evidenced by the canceled 2002 Kingdom Hearts cartoon series—which was canceled "so as to not jeopardize the relationship between Square Enix & Disney as they began to expand the franchise"—and more recently, the canceled Disney Kingdom Hearts game which is speculated to have been canceled due to Square Enix's disapproval. According to Disney of Japan executive Justin Scarpone, the process for negotiating Sora in Smash would go as such:

• Nintendo approaches Disney for negotiations
• Assuming fan demand exists, approval from Normura and Square Enix would be required
• Disney would then work alongside Nintendo to represent Sora accurately.

Let's go through this process bit by bit and look at some of the moving parts here.

To begin, Nintendo needs to convince Disney. This is where the most error can occur, and where the most variability in speculation exists. On one hand, you have users who have worked with Disney or know people who have worked with Disney such as @NonSpecificGuy and @PlayerOneTyler who express how difficult it is to work with Disney legal for even minor things, but you also have the claim from Scarpone that Disney "isn't restrictive, but particular," examples of Disney cross-promotion in video games, such as:

• Thanos in Fortnite in a time-exclusive game mode (one which seems to be making a return soon)
• Most recently, Wreck-It-Ralph in Fortnite
• Wreck-It-Ralph in Sonic and Sega All-Stars racing

and factors hinting that Disney may not be as soulless as some imagine them to be, such as Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3's exclusivity to Nintendo Switch (when it could make more money being multiplatform) and Normura being the one who decided to not make a Disney fighting game and not Disney. Additionally, Nintendo and Disney seem to be on good terms given the aforementioned exclusivity of Ultimate Alliance 3, the game show that the two made together about the Nintendo Switch, and the fact that Disney XD has streamed events such as the Sm4sh Wii U finals at EVO 2017 and if I recall correctly, the Invitational tournaments. Disney and Nintendo go way back past this, as far as the pre-NES era, and interestingly enough, Nintendo has also published games with Disney characters such as Epic Mickey (in Japan) and Disney's Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse, which makes Disney similar to Dragon Quest in that regard. Overall, negotiations with Disney is a coinflip, but I believe that it's possible, especially if Nintendo and Disney work out a deal outside of Smash (similar to how Ralph ended up in Sega All-Stars racing due to Sonic being in Wreck-It-Ralph).

We've established that fan demand for Sora exists. Getting Normura's approval would be easy given Sakurai's positive relationship with Normura (he even praised Normura and his team for Kingdom Heart's 15th anniversary and expressed that he was a fan of the series), and extending to Square Enix Hashimoto's support of Sora bodes well for Nintendo getting general approval for Sora. While Square Enix has proven themselves difficult to work with, I believe with pressure from inside the company it's likely they'll get approval.

Now, all Sakurai and his team need to do is work alongside Disney to faithfully represent Sora. The question here is whether Disney will give Sakurai the artistic liberty required for him to work, and I'd say that it's 75:25. I could see it going down like how Toei and Shueishi worked alongside Arc System Works for Fighterz where they only made incredibly minor changes, and I trust that if anyone can represent Sora accurately, it's Sakurai; guy's the king of accurate character representation.

Overall, I would give Sora 50/50 chances depending on whether or not Disney can play nice with Nintendo. I would say he's more likely than people think, but I acknowledge that negotiations with him could be difficult enough to consider pursuing another option. However, Sora checks off both boxes (Kingdom Hearts is both an iconic and historic crossover) and his popularity would generate a large amount of sales and press for Smash Bros.

Spoiler: Geno

What's this? tehponycorn arguing for Geno instead of against him? Surely that's impossible! Well, it is, my reputation as a supposed "Geno basher" be damned. This one goes out to my girl Luigi The President - never stop dreaming

Let's start with the most prominent point in Geno's favor: the Sakurai Interview. We all know the one.

Even the interviewer acknowledges Geno's popularity, saying

So, we have a direct statement from Sakurai saying that he wanted Geno in the game for Brawl and Sm4sh, and acknowledgement of his popularity. This is hands down the best point in his favor. Geno, similar to the other two members of the Holy Trinity composed of himself, Ridley, and King K. Rool—the latter two of which were newcomers for Ultimate—has managed to remain a popular speculation pick within the Smash Bros. community since Brawl, and consistently ranks high within fan polls across the core fanbase (the fan polls linked came from Twitter, Reddit, 4chan's /v/, and SourceGaming among other sources). His Mii Costume also got it's own splash screen, making it notable as no other Mii Costumes got that level of preferential treatment, and Spirits of him and Mallow are the only Square Enix spirits to appear besides Cloud, meaning that someone is pushing for his inclusion, or at least acknowledgement, in Smash Bros.

The game he's from, Super Mario RPG for the SNES, isn't a slouch in terms of notoriety. For one, it's revered to this day as a classic SNES RPG alongside Crono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6, and sold 2.14 million copies in it's original run, with rereleases on the Wii and Wii U virtual console and most recently a rerelease on the SNES classic, which has sold over 5 million units (as of March 2018).

Another argument in favor of Geno is how simple it would be to acquire the rights to him. Compared to the messes that are Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, and even Final Fantasy with it's music, all Nintendo would need to do is get the rights for Geno and Super Mario RPG content. The main composer for the game, Yoko Shimomura, is already onboard for Smash Ultimate, facilitating negotiations for music and introducing the possibilities of remixes and making for an easy process to acquire Geno and include him in Smash Bros. Geno would also represent the culmination Nintendo and Square Enix's first golden age, which is incredibly fitting seeing as they're currently entering their second one.

All that being said, there are valid counterarguments for each of the above points.

Geno's popularity cannot be denied due to Sakurai and the Nintendo Dream Interviewer's direct acknowledgement of it. If Sakurai has wanted Geno in since Brawl, however, then why hasn't he been added? Pac-Man, Villager, and Miis, all previously considered characters for Brawl similar to Geno, made the jump to playable status in Smash 4, and even Ridley, a character that Sakurai famously denied, made the jump in Smash Ultimate. So then why hasn't Geno, a character that's been seriously considered for the last two entries, made a similar jump? The most common theory currently is that Square Enix refuses to give Sakurai and co. the license to use Geno as a playable character; why add Geno when another, more relevant character could be added to promote a current series for Square Enix? Remember, Square Enix is all about cross-promotion in their crossover deals, and Geno hasn't had a game release in 20 years.

However, Square Enix did give Sakurai and co. the rights to make a mii costume and include Spirits of the characters in Smash Ultimate, so they're not completely opposed to the prospect of Geno in Smash. I imagine that negotiating for a mii costume and literal .png files is much easier than negotiating for a playable character though. The argument of "would Square Enix grant Nintendo the rights to Geno" is one that is difficult to answer because both sides are valid. It would be incredibly easy to get Geno in Smash Bros. compared to other Square Enix characters, making his inclusion the one with the least risk.

While Geno always performs well in fan polls, fan polls, by nature, are susceptible to Voluntary Response Bias, which skews statistical data when the sample size is composed of self-selected volunteers. People who participate in polls conducted by the core fanbase are more likely to vote for characters widely supported by the core fanbase, i.e. Geno. This is further evidenced by the Ultimate Reddit poll, wherein Sora and Phoenix Wright, two nonstandard picks for the core fanbase, performed very well due to the high number of brigaders for those characters. Within that same fan poll, it was stated that most of Geno's support came from the United States, showing that he isn't nearly as popular abroad as he is here. While fan polls are a great general indicator of the fanbase's wishes, they can't be relied on for hard evidence due to the bias present in them by nature. I would say that given the larger size of the Ultimate Reddit poll, it can be trusted relatively well, but it still doesn't account for the large, silent, casual fanbase, who are equally as valid as the core fanbase. While the core fanbase would be ecstatic about Geno, the casual fanbase would likely not know who he is given the low sales of his game compared to Square Enix's other series (while he did appear on the SNES Classic, it's worth noting that many purchases of the SNES Classic was marketed towards those looking to re-experience the classic SNES games of their youth, and therefore many purchases of the SNES Classic were from people who likely already knew about Geno or bought the console for another game unrelated to him). From this, while Geno's inclusion has the least risk, it also likely has the least reward.

Finally, as a miscellaneous point, multiple other Mii characters got splash screens, such as Abraham Lincoln, Elijah Wood, and Ice T alongside members of the J-Pop idol group AKB48. I also swear that Nikki from Swapnote got her own little trailer as a Mii Fighter, but was unable to find any proof of such. This may be tangental to the prominence of the splash screen for Geno's costume seeing that it's a character costume and not just a mii alongside the fact that Geno is a third party character, but I still believe it's a point worth mentioning that Geno could've just been a marketable face similar to the former characters.

Overall, I give Geno a 50/50 chance depending on whether or not Square Enix and Nintendo want to go the easy route. I personally doubt that they would, but I understand that there's a case to be made for them doing so. Despite my own biases, I acknowledge that both sides have equal weight, and Geno is truly a tossup at this point; he's historic, but it's kind of reach, and he's not iconic, but could maybe have the extenuating circumstances required to make up for that. It's truly difficult to tell.

Spoiler: Final Fantasy Character

I'm condensing every possible Final Fantasy fighter into one for the sake of my own sanity, as there are so many possible fighters here. So, I'm going to be arguing for the series' merits and then listing some characters I believe could be our second Final Fantasy rep if we get one.

Final Fantasy is Square Enix's flagship franchise, selling over 144 million units as of March 2018. That's a little under double that of Dragon Quest, Square Enix's next best selling series. This also shows in the promotion that the series receives, such as the aforementioned Noctis in Tekken, Assassin's Creed in Final Fantasy XV, and Behemoth in Tekken (see Background - Why a Square Enix Character?) alongside, you know, . Sakurai even acknowledged this within the Nintendo Dream Interview by calling it

So, it would be a safe pick for Square Enix to go for another Square Enix series, given the long history the series has with Nintendo and the many iconic characters within the series. However, with that many characters, who would they choose next? I have four ideas:

Bartz Klauser
Protagonist of Final Fantasy V for the SNES, mentioned within the same interview as Cloud by Sakurai, who remarked that a moveset about switching jobs could be "interesting." Sakurai has previously dropped things within interviews that were prominent, such as how Castlevania impacted him similar to the Legend of Zelda and how excited he was to play Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow prior to Simon's reveal.

Onion Knight
Mentioned within the same interview as Bartz, but isn't as likely given that it was Japan-exclusive until 2006.

Terra Branford
A little bit of personal speculation on my part, but given how Final Fantasy 6 is often held as one of the best JRPGs of all time and is prominently on Nintendo console, it would make sense for her to be our second Final Fantasy pick.

Sephiroth
Final Fantasy 7 is already on the table given Cloud's inclusion, so it'd be relatively easy to secure the character rights for him. Sephiroth is one of the most iconic villains in all of gaming history, and anyone who knows about Cloud will know about his age old rival Sephiroth.

Despite it being Square Enix's flagship franchise and having a bevy of characters to choose from, there are barriers to inclusion for a Final Fantasy character. For one, the way that licensing for Final Fantasy is handled scatters the rights to music and different components among the creators of those works. This leads to what could be costly licensing fees for Nintendo, to the point where it's simply not worth to negotiate for music. Additionally, no precedent for a series having two unique characters exists. While this is nothing but a fan rule that could easily be shattered, it's still worth noting, especially when both Bayonetta and Joker—both owned by Sega—got in over another Sonic character.

While I certainly wouldn't discount the inclusion of another Final Fantasy character, I also wouldn't see it as the most likely scenario.

Spoiler: Lara Croft

Tomb Raider is Square Enix's third best selling series, selling 60 million units as of March 2018 and defining the action adventure genre later refined by series such as Uncharted. Tomb Raider is also notable due to its status as a cultural phenomenon, as its spawned three movies, multiple soundtracks, a TV series, and multiple comic series and novelizations over the years. The only other Square Enix series to come close to this is Dragon Quest, and even then it lacks the worldwide appeal that Tomb Raider does. Lara Croft is an iconic character, and you'd be hard pressed to find a top 10 women in video games list without her, with her even winning the world record for "most successful female video game character" within the 2010 Guinness Book of World Records. This was before the series' remake, mind you, meaning that she and her series have only become more successful since then.

There are a couple of barriers for Laura's inclusion, however. For one, she's more associated with Playstation and Xbox than Nintendo. While we do have characters more known for appearances on Playstation systems, being Snake, Cloud, and Joker, each of them have some sort of circumstance behind that, with Snake largely being a favor for a friend, and Cloud and Joker representing Final Fantasy and Shin Megami Tensei, two series with historic ties to Nintendo. Lara Croft lacks either of these circumstances, which is significant. Furthermore, she uses realistic weaponry, such as her signature dual pistols, for most of her attacks, and it is unknown whether this could translate into to Smash similar to Snake or Bayonetta, both of whom were toned down in that regard. Finally, she's a British developed character, which subjects her to the stigma against Western character which seems to be present within the series, with Diddy Kong, King K. Rool, and Dark Samus being the only character created outside of Japan.


While Lara Croft as the Square Enix character is worth being discussed, I would say that she's the dark horse pick of the bunch and is overall unlikely. Keep her in mind though.

Spoiler: Gex

YOU THOUGHT I WAS SERIOUSLY GOING TO ARGUE FOR GEX?!

Joking aside, Gex has appeared on Nintendo consoles before, and his three games have sold a total of 15 million units worldwide, which is nothing to laugh at. I'd say it's more possible than you'd think, but still very unlikely.

Spoiler: Misc.

I acknowledge that the Square Enix character could be someone not previously argued for. So, I'm going to be doing small arguments for other character I believe could be the Square Enix rep, but wouldn't necessarily hold out hopes for.
Crono
Crono almost got his own section, but in the end I couldn't justify that as much as I could justify using him to start this section. Similar to Terra and Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger appears on many, if not every list of the greatest JRPGs of all time. However, he's in a similar place as Geno wherein he hasn't had a recent game in his series for around 20 years, but doesn't have the vocal fanbase to keep him going.

Neku Sakuraba
The World Ends With You is a critically acclaimed cult classic (that's a tongue-twister) that's appeared on the Nintendo DS and iOS/Android alongside the Nintendo Switch. That said, it's only a cult classic and has failed to establish itself as a series. I would say he has good chances as a predominantly Nintendo character, but compared to other, larger Square Enix picks he fails to compare.

Agnès Oblige
Another Square Enix character predominantly on Nintendo systems, Bravely Default 1 & 2 were critically acclaimed JRPGs on the 3DS. However, with a third entry in the series for Nintendo Switch unconfirmed, she lacks the relevance required to make her a notable pick for DLC.

2B
While 2B is a popular Square Enix character and has even made an appearance in Soul Calibur 6 as a playable character, she's never appeared on a Nintendo console and is therefore ineligible for Smash Bros. Sorry @NineS.

Spoiler: Wrap-Up: My Thoughts

If I had to bet on which Square Enix character I think will get in, I'd put all my money on Dragon Quest. Every factor seems to line up in the series' favor, and the most notable counterarguments are made up for and can't really be used against it. If I had to make a chart for it, it would go like this:

Dragon Quest >> Final Fantasy Character > Lara Croft > Geno = Sora = Crono > Neku > Anyone else

While speculation about the Square Enix representative was initially exciting, I've quickly found it to become tiring and monotonous, as speculation continues to circle around the same rehashed topics and every time we get a new piece of information we end up right where we started in terms of what we know. Hopefully this piece clears up some misconceptions and offers some closure to the circuitous arguments that the fanbase has found itself mired in. At this point I would suggest that everyone just sit back and relax, for it seems like similar to Mr. Bone, Mr. Square Enix's wild ride won't be ending anytime soon.

BOY OH BOY LEMME GET MYSELF SOME LEMONADE AND GET TO WORK ON THIS

 

[Idon]

Dang, I've been hearing from people that World of Light is kind of terrible. Mainly some of the fights that are bull**** and the mode being a slog. Of course that's just subjective opinions. I guess I'll have to see when I get to eventually play.

With DLC trailers(excluding Piranha Plant) more or less not using renders, I think we'll see the remaining reveals earlier than we thought. I think they'll reveal the last character at E3.

That'd be insane.

At most, we're getting 2 DLC trailers instead of one.
And maybe some gameplay and the amiibo announcement for Joker.

 

[Bee Card]

Do you not think that applies to every other character SE has?
And that SE has more to gain to either get another popular character like Sephiroth or a character that is both popular and can be used to promote their franchises like Erdrick?

Yes but as I said perhaps SE don't want to mix their franchises with Smash. Cloud is the only one who just have official Smash Bros artwork in spirits, 2 original tracks only, no other FF references, no more chocobo mii costume. If SE protect the image of their other franchise like they do with FF, the only characters who could be in Smash are Geno and at a push Crono from Chrono Trigger.

 

[Flyboy]

Your arguments are valid but you're underselling just how many people want him.
I don't think it can really be disputed that he's the most wanted Squenix rep, maybe Sora comes kinda close but Geno's been pretty wanted for 10 years now.

Ten years if we go by the massive groundswell, but you could argue twenty considering how he's been in the conversation since the beginning. It's all pretty fascinating.

Like, Geno has a leg up on a lot of popular choices for the Mario connection but it's still absolutely nuts that people for example are building their whole YouTube brand around this obscure side character in a Mario RPG for the SNES and the fandom just looks at it and is like "oh that makes sense".

He's in the conversation every single time. He's in the fans' minds because kids nowadays live on YouTube and he's in the higher ups' minds because he was a Mii Costume.

I don't even have a stake in the fight other than by being an old man who was on the internet in 1999. It's just silly to even intimate Geno isn't part of any conversation or is in any way impossible.

 

[Pokechu]

Your arguments are valid but you're underselling just how many people want him.
I don't think it can really be disputed that he's the most wanted Squenix rep, maybe Sora comes kinda close but Geno's been pretty wanted for 10 years now.

This is true. Geno is very wanted, but I think it comes down to the general Smash fanbase as a whole. A lot of them would be like "who?" but if it was Slime they'd find it amusing akin to Piranha Plant or if it was Sora then they'd think "OMG KINGDOM HEARTS!". I've personally never liked Geno, I'm biased against him so that comes into play when I consider his chances, but I do think that his shot was base game or bust, especially with Nintendo choosing the DLC and not Sakurai.

 

[Wyoming]

At this point I believe more we won't get a Square character than will.

I think the insiders don't know the picture for DLC. Base game and DLC are two different projects, so I wouldn't be shocked if that's the case.

We'll see.

 

[PlugMeister]

So if I pre-purchased the game from the eShop, do I have to get a code e-mail to get the good plant boy or will he automatically be given to me in February?

 

[Idon]

So if I pre-purchased the game from the eShop, do I have to get a code e-mail to get the good plant boy or will he automatically be given to me in February?

Code.

 

[Dyllybirdy]

Here's the post I've been working on and teasing for the past two days, and why I haven't been nearly as active as usual for the last two days. Let me introduce you to:

THE ULTIMATE heh SQUARE ENIX CHARACTER ARGUMENT​

I'm on a month long break, and to keep my brain from rotting out of my head I've decided to write a series of in-depth speculation posts about current popular Smash Bros. Ultimate Speculation and topics that personally interest me within it. The idea of a Square Enix character has been prevalent in this speculation cycle since at least October, and has recently hit a climax with seemingly everyone and their mom having a source and going after information about the elusive Square Enix character. While I've argued with many about Sora, Geno, and Dragon Quest, I wanted to take an in-depth look into every potential Square Enix pick and argue the pros and cons of their inclusion, which led to this. This is a long post—likely the longest I've written and will ever write—clocking in at over 6,500 words. So buckle up, and I hope you enjoy the ride!

Spoiler: Background - On third parties

While Sakurai has commented on third parties in the past, he's been quite vague, only saying that the characters must appear on Nintendo consoles, both companies must want them and Sakurai must have some artistic license, the character must carry history with them, and (more recently) implying that third parties must have worldwide popularity

Based off of this, I'm going to argue that a third party representative must be at least one of two things: historic and iconic

So, let's take a brief look at our current third parties and how they fit this criteria (echoes are considered with their original counterpart):
Snake: Metal Gear Solid had it's starts on old-computer systems and even had an NES port, and was launched into fame thanks to the well-known Metal Gear Solid franchise headed by Hideo Kojima. Granted, Snake's inclusion was a favor to a friend, but the fact still stands that Snake falls under both criteria.
Sonic: The mascot of Sega himself once went toe-to-toe with Mario and Nintendo in one of the most iconic showdowns in gaming history, and even now that Sega's a third party Sonic is still one of the larger video game series despite it's mis-steps. He more than checks off both criteria.
Megaman: Up until Megaman 7 and Megaman X4 the Megaman series was exclusive to Nintendo, making Megaman a hallmark of early Nintendo, and he even appeared as a main character on the 1980s NES-centered cartoon Captain N. The series remained active from the NES era up until the 7th generation (Wii U, PS4, Xbox One) in one way or another before teetering off, but the series has recently been rebooted with Megaman 11 and a new Megaman X game likely in the works. He handily stands under both criteria.
Pac-Man: Dude's an arcade legend. Mostly everyone knows who Pac-Man is, or has played it in some way shape or form. He speaks for himself, 'nuff said.
Ryu: Another arcade legend, but Ryu also made a notable jump into the console market and has remained on top of the Fighting Game Genre since then. He checks off both boxes.
Cloud: Final Fantasy is undoubtedly the most popular JRPG series, and until the Nintendo 64 was synonymous with Nintendo. Final Fantasy VII is one of the most popular games of all time, and represents a moment in gaming history when Square Enix gave Nintendo a big old middle finger and moved over to Playstation. An odd piece of history to represent, but historic and iconic nonetheless.
Bayonetta: I'll admit this is a bit of an odd one to argue given that Bayonetta as a series is much more recent than the other third parties and much less popular. That being said, I'll still argue that she's iconic. The original Bayonetta was a cult classic, and when a sequel couldn't be funded, Nintendo swooped in and paid for it themselves, and she represents this weird moment in Nintendo history when Nintendo funded an M rated series for the failing Wii U. Since then, Bayonetta has (oddly enough) become synonymous with Nintendo in the modern era, making her a natural inclusion
Simon Belmont: Similar to Megaman or Final Fantasy, Castlevania is synonymous with classic Nintendo, and Simon Belmont also appeared on Captain N as a main character. The Castlevania franchise was active and renowned up until Konami canned it towards the end of the 7th generation, even spawning it's own genre of games, the Metroidvania, in it and Metroid's styles. He definitely checks off both criteria
Joker: I'm still in shock that they added him. I never thought it would happen, but it did. Persona 5 marks a distinct shift in both the series and the JRPG genre towards worldwide popularity, selling 2 million copies as of December 1st 2017 making it the highest selling Persona 5. Persona 5 also was a game of the year contender alongside Breath of the Wild and won best RPG at the Game Awards. Joker doesn't just represent Persona 5 though, he also represents Shin Megami Tensei, an iconic series with a long history of Nintendo exclusives, according to the press release for his inclusion in Smash Bros:

In doing so, he checks off both criteria with his inclusion.

So, all of our third parties but 1 are historic and iconic, with the 1 left being iconic but also having special circumstances. This is important to consider.

Spoiler: Background - Why a Square Enix Character?

For one, a Square Enix character in Smash Ultimate has to be one of, if not the worst kept secret in Nintendo history. We've known about this since at least October, and the rumblings of it began as early as March when the game was first teased. While many believe that leakers have been "BTFO" with the advent of no one knowing about Joker or his impending reveal at The Game Awards, too many people have heard about this for it NOT to happen at this point. Unless Nintendo and Square Enix are playing 5 Dimensional Chess and spreading misinformation about there being a Square Enix character for ****s and giggles, we're getting one, and the misinformation is to mask who it is. Of course, we have that supposed list of 7 characters and accounts of who made it to negotiations and who didn't, but seeing as Nintendo have shown themselves capable of spreading convincing misinformation (Every insider claimed we were getting Metroid Prime and no Smash at The Game Awards only for us to get Joker) I would throw everything we know about the Square Enix character out of the window. For the sake of this post, I'll be doing just that, and I'll be arguing why we should ALL do that in my next speculation piece.

Even if the leaks are fake, I believe there's reason to believe that we're getting a Square Enix character. For one, Square Enix has been oddly liberal with their IPs as of late, adding Noctis (Final Fantasy XV) into Tekken, Behemoth (Final Fantasy) in Monster Hunter, Assassin's Creed with Final Fantasy XV, and 2B (Nier: Automata) into Soul Calibur 6. When discussing how Noctis got into Tekken, it was stated that it was due to the relationship between Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada and Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata, showing that all it takes is some good blood to get the ball rolling. Fortunately, not only is Sakurai friends with Tetsuya Normura, but Square Enix seems to be in a second golden age with Nintendo, with Octopath Traveler performing better than expected. Prior to its release, Square Enix said that if Octopath Traveler was successful, they would focus on the Switch as a console; staying true to their word Square Enix telling those present at an earnings conference to expect more games like Octopath Traveler and creating a division to specifically focus on making Switch games. Square Enix has every reason to go to Nintendo and get a character of their's in Nintendo; it's win-win, they get exposure for one of their series, and Nintendo gets massive press for Smash Bros.

So then the question becomes: which one?

Spoiler: Erdrick/Dragon Quest Character

This is what inspired me to write this post, given that people have argued for Sora, Geno, and other roster picks citing all of these articles but never Erdrick or another Dragon Quest character. You can thank me later @Calane

Anyways, let's begin with a history lesson. Dragon Quest is the grandfather of the entire RPG genre, with the first game in the series releasing on the NES an entire year and a half before the first Final Fantasy game. It is Square Enix's 2nd best selling series, sitting at 75 million units sold as of a year ago between its main titles and spin-offs, and has a long history with Nintendo, with every main entry in the series being playable on Nintendo consoles (only 2 of 11 main series games weren't on Nintendo consoles initially, being 7 and 8, though they later received 3DS remakes). Nintendo even published Dragon Quest I, VI, VII, VIII, and IX within Western countries. IX is notable as it was a third-party DS game published by Nintendo, something only done for Dragon Quest and Level-5 games in the DS era. Mario and co. have also crossed over with the Dragon Quest bunch multiple times in the Fortune Street series, creating a precedent for a crossover between Nintendo and Dragon Quest. More recently, Dragon Quest XI was one of the first games revealed for the Nintendo Switch, then called the Nintendo NX, and more recently has been announced to be an upgraded version named Dragon Quest XI S (appearing at this year's Jump Festa), which will include voice acting among other new features. Needless to say, the ties between Nintendo and Dragon Quest are VERY strong.

Additionally Dragon Quest's is a cultural phenomenon in Japan. This game series is so large that it's spawned an urban myth on the level of "the average human eats 8 spiders in their sleep per year" about there being a law that Dragon Quest games had to be released on weekends, or that when Dragon Quest games released it was akin to a national holiday. While there is a Dragon Quest Day, it's an unofficial holiday, and in reality, 300 kids were arrested for truancy when Dragon Quest III released and muggings of Dragon Quest games became so widespread that there were hearings about in the Japanese parliament, leading the developers to feel bad about creating a nationwide issue and moving the game's release dates to the weekend. The series is large enough to be a common conversation topic in Japan, and is considered by many within the Japanese gaming industry to be Japan's national game. I **** you not, this series is so big that it caused the entire staff of the HiatusxHiatus HunterxHunter anime to go on hiatus JUST TO PLAY DRAGON QUEST, the series has a world record in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the first game to inspire a ballet, and has an amusement park attraction at Universal Studios Japan (where Nintendo will be soon), that's is how big this series is.

Due to Dragon Quest's Japanese popularity, Sakurai talks about it quite a bit. In the Sakurai x Normura Interview Sakurai mentions game designer Yosuke Saito (who worked on Dragon Quest X) on "a list of game designers born in 1970, [where] there's quite a few big names" alongside Hideki Kamiya, Yoko Taro, and John Carmack, and participated in a roundtable discussion with series creator Yuji Horii and Junichi Masuda of Pokémon fame where they discussed Dragon Quest XI. He's notably advocated for the series twice, first in 2011 when he stood up for Dragon Quest X and expressed that he looks forward to it, and plays Devil's Advocate for the series' difficulty, also directly acknowledging the series' popularity in the process, and went far as finding a workaround to play Dragon Quest Heroes among other games while recovering from his arm injury.. Sakurai also notably lists Dragon Quest III alongside Megaman, Final Fantasy, and Ocarina of Time among others when talking about anniversaries, and COMPARES KIRBY (you know, that one character that HE CREATED AND TREATS LIKE HIS CHILD) TO THE MAIN CHARACTER OF A DRAGON QUEST GAME. Needless to say, Dragon Quest is on Sakurai's radar.

Now, to address the common counterarguments:
The first is the series' western popularity. While the series is certainly historic, and is amazingly popular in Japan, it largely lacks a presence in the West, with 3 million+ out of 4 million copies (more than 75%) of Dragon Quest XI being sold in Japan instead of the West. It's no small secret that Square Enix has been fighting a decades long battle (sometimes alongside Nintendo) to make Dragon Quest popular in the West, and it seems like they're stacking the deck to make Dragon Quest XI the game that breaks through. I believe that Square Enix would be willing to make a gamble on the inclusion of a Dragon Quest character in Smash Bros. in an attempt to boost the series' western popularity. We've seen a good amount people interested in playing Persona with the inclusion of Joker, and "the Smash effect" could similarly boost Dragon Quest's western sales in the future.

Second, the licensing. Many people cite Dragon Quest as a "licensing nightmare" in an attempt to discredit the series' inclusion, but it's not as complicated as you'd think. Dragon Quest as a whole is between four parties: Square Enix (Development, IP ownership), Armor Project (game design), Bird Studio (character design), and Koichi Sugiyama (music). Of those four, two are no problem to deal with, being Square Enix and Armor Project, run by series' director Yuji Horii, both of whom have benefitted from positive relations with Nintendo and would no doubt like to have a Dragon Quest character in Smash to boost the series' Western popularity. That leaves Bird Studio, run by Akira Toriyama, and Koichi Sugiyama as the wildcards in rights negotiation for Dragon Quest content. However, I'm willing to believe that both will cooperate. For one, Akira Toriyama worked closely alongside Arc System Works and Namco Bandai to design Android 21, an original character, for Dragon Ball Fighterz. Namco's involvement in this scenario is notable, as they're also developer Smash Bros. Ultimate, and using their connections developing the Dragon Ball games, could bring Toriyama to the negotiating table if he isn't already there. Additionally, in developing at least Fighterz, the developers worked alongside Toei Animation and Shueisha instead of Toriyama, who made slight changes to the game to fit with the Dragon Ball IP, which could be taken as Toriyama taking a back seat when it comes to adaptations of his work. Given how many Dragon Ball games have been made, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case Goku, his star character, has been licensed out on a couple of occasions to Fuji TV and is the ambassador of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games, which leaves me with little doubt he'd be willing to work with Nintendo on a Dragon Quest character for Smash Bros (one of the largest crossovers ever) and grant Sakurai the proper artistic license to make a Dragon Quest character a reasonable inclusion. As for Sugiyama? The use of midi music files has been suggested multiple times and could be a viable way to get Dragon Quest into Smash Bros. if needed. If Nintendo and Sakurai decide to go the orchestral route they might run into trouble due to either money or Sugiyama's seeming unwillingness to let us worldwide players have orchestral music (this is overblown, however, as Dragon Quest XI had a midi soundtrack worldwide instead of just in the West), which is the only problem I could viably see happening. However, Nintendo has dealt with this before and will do it again if negotiations go right, at worst we just end up with midis instead of orchestral music and remixes. As for the controversy surrounding Sugiyama, that's a nonissue, given that Square Enix has made a statement about it saying that it doesn't speak to company policy and are moving ahead with Dragon Quest anyways.

If Square Enix has the chance to push Dragon Quest, I could easily see them doing so. I see a Dragon Quest character as one of, if not the likeliest Square Enix character given that everything seems to line up for it. Dragon Quest is the most historic choice, and while not iconic worldwide, has the proper circumstances surrounding it to make up for that fact and justify it's inclusion in Smash.

Spoiler: Sora

Surprise surprise, one of the top Sora supporters here is going to post a lengthy argument for him. While many have counted him out time and time again, there is a solid case to be made for Sora. As mentioned before, I'm not going to address insider information as I believe it should be thrown out the window (I'll elaborate on this in another mini-essay).

Kingdom Hearts is one of Square Enix's more notable series, selling 24 million units worldwide as of November 2017 making it Square Enix's fourth best selling series. While this may initially seem unimpressive, this is across only 15 titles (2 of which were remakes and 5 of which were collections of previous games). Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Tomb Raider, Square Enix's top 3 best selling series, clock in at 54 titles, 29 titles, and 30 titles respectively. For Kingdom Hearts to accomplish that much in such a little amount is impressive. The series is a collaboration between Disney and Square Enix and uses both the Disney and Final Fantasy IPs alongside original characters, such as Sora. By sole merit of possessing Disney content a majority of people will know at least something about Kingdom Hearts. The series is also known for Kingdom Hearts 3, which at one point stood alongside games such as Duke Nukem Forever and Half-Life 3 as a game in a popular series trapped in development hell and became a meme within the gaming community because of this; Kingdom Hearts 3 has been teased since 2005, and ever since it's official announcement it's consistently placed within Japanese Gaming Magazine Famitsu's Weekly Most Wanted Games poll, showing Japanese popularity. On the Western front, Kingdom Hearts 3 won 16 awards out 29 nominations at E3 2018, which I believe is a good sign of Western popularity.

Stemming from Kingdom Heart's popularity, demand for Sora in Smash Bros. exists, and it's a lot larger than some would expect. Going back to the Smash Ballot era, the entire Kingdom Hearts community rallied behind Sora, with prominent Kingdom Hearts youtubers HMK and TheGamersJoint (at 36,000 and 59,000 subscribers respectively at the time) both making videos telling their fans to vote for Sora in the ballot. More recently, fans have been more vocal about their wants, with the king of Sm4sh, Zero, voicing his support for Sora and HMK telling a Disney executive to his face that the fans want Sora in Smash alongside reasons for his inclusion. Sora ranked number 1 on an Italian Smash Bros. Fighter Poll, number 5 for large Japanese magazine Inside's most anticipated Smash Bros. character, and number 5 on the Reddit Smash Ultimate Poll with 12,485 votes. Further evidence for an impressive ballot performance for Sora comes from the fact that in the Reddit Ultimate Poll: "The character with the most brigaders (was) Sora (more than half his voters came from non-reddit referrers). This shows that Kingdom Hearts fans care enough about Sora in Smash to vote on a large, unofficial Reddit poll, which would certainly translate to an official Nintendo ballot. Support for Sora even exists within Square Enix, as evidenced by this deleted tweet from series producer and Square Enix executive Shinji Hashimoto. Needless to say, there's a lot of people who want to see Sora in Smash Bros.

As a character, Sora is in an interesting place. While Sora is owned by Disney for all legal purposes, Disney and Square Enix have a gentlemen's agreement between them where Disney has to approach series director Tetsuya Normura and Square Enix to use him in any sort of marketing (source). This gentlemen's agreement is highly important, as evidenced by the canceled 2002 Kingdom Hearts cartoon series—which was canceled "so as to not jeopardize the relationship between Square Enix & Disney as they began to expand the franchise"—and more recently, the canceled Disney Kingdom Hearts game which is speculated to have been canceled due to Square Enix's disapproval. According to Disney of Japan executive Justin Scarpone, the process for negotiating Sora in Smash would go as such:

• Nintendo approaches Disney for negotiations
• Assuming fan demand exists, approval from Normura and Square Enix would be required
• Disney would then work alongside Nintendo to represent Sora accurately.

Let's go through this process bit by bit and look at some of the moving parts here.

To begin, Nintendo needs to convince Disney. This is where the most error can occur, and where the most variability in speculation exists. On one hand, you have users who have worked with Disney or know people who have worked with Disney such as @NonSpecificGuy and @PlayerOneTyler who express how difficult it is to work with Disney legal for even minor things, but you also have the claim from Scarpone that Disney "isn't restrictive, but particular," examples of Disney cross-promotion in video games, such as:

• Thanos in Fortnite in a time-exclusive game mode (one which seems to be making a return soon)
• Most recently, Wreck-It-Ralph in Fortnite
• Wreck-It-Ralph in Sonic and Sega All-Stars racing

and factors hinting that Disney may not be as soulless as some imagine them to be, such as Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3's exclusivity to Nintendo Switch (when it could make more money being multiplatform) and Normura being the one who decided to not make a Disney fighting game and not Disney. Additionally, Nintendo and Disney seem to be on good terms given the aforementioned exclusivity of Ultimate Alliance 3, the game show that the two made together about the Nintendo Switch, and the fact that Disney XD has streamed events such as the Sm4sh Wii U finals at EVO 2017 and if I recall correctly, the Invitational tournaments. Disney and Nintendo go way back past this, as far as the pre-NES era, and interestingly enough, Nintendo has also published games with Disney characters such as Epic Mickey (in Japan) and Disney's Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse, which makes Disney similar to Dragon Quest in that regard. Overall, negotiations with Disney is a coinflip, but I believe that it's possible, especially if Nintendo and Disney work out a deal outside of Smash (similar to how Ralph ended up in Sega All-Stars racing due to Sonic being in Wreck-It-Ralph).

We've established that fan demand for Sora exists. Getting Normura's approval would be easy given Sakurai's positive relationship with Normura (he even praised Normura and his team for Kingdom Heart's 15th anniversary and expressed that he was a fan of the series), and extending to Square Enix Hashimoto's support of Sora bodes well for Nintendo getting general approval for Sora. While Square Enix has proven themselves difficult to work with, I believe with pressure from inside the company it's likely they'll get approval.

Now, all Sakurai and his team need to do is work alongside Disney to faithfully represent Sora. The question here is whether Disney will give Sakurai the artistic liberty required for him to work, and I'd say that it's 75:25. I could see it going down like how Toei and Shueishi worked alongside Arc System Works for Fighterz where they only made incredibly minor changes, and I trust that if anyone can represent Sora accurately, it's Sakurai; guy's the king of accurate character representation.

Overall, I would give Sora 50/50 chances depending on whether or not Disney can play nice with Nintendo. I would say he's more likely than people think, but I acknowledge that negotiations with him could be difficult enough to consider pursuing another option. However, Sora checks off both boxes (Kingdom Hearts is both an iconic and historic crossover) and his popularity would generate a large amount of sales and press for Smash Bros.

Spoiler: Geno

What's this? tehponycorn arguing for Geno instead of against him? Surely that's impossible! Well, it is, my reputation as a supposed "Geno basher" be damned. This one goes out to my girl Luigi The President - never stop dreaming

Let's start with the most prominent point in Geno's favor: the Sakurai Interview. We all know the one.

Even the interviewer acknowledges Geno's popularity, saying

So, we have a direct statement from Sakurai saying that he wanted Geno in the game for Brawl and Sm4sh, and acknowledgement of his popularity. This is hands down the best point in his favor. Geno, similar to the other two members of the Holy Trinity composed of himself, Ridley, and King K. Rool—the latter two of which were newcomers for Ultimate—has managed to remain a popular speculation pick within the Smash Bros. community since Brawl, and consistently ranks high within fan polls across the core fanbase (the fan polls linked came from Twitter, Reddit, 4chan's /v/, and SourceGaming among other sources). His Mii Costume also got it's own splash screen, making it notable as no other Mii Costumes got that level of preferential treatment, and Spirits of him and Mallow are the only Square Enix spirits to appear besides Cloud, meaning that someone is pushing for his inclusion, or at least acknowledgement, in Smash Bros.

The game he's from, Super Mario RPG for the SNES, isn't a slouch in terms of notoriety. For one, it's revered to this day as a classic SNES RPG alongside Crono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6, and sold 2.14 million copies in it's original run, with rereleases on the Wii and Wii U virtual console and most recently a rerelease on the SNES classic, which has sold over 5 million units (as of March 2018).

Another argument in favor of Geno is how simple it would be to acquire the rights to him. Compared to the messes that are Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, and even Final Fantasy with it's music, all Nintendo would need to do is get the rights for Geno and Super Mario RPG content. The main composer for the game, Yoko Shimomura, is already onboard for Smash Ultimate, facilitating negotiations for music and introducing the possibilities of remixes and making for an easy process to acquire Geno and include him in Smash Bros. Geno would also represent the culmination Nintendo and Square Enix's first golden age, which is incredibly fitting seeing as they're currently entering their second one.

All that being said, there are valid counterarguments for each of the above points.

Geno's popularity cannot be denied due to Sakurai and the Nintendo Dream Interviewer's direct acknowledgement of it. If Sakurai has wanted Geno in since Brawl, however, then why hasn't he been added? Pac-Man, Villager, and Miis, all previously considered characters for Brawl similar to Geno, made the jump to playable status in Smash 4, and even Ridley, a character that Sakurai famously denied, made the jump in Smash Ultimate. So then why hasn't Geno, a character that's been seriously considered for the last two entries, made a similar jump? The most common theory currently is that Square Enix refuses to give Sakurai and co. the license to use Geno as a playable character; why add Geno when another, more relevant character could be added to promote a current series for Square Enix? Remember, Square Enix is all about cross-promotion in their crossover deals, and Geno hasn't had a game release in 20 years.

However, Square Enix did give Sakurai and co. the rights to make a mii costume and include Spirits of the characters in Smash Ultimate, so they're not completely opposed to the prospect of Geno in Smash. I imagine that negotiating for a mii costume and literal .png files is much easier than negotiating for a playable character though. The argument of "would Square Enix grant Nintendo the rights to Geno" is one that is difficult to answer because both sides are valid. It would be incredibly easy to get Geno in Smash Bros. compared to other Square Enix characters, making his inclusion the one with the least risk.

While Geno always performs well in fan polls, fan polls, by nature, are susceptible to Voluntary Response Bias, which skews statistical data when the sample size is composed of self-selected volunteers. People who participate in polls conducted by the core fanbase are more likely to vote for characters widely supported by the core fanbase, i.e. Geno. This is further evidenced by the Ultimate Reddit poll, wherein Sora and Phoenix Wright, two nonstandard picks for the core fanbase, performed very well due to the high number of brigaders for those characters. Within that same fan poll, it was stated that most of Geno's support came from the United States, showing that he isn't nearly as popular abroad as he is here. While fan polls are a great general indicator of the fanbase's wishes, they can't be relied on for hard evidence due to the bias present in them by nature. I would say that given the larger size of the Ultimate Reddit poll, it can be trusted relatively well, but it still doesn't account for the large, silent, casual fanbase, who are equally as valid as the core fanbase. While the core fanbase would be ecstatic about Geno, the casual fanbase would likely not know who he is given the low sales of his game compared to Square Enix's other series (while he did appear on the SNES Classic, it's worth noting that many purchases of the SNES Classic was marketed towards those looking to re-experience the classic SNES games of their youth, and therefore many purchases of the SNES Classic were from people who likely already knew about Geno or bought the console for another game unrelated to him). From this, while Geno's inclusion has the least risk, it also likely has the least reward.

Finally, as a miscellaneous point, multiple other Mii characters got splash screens, such as Abraham Lincoln, Elijah Wood, and Ice T alongside members of the J-Pop idol group AKB48. I also swear that Nikki from Swapnote got her own little trailer as a Mii Fighter, but was unable to find any proof of such. This may be tangental to the prominence of the splash screen for Geno's costume seeing that it's a character costume and not just a mii alongside the fact that Geno is a third party character, but I still believe it's a point worth mentioning that Geno could've just been a marketable face similar to the former characters.

Overall, I give Geno a 50/50 chance depending on whether or not Square Enix and Nintendo want to go the easy route. I personally doubt that they would, but I understand that there's a case to be made for them doing so. Despite my own biases, I acknowledge that both sides have equal weight, and Geno is truly a tossup at this point; he's historic, but it's kind of reach, and he's not iconic, but could maybe have the extenuating circumstances required to make up for that. It's truly difficult to tell.

Spoiler: Final Fantasy Character

I'm condensing every possible Final Fantasy fighter into one for the sake of my own sanity, as there are so many possible fighters here. So, I'm going to be arguing for the series' merits and then listing some characters I believe could be our second Final Fantasy rep if we get one.

Final Fantasy is Square Enix's flagship franchise, selling over 144 million units as of March 2018. That's a little under double that of Dragon Quest, Square Enix's next best selling series. This also shows in the promotion that the series receives, such as the aforementioned Noctis in Tekken, Assassin's Creed in Final Fantasy XV, and Behemoth in Tekken (see Background - Why a Square Enix Character?) alongside, you know, . Sakurai even acknowledged this within the Nintendo Dream Interview by calling it

So, it would be a safe pick for Square Enix to go for another Square Enix series, given the long history the series has with Nintendo and the many iconic characters within the series. However, with that many characters, who would they choose next? I have four ideas:

Bartz Klauser
Protagonist of Final Fantasy V for the SNES, mentioned within the same interview as Cloud by Sakurai, who remarked that a moveset about switching jobs could be "interesting." Sakurai has previously dropped things within interviews that were prominent, such as how Castlevania impacted him similar to the Legend of Zelda and how excited he was to play Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow prior to Simon's reveal.

Onion Knight
Mentioned within the same interview as Bartz, but isn't as likely given that it was Japan-exclusive until 2006.

Terra Branford
A little bit of personal speculation on my part, but given how Final Fantasy 6 is often held as one of the best JRPGs of all time and is prominently on Nintendo console, it would make sense for her to be our second Final Fantasy pick.

Sephiroth
Final Fantasy 7 is already on the table given Cloud's inclusion, so it'd be relatively easy to secure the character rights for him. Sephiroth is one of the most iconic villains in all of gaming history, and anyone who knows about Cloud will know about his age old rival Sephiroth.

Despite it being Square Enix's flagship franchise and having a bevy of characters to choose from, there are barriers to inclusion for a Final Fantasy character. For one, the way that licensing for Final Fantasy is handled scatters the rights to music and different components among the creators of those works. This leads to what could be costly licensing fees for Nintendo, to the point where it's simply not worth to negotiate for music. Additionally, no precedent for a series having two unique characters exists. While this is nothing but a fan rule that could easily be shattered, it's still worth noting, especially when both Bayonetta and Joker—both owned by Sega—got in over another Sonic character.

While I certainly wouldn't discount the inclusion of another Final Fantasy character, I also wouldn't see it as the most likely scenario.

Spoiler: Lara Croft

Tomb Raider is Square Enix's third best selling series, selling 60 million units as of March 2018 and defining the action adventure genre later refined by series such as Uncharted. Tomb Raider is also notable due to its status as a cultural phenomenon, as its spawned three movies, multiple soundtracks, a TV series, and multiple comic series and novelizations over the years. The only other Square Enix series to come close to this is Dragon Quest, and even then it lacks the worldwide appeal that Tomb Raider does. Lara Croft is an iconic character, and you'd be hard pressed to find a top 10 women in video games list without her, with her even winning the world record for "most successful female video game character" within the 2010 Guinness Book of World Records. This was before the series' remake, mind you, meaning that she and her series have only become more successful since then.

There are a couple of barriers for Laura's inclusion, however. For one, she's more associated with Playstation and Xbox than Nintendo. While we do have characters more known for appearances on Playstation systems, being Snake, Cloud, and Joker, each of them have some sort of circumstance behind that, with Snake largely being a favor for a friend, and Cloud and Joker representing Final Fantasy and Shin Megami Tensei, two series with historic ties to Nintendo. Lara Croft lacks either of these circumstances, which is significant. Furthermore, she uses realistic weaponry, such as her signature dual pistols, for most of her attacks, and it is unknown whether this could translate into to Smash similar to Snake or Bayonetta, both of whom were toned down in that regard. Finally, she's a British developed character, which subjects her to the stigma against Western character which seems to be present within the series, with Diddy Kong, King K. Rool, and Dark Samus being the only character created outside of Japan.


While Lara Croft as the Square Enix character is worth being discussed, I would say that she's the dark horse pick of the bunch and is overall unlikely. Keep her in mind though.

Spoiler: Gex

YOU THOUGHT I WAS SERIOUSLY GOING TO ARGUE FOR GEX?!

Joking aside, Gex has appeared on Nintendo consoles before, and his three games have sold a total of 15 million units worldwide, which is nothing to laugh at. I'd say it's more possible than you'd think, but still very unlikely.

Spoiler: Misc.

I acknowledge that the Square Enix character could be someone not previously argued for. So, I'm going to be doing small arguments for other character I believe could be the Square Enix rep, but wouldn't necessarily hold out hopes for.
Crono
Crono almost got his own section, but in the end I couldn't justify that as much as I could justify using him to start this section. Similar to Terra and Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger appears on many, if not every list of the greatest JRPGs of all time. However, he's in a similar place as Geno wherein he hasn't had a recent game in his series for around 20 years, but doesn't have the vocal fanbase to keep him going.

Neku Sakuraba
The World Ends With You is a critically acclaimed cult classic (that's a tongue-twister) that's appeared on the Nintendo DS and iOS/Android alongside the Nintendo Switch. That said, it's only a cult classic and has failed to establish itself as a series. I would say he has good chances as a predominantly Nintendo character, but compared to other, larger Square Enix picks he fails to compare.

Agnès Oblige
Another Square Enix character predominantly on Nintendo systems, Bravely Default 1 & 2 were critically acclaimed JRPGs on the 3DS. However, with a third entry in the series for Nintendo Switch unconfirmed, she lacks the relevance required to make her a notable pick for DLC.

2B
While 2B is a popular Square Enix character and has even made an appearance in Soul Calibur 6 as a playable character, she's never appeared on a Nintendo console and is therefore ineligible for Smash Bros. Sorry @NineS.

Spoiler: Wrap-Up: My Thoughts

If I had to bet on which Square Enix character I think will get in, I'd put all my money on Dragon Quest. Every factor seems to line up in the series' favor, and the most notable counterarguments are made up for and can't really be used against it. If I had to make a chart for it, it would go like this:

Dragon Quest >> Final Fantasy Character > Lara Croft > Geno = Sora = Crono > Neku > Anyone else

While speculation about the Square Enix representative was initially exciting, I've quickly found it to become tiring and monotonous, as speculation continues to circle around the same rehashed topics and every time we get a new piece of information we end up right where we started in terms of what we know. Hopefully this piece clears up some misconceptions and offers some closure to the circuitous arguments that the fanbase has found itself mired in. At this point I would suggest that everyone just sit back and relax, for it seems like similar to Mr. Bone, Mr. Square Enix's wild ride won't be ending anytime soon.

Wow, this is amazing!

 

[Shroob]

Friend wants to know how long it takes for Piranha Plant's code to be emailed on average.

 

[Noipoi]

Here's the post I've been working on and teasing for the past two days, and why I haven't been nearly as active as usual. Let me introduce you to:

THE ULTIMATE heh SQUARE ENIX CHARACTER ARGUMENT​

I'm on a month long break, and to keep my brain from rotting out of my head I've decided to write a series of in-depth speculation posts about current popular Smash Bros. Ultimate Speculation and topics that personally interest me. The idea of a Square Enix character has been prevalent in this speculation cycle since at least October, and has recently hit a climax with seemingly everyone and their mom having a source and going after information about the elusive Square Enix character. While I've argued with many about Sora, Geno, and Dragon Quest, I wanted to take an in-depth look into every potential Square Enix pick and argue the pros and cons of their inclusion, which led to this. This is a long post—likely the longest I've written and will ever write—clocking in at over 6,500 words. So buckle up, and I hope you enjoy the ride!

Spoiler: Background - On third parties

While Sakurai has commented on third parties in the past, he's been quite vague, only saying that the characters must appear on Nintendo consoles, both companies must want them and Sakurai must have some artistic license, the character must carry history with them, and (more recently) implying that third parties must have worldwide popularity

Based off of this, I'm going to argue that a third party representative must be at least one of two things: historic and iconic

So, let's take a brief look at our current third parties and how they fit this criteria (echoes are considered with their original counterpart):
Snake: Metal Gear Solid had it's starts on old-computer systems and even had an NES port, and was launched into fame thanks to the well-known Metal Gear Solid franchise headed by Hideo Kojima. Granted, Snake's inclusion was a favor to a friend, but the fact still stands that Snake falls under both criteria.
Sonic: The mascot of Sega himself once went toe-to-toe with Mario and Nintendo in one of the most iconic showdowns in gaming history, and even now that Sega's a third party Sonic is still one of the larger video game series despite it's mis-steps. He more than checks off both criteria.
Megaman: Up until Megaman 7 and Megaman X4 the Megaman series was exclusive to Nintendo, making Megaman a hallmark of early Nintendo, and he even appeared as a main character on the 1980s NES-centered cartoon Captain N. The series remained active from the NES era up until the 7th generation (Wii U, PS4, Xbox One) in one way or another before teetering off, but the series has recently been rebooted with Megaman 11 and a new Megaman X game likely in the works. He handily stands under both criteria.
Pac-Man: Dude's an arcade legend. Mostly everyone knows who Pac-Man is, or has played it in some way shape or form. He speaks for himself, 'nuff said.
Ryu: Another arcade legend, but Ryu also made a notable jump into the console market and has remained on top of the Fighting Game Genre since then. He checks off both boxes.
Cloud: Final Fantasy is undoubtedly the most popular JRPG series, and until the Nintendo 64 was synonymous with Nintendo. Final Fantasy VII is one of the most popular games of all time, and represents a moment in gaming history when Square Enix gave Nintendo a big old middle finger and moved over to Playstation. An odd piece of history to represent, but historic and iconic nonetheless.
Bayonetta: I'll admit this is a bit of an odd one to argue given that Bayonetta as a series is much more recent than the other third parties and much less popular. That being said, I'll still argue that she's iconic. The original Bayonetta was a cult classic, and when a sequel couldn't be funded, Nintendo swooped in and paid for it themselves, and she represents this weird moment in Nintendo history when Nintendo funded an M rated series for the failing Wii U. Since then, Bayonetta has (oddly enough) become synonymous with Nintendo in the modern era, making her a natural inclusion
Simon Belmont: Similar to Megaman or Final Fantasy, Castlevania is synonymous with classic Nintendo, and Simon Belmont also appeared on Captain N as a main character. The Castlevania franchise was active and renowned up until Konami canned it towards the end of the 7th generation, even spawning it's own genre of games, the Metroidvania, in it and Metroid's styles. He definitely checks off both criteria
Joker: I'm still in shock that they added him. I never thought it would happen, but it did. Persona 5 marks a distinct shift in both the series and the JRPG genre towards worldwide popularity, selling 2 million copies as of December 1st 2017 making it the highest selling Persona 5. Persona 5 also was a game of the year contender alongside Breath of the Wild and won best RPG at the Game Awards. Joker doesn't just represent Persona 5 though, he also represents Shin Megami Tensei, an iconic series with a long history of Nintendo exclusives, according to the press release for his inclusion in Smash Bros:

In doing so, he checks off both criteria with his inclusion.

So, all of our third parties but 1 are historic and iconic, with the 1 left being iconic but also having special circumstances. This is important to consider.

Spoiler: Background - Why a Square Enix Character?

For one, a Square Enix character in Smash Ultimate has to be one of, if not the worst kept secret in Nintendo history. We've known about this since at least October, and the rumblings of it began as early as March when the game was first teased. While many believe that leakers have been "BTFO" with the advent of no one knowing about Joker or his impending reveal at The Game Awards, too many people have heard about this for it NOT to happen at this point. Unless Nintendo and Square Enix are playing 5 Dimensional Chess and spreading misinformation about there being a Square Enix character for ****s and giggles, we're getting one, and the misinformation is to mask who it is. Of course, we have that supposed list of 7 characters and accounts of who made it to negotiations and who didn't, but seeing as Nintendo have shown themselves capable of spreading convincing misinformation (Every insider claimed we were getting Metroid Prime and no Smash at The Game Awards only for us to get Joker) I would throw everything we know about the Square Enix character out of the window. For the sake of this post, I'll be doing just that, and I'll be arguing why we should ALL do that in my next speculation piece.

Even if the leaks are fake, I believe there's reason to believe that we're getting a Square Enix character. For one, Square Enix has been oddly liberal with their IPs as of late, adding Noctis (Final Fantasy XV) into Tekken, Behemoth (Final Fantasy) in Monster Hunter, Assassin's Creed with Final Fantasy XV, and 2B (Nier: Automata) into Soul Calibur 6. When discussing how Noctis got into Tekken, it was stated that it was due to the relationship between Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada and Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata, showing that all it takes is some good blood to get the ball rolling. Fortunately, not only is Sakurai friends with Tetsuya Normura, but Square Enix seems to be in a second golden age with Nintendo, with Octopath Traveler performing better than expected. Prior to its release, Square Enix said that if Octopath Traveler was successful, they would focus on the Switch as a console; staying true to their word Square Enix telling those present at an earnings conference to expect more games like Octopath Traveler and creating a division to specifically focus on making Switch games. Square Enix has every reason to go to Nintendo and get a character of their's in Nintendo; it's win-win, they get exposure for one of their series, and Nintendo gets massive press for Smash Bros.

So then the question becomes: which one?

Spoiler: Erdrick/Dragon Quest Character

This is what inspired me to write this post, given that people have argued for Sora, Geno, and other roster picks citing all of these articles but never Erdrick or another Dragon Quest character. You can thank me later @Calane

Anyways, let's begin with a history lesson. Dragon Quest is the grandfather of the entire RPG genre, with the first game in the series releasing on the NES an entire year and a half before the first Final Fantasy game. It is Square Enix's 2nd best selling series, sitting at 75 million units sold as of a year ago between its main titles and spin-offs, and has a long history with Nintendo, with every main entry in the series being playable on Nintendo consoles (only 2 of 11 main series games weren't on Nintendo consoles initially, being 7 and 8, though they later received 3DS remakes). Nintendo even published Dragon Quest I, VI, VII, VIII, and IX within Western countries. IX is notable as it was a third-party DS game published by Nintendo, something only done for Dragon Quest and Level-5 games in the DS era. Mario and co. have also crossed over with the Dragon Quest bunch multiple times in the Fortune Street series, creating a precedent for a crossover between Nintendo and Dragon Quest. More recently, Dragon Quest XI was one of the first games revealed for the Nintendo Switch, then called the Nintendo NX, and more recently has been announced to be an upgraded version named Dragon Quest XI S (appearing at this year's Jump Festa), which will include voice acting among other new features. Needless to say, the ties between Nintendo and Dragon Quest are VERY strong.

Additionally Dragon Quest's is a cultural phenomenon in Japan. This game series is so large that it's spawned an urban myth on the level of "the average human eats 8 spiders in their sleep per year" about there being a law that Dragon Quest games had to be released on weekends, or that when Dragon Quest games released it was akin to a national holiday. While there is a Dragon Quest Day, it's an unofficial holiday, and in reality, 300 kids were arrested for truancy when Dragon Quest III released and muggings of Dragon Quest games became so widespread that there were hearings about in the Japanese parliament, leading the developers to feel bad about creating a nationwide issue and moving the game's release dates to the weekend. The series is large enough to be a common conversation topic in Japan, and is considered by many within the Japanese gaming industry to be Japan's national game. I **** you not, this series is so big that it caused the entire staff of the HiatusxHiatus HunterxHunter anime to go on hiatus JUST TO PLAY DRAGON QUEST, the series has a world record in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the first game to inspire a ballet, and has an amusement park attraction at Universal Studios Japan (where Nintendo will be soon), that's is how big this series is.

Due to Dragon Quest's Japanese popularity, Sakurai talks about it quite a bit. In the Sakurai x Normura Interview Sakurai mentions game designer Yosuke Saito (who worked on Dragon Quest X) on "a list of game designers born in 1970, [where] there's quite a few big names" alongside Hideki Kamiya, Yoko Taro, and John Carmack, and participated in a roundtable discussion with series creator Yuji Horii and Junichi Masuda of Pokémon fame where they discussed Dragon Quest XI. He's notably advocated for the series twice, first in 2011 when he stood up for Dragon Quest X and expressed that he looks forward to it, and plays Devil's Advocate for the series' difficulty, also directly acknowledging the series' popularity in the process, and went far as finding a workaround to play Dragon Quest Heroes among other games while recovering from his arm injury.. Sakurai also notably lists Dragon Quest III alongside Megaman, Final Fantasy, and Ocarina of Time among others when talking about anniversaries, and COMPARES KIRBY (you know, that one character that HE CREATED AND TREATS LIKE HIS CHILD) TO THE MAIN CHARACTER OF A DRAGON QUEST GAME. Needless to say, Dragon Quest is on Sakurai's radar.

Now, to address the common counterarguments:
The first is the series' western popularity. While the series is certainly historic, and is amazingly popular in Japan, it largely lacks a presence in the West, with 3 million+ out of 4 million copies (more than 75%) of Dragon Quest XI being sold in Japan instead of the West. It's no small secret that Square Enix has been fighting a decades long battle (sometimes alongside Nintendo) to make Dragon Quest popular in the West, and it seems like they're stacking the deck to make Dragon Quest XI the game that breaks through. I believe that Square Enix would be willing to make a gamble on the inclusion of a Dragon Quest character in Smash Bros. in an attempt to boost the series' western popularity. We've seen a good amount people interested in playing Persona with the inclusion of Joker, and "the Smash effect" could similarly boost Dragon Quest's western sales in the future.

Second, the licensing. Many people cite Dragon Quest as a "licensing nightmare" in an attempt to discredit the series' inclusion, but it's not as complicated as you'd think. Dragon Quest as a whole is between four parties: Square Enix (Development, IP ownership), Armor Project (game design), Bird Studio (character design), and Koichi Sugiyama (music). Of those four, two are no problem to deal with, being Square Enix and Armor Project, run by series' director Yuji Horii, both of whom have benefitted from positive relations with Nintendo and would no doubt like to have a Dragon Quest character in Smash to boost the series' Western popularity. That leaves Bird Studio, run by Akira Toriyama, and Koichi Sugiyama as the wildcards in rights negotiation for Dragon Quest content. However, I'm willing to believe that both will cooperate. For one, Akira Toriyama worked closely alongside Arc System Works and Namco Bandai to design Android 21, an original character, for Dragon Ball Fighterz. Namco's involvement in this scenario is notable, as they're also developer Smash Bros. Ultimate, and using their connections developing the Dragon Ball games, could bring Toriyama to the negotiating table if he isn't already there. Additionally, in developing at least Fighterz, the developers worked alongside Toei Animation and Shueisha instead of Toriyama, who made slight changes to the game to fit with the Dragon Ball IP, which could be taken as Toriyama taking a back seat when it comes to adaptations of his work. Given how many Dragon Ball games have been made, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the case Goku, his star character, has been licensed out on a couple of occasions to Fuji TV and is the ambassador of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games, which leaves me with little doubt he'd be willing to work with Nintendo on a Dragon Quest character for Smash Bros (one of the largest crossovers ever) and grant Sakurai the proper artistic license to make a Dragon Quest character a reasonable inclusion. As for Sugiyama? The use of midi music files has been suggested multiple times and could be a viable way to get Dragon Quest into Smash Bros. if needed. If Nintendo and Sakurai decide to go the orchestral route they might run into trouble due to either money or Sugiyama's seeming unwillingness to let us worldwide players have orchestral music (this is overblown, however, as Dragon Quest XI had a midi soundtrack worldwide instead of just in the West), which is the only problem I could viably see happening. However, Nintendo has dealt with this before and will do it again if negotiations go right, at worst we just end up with midis instead of orchestral music and remixes. As for the controversy surrounding Sugiyama, that's a nonissue, given that Square Enix has made a statement about it saying that it doesn't speak to company policy and are moving ahead with Dragon Quest anyways.

If Square Enix has the chance to push Dragon Quest, I could easily see them doing so. I see a Dragon Quest character as one of, if not the likeliest Square Enix character given that everything seems to line up for it. Dragon Quest is the most historic choice, and while not iconic worldwide, has the proper circumstances surrounding it to make up for that fact and justify it's inclusion in Smash.

Spoiler: Sora

Surprise surprise, one of the top Sora supporters here is going to post a lengthy argument for him. While many have counted him out time and time again, there is a solid case to be made for Sora. As mentioned before, I'm not going to address insider information as I believe it should be thrown out the window (I'll elaborate on this in another mini-essay).

Kingdom Hearts is one of Square Enix's more notable series, selling 24 million units worldwide as of November 2017 making it Square Enix's fourth best selling series. While this may initially seem unimpressive, this is across only 15 titles (2 of which were remakes and 5 of which were collections of previous games). Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Tomb Raider, Square Enix's top 3 best selling series, clock in at 54 titles, 29 titles, and 30 titles respectively. For Kingdom Hearts to accomplish that much in such a little amount is impressive. The series is a collaboration between Disney and Square Enix and uses both the Disney and Final Fantasy IPs alongside original characters, such as Sora. By sole merit of possessing Disney content a majority of people will know at least something about Kingdom Hearts. The series is also known for Kingdom Hearts 3, which at one point stood alongside games such as Duke Nukem Forever and Half-Life 3 as a game in a popular series trapped in development hell and became a meme within the gaming community because of this; Kingdom Hearts 3 has been teased since 2005, and ever since it's official announcement it's consistently placed within Japanese Gaming Magazine Famitsu's Weekly Most Wanted Games poll, showing Japanese popularity. On the Western front, Kingdom Hearts 3 won 16 awards out 29 nominations at E3 2018, which I believe is a good sign of Western popularity.

Stemming from Kingdom Heart's popularity, demand for Sora in Smash Bros. exists, and it's a lot larger than some would expect. Going back to the Smash Ballot era, the entire Kingdom Hearts community rallied behind Sora, with prominent Kingdom Hearts youtubers HMK and TheGamersJoint (at 36,000 and 59,000 subscribers respectively at the time) both making videos telling their fans to vote for Sora in the ballot. More recently, fans have been more vocal about their wants, with the king of Sm4sh, Zero, voicing his support for Sora and HMK telling a Disney executive to his face that the fans want Sora in Smash alongside reasons for his inclusion. Sora ranked number 1 on an Italian Smash Bros. Fighter Poll, number 5 for large Japanese magazine Inside's most anticipated Smash Bros. character, and number 5 on the Reddit Smash Ultimate Poll with 12,485 votes. Further evidence for an impressive ballot performance for Sora comes from the fact that in the Reddit Ultimate Poll: "The character with the most brigaders (was) Sora (more than half his voters came from non-reddit referrers). This shows that Kingdom Hearts fans care enough about Sora in Smash to vote on a large, unofficial Reddit poll, which would certainly translate to an official Nintendo ballot. Support for Sora even exists within Square Enix, as evidenced by this deleted tweet from series producer and Square Enix executive Shinji Hashimoto. Needless to say, there's a lot of people who want to see Sora in Smash Bros.

As a character, Sora is in an interesting place. While Sora is owned by Disney for all legal purposes, Disney and Square Enix have a gentlemen's agreement between them where Disney has to approach series director Tetsuya Normura and Square Enix to use him in any sort of marketing (source). This gentlemen's agreement is highly important, as evidenced by the canceled 2002 Kingdom Hearts cartoon series—which was canceled "so as to not jeopardize the relationship between Square Enix & Disney as they began to expand the franchise"—and more recently, the canceled Disney Kingdom Hearts game which is speculated to have been canceled due to Square Enix's disapproval. According to Disney of Japan executive Justin Scarpone, the process for negotiating Sora in Smash would go as such:

• Nintendo approaches Disney for negotiations
• Assuming fan demand exists, approval from Normura and Square Enix would be required
• Disney would then work alongside Nintendo to represent Sora accurately.

Let's go through this process bit by bit and look at some of the moving parts here.

To begin, Nintendo needs to convince Disney. This is where the most error can occur, and where the most variability in speculation exists. On one hand, you have users who have worked with Disney or know people who have worked with Disney such as @NonSpecificGuy and @PlayerOneTyler who express how difficult it is to work with Disney legal for even minor things, but you also have the claim from Scarpone that Disney "isn't restrictive, but particular," examples of Disney cross-promotion in video games, such as:

• Thanos in Fortnite in a time-exclusive game mode (one which seems to be making a return soon)
• Most recently, Wreck-It-Ralph in Fortnite
• Wreck-It-Ralph in Sonic and Sega All-Stars racing

and factors hinting that Disney may not be as soulless as some imagine them to be, such as Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3's exclusivity to Nintendo Switch (when it could make more money being multiplatform) and Normura being the one who decided to not make a Disney fighting game and not Disney. Additionally, Nintendo and Disney seem to be on good terms given the aforementioned exclusivity of Ultimate Alliance 3, the game show that the two made together about the Nintendo Switch, and the fact that Disney XD has streamed events such as the Sm4sh Wii U finals at EVO 2017 and if I recall correctly, the Invitational tournaments. Disney and Nintendo go way back past this, as far as the pre-NES era, and interestingly enough, Nintendo has also published games with Disney characters such as Epic Mickey (in Japan) and Disney's Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse, which makes Disney similar to Dragon Quest in that regard. Overall, negotiations with Disney is a coinflip, but I believe that it's possible, especially if Nintendo and Disney work out a deal outside of Smash (similar to how Ralph ended up in Sega All-Stars racing due to Sonic being in Wreck-It-Ralph).

We've established that fan demand for Sora exists. Getting Normura's approval would be easy given Sakurai's positive relationship with Normura (he even praised Normura and his team for Kingdom Heart's 15th anniversary and expressed that he was a fan of the series), and extending to Square Enix Hashimoto's support of Sora bodes well for Nintendo getting general approval for Sora. While Square Enix has proven themselves difficult to work with, I believe with pressure from inside the company it's likely they'll get approval.

Now, all Sakurai and his team need to do is work alongside Disney to faithfully represent Sora. The question here is whether Disney will give Sakurai the artistic liberty required for him to work, and I'd say that it's 75:25. I could see it going down like how Toei and Shueishi worked alongside Arc System Works for Fighterz where they only made incredibly minor changes, and I trust that if anyone can represent Sora accurately, it's Sakurai; guy's the king of accurate character representation.

Overall, I would give Sora 50/50 chances depending on whether or not Disney can play nice with Nintendo. I would say he's more likely than people think, but I acknowledge that negotiations with him could be difficult enough to consider pursuing another option. However, Sora checks off both boxes (Kingdom Hearts is both an iconic and historic crossover) and his popularity would generate a large amount of sales and press for Smash Bros.

Spoiler: Geno

What's this? tehponycorn arguing for Geno instead of against him? Surely that's impossible! Well, it is, my reputation as a supposed "Geno basher" be damned. This one goes out to my girl Luigi The President - never stop dreaming

Let's start with the most prominent point in Geno's favor: the Sakurai Interview. We all know the one.

Even the interviewer acknowledges Geno's popularity, saying

So, we have a direct statement from Sakurai saying that he wanted Geno in the game for Brawl and Sm4sh, and acknowledgement of his popularity. This is hands down the best point in his favor. Geno, similar to the other two members of the Holy Trinity composed of himself, Ridley, and King K. Rool—the latter two of which were newcomers for Ultimate—has managed to remain a popular speculation pick within the Smash Bros. community since Brawl, and consistently ranks high within fan polls across the core fanbase (the fan polls linked came from Twitter, Reddit, 4chan's /v/, and SourceGaming among other sources). His Mii Costume also got it's own splash screen, making it notable as no other Mii Costumes got that level of preferential treatment, and Spirits of him and Mallow are the only Square Enix spirits to appear besides Cloud, meaning that someone is pushing for his inclusion, or at least acknowledgement, in Smash Bros.

The game he's from, Super Mario RPG for the SNES, isn't a slouch in terms of notoriety. For one, it's revered to this day as a classic SNES RPG alongside Crono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6, and sold 2.14 million copies in it's original run, with rereleases on the Wii and Wii U virtual console and most recently a rerelease on the SNES classic, which has sold over 5 million units (as of March 2018).

Another argument in favor of Geno is how simple it would be to acquire the rights to him. Compared to the messes that are Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, and even Final Fantasy with it's music, all Nintendo would need to do is get the rights for Geno and Super Mario RPG content. The main composer for the game, Yoko Shimomura, is already onboard for Smash Ultimate, facilitating negotiations for music and introducing the possibilities of remixes and making for an easy process to acquire Geno and include him in Smash Bros. Geno would also represent the culmination Nintendo and Square Enix's first golden age, which is incredibly fitting seeing as they're currently entering their second one.

All that being said, there are valid counterarguments for each of the above points.

Geno's popularity cannot be denied due to Sakurai and the Nintendo Dream Interviewer's direct acknowledgement of it. If Sakurai has wanted Geno in since Brawl, however, then why hasn't he been added? Pac-Man, Villager, and Miis, all previously considered characters for Brawl similar to Geno, made the jump to playable status in Smash 4, and even Ridley, a character that Sakurai famously denied, made the jump in Smash Ultimate. So then why hasn't Geno, a character that's been seriously considered for the last two entries, made a similar jump? The most common theory currently is that Square Enix refuses to give Sakurai and co. the license to use Geno as a playable character; why add Geno when another, more relevant character could be added to promote a current series for Square Enix? Remember, Square Enix is all about cross-promotion in their crossover deals, and Geno hasn't had a game release in 20 years.

However, Square Enix did give Sakurai and co. the rights to make a mii costume and include Spirits of the characters in Smash Ultimate, so they're not completely opposed to the prospect of Geno in Smash. I imagine that negotiating for a mii costume and literal .png files is much easier than negotiating for a playable character though. The argument of "would Square Enix grant Nintendo the rights to Geno" is one that is difficult to answer because both sides are valid. It would be incredibly easy to get Geno in Smash Bros. compared to other Square Enix characters, making his inclusion the one with the least risk.

While Geno always performs well in fan polls, fan polls, by nature, are susceptible to Voluntary Response Bias, which skews statistical data when the sample size is composed of self-selected volunteers. People who participate in polls conducted by the core fanbase are more likely to vote for characters widely supported by the core fanbase, i.e. Geno. This is further evidenced by the Ultimate Reddit poll, wherein Sora and Phoenix Wright, two nonstandard picks for the core fanbase, performed very well due to the high number of brigaders for those characters. Within that same fan poll, it was stated that most of Geno's support came from the United States, showing that he isn't nearly as popular abroad as he is here. While fan polls are a great general indicator of the fanbase's wishes, they can't be relied on for hard evidence due to the bias present in them by nature. I would say that given the larger size of the Ultimate Reddit poll, it can be trusted relatively well, but it still doesn't account for the large, silent, casual fanbase, who are equally as valid as the core fanbase. While the core fanbase would be ecstatic about Geno, the casual fanbase would likely not know who he is given the low sales of his game compared to Square Enix's other series (while he did appear on the SNES Classic, it's worth noting that many purchases of the SNES Classic was marketed towards those looking to re-experience the classic SNES games of their youth, and therefore many purchases of the SNES Classic were from people who likely already knew about Geno or bought the console for another game unrelated to him). From this, while Geno's inclusion has the least risk, it also likely has the least reward.

Finally, as a miscellaneous point, multiple other Mii characters got splash screens, such as Abraham Lincoln, Elijah Wood, and Ice T alongside members of the J-Pop idol group AKB48. I also swear that Nikki from Swapnote got her own little trailer as a Mii Fighter, but was unable to find any proof of such. This may be tangental to the prominence of the splash screen for Geno's costume seeing that it's a character costume and not just a mii alongside the fact that Geno is a third party character, but I still believe it's a point worth mentioning that Geno could've just been a marketable face similar to the former characters.

Overall, I give Geno a 50/50 chance depending on whether or not Square Enix and Nintendo want to go the easy route. I personally doubt that they would, but I understand that there's a case to be made for them doing so. Despite my own biases, I acknowledge that both sides have equal weight, and Geno is truly a tossup at this point; he's historic, but it's kind of reach, and he's not iconic, but could maybe have the extenuating circumstances required to make up for that. It's truly difficult to tell.

Spoiler: Final Fantasy Character

I'm condensing every possible Final Fantasy fighter into one for the sake of my own sanity, as there are so many possible fighters here. So, I'm going to be arguing for the series' merits and then listing some characters I believe could be our second Final Fantasy rep if we get one.

Final Fantasy is Square Enix's flagship franchise, selling over 144 million units as of March 2018. That's a little under double that of Dragon Quest, Square Enix's next best selling series. This also shows in the promotion that the series receives, such as the aforementioned Noctis in Tekken, Assassin's Creed in Final Fantasy XV, and Behemoth in Tekken (see Background - Why a Square Enix Character?) alongside, you know, . Sakurai even acknowledged this within the Nintendo Dream Interview by calling it

So, it would be a safe pick for Square Enix to go for another Square Enix series, given the long history the series has with Nintendo and the many iconic characters within the series. However, with that many characters, who would they choose next? I have four ideas:

Bartz Klauser
Protagonist of Final Fantasy V for the SNES, mentioned within the same interview as Cloud by Sakurai, who remarked that a moveset about switching jobs could be "interesting." Sakurai has previously dropped things within interviews that were prominent, such as how Castlevania impacted him similar to the Legend of Zelda and how excited he was to play Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow prior to Simon's reveal.

Onion Knight
Mentioned within the same interview as Bartz, but isn't as likely given that it was Japan-exclusive until 2006.

Terra Branford
A little bit of personal speculation on my part, but given how Final Fantasy 6 is often held as one of the best JRPGs of all time and is prominently on Nintendo console, it would make sense for her to be our second Final Fantasy pick.

Sephiroth
Final Fantasy 7 is already on the table given Cloud's inclusion, so it'd be relatively easy to secure the character rights for him. Sephiroth is one of the most iconic villains in all of gaming history, and anyone who knows about Cloud will know about his age old rival Sephiroth.

Despite it being Square Enix's flagship franchise and having a bevy of characters to choose from, there are barriers to inclusion for a Final Fantasy character. For one, the way that licensing for Final Fantasy is handled scatters the rights to music and different components among the creators of those works. This leads to what could be costly licensing fees for Nintendo, to the point where it's simply not worth to negotiate for music. Additionally, no precedent for a series having two unique characters exists. While this is nothing but a fan rule that could easily be shattered, it's still worth noting, especially when both Bayonetta and Joker—both owned by Sega—got in over another Sonic character.

While I certainly wouldn't discount the inclusion of another Final Fantasy character given that the series is notably historic and iconic, I also wouldn't see it as the most likely scenario.

Spoiler: Lara Croft

Tomb Raider is Square Enix's third best selling series, selling 60 million units as of March 2018 and defining the action adventure genre later refined by series such as Uncharted. Tomb Raider is also notable due to its status as a cultural phenomenon, as its spawned three movies, multiple soundtracks, a TV series, and multiple comic series and novelizations over the years. The only other Square Enix series to come close to this is Dragon Quest, and even then it lacks the worldwide appeal that Tomb Raider does. Lara Croft is an iconic character, and you'd be hard pressed to find a top 10 women in video games list without her, with her even winning the world record for "most successful female video game character" within the 2010 Guinness Book of World Records. This was before the series' remake, mind you, meaning that she and her series have only become more successful since then.

There are a couple of barriers for Laura's inclusion, however. For one, she's more associated with Playstation and Xbox than Nintendo. While we do have characters more known for appearances on Playstation systems, being Snake, Cloud, and Joker, each of them have some sort of circumstance behind that, with Snake largely being a favor for a friend, and Cloud and Joker representing Final Fantasy and Shin Megami Tensei, two series with historic ties to Nintendo. Lara Croft lacks either of these circumstances, which is significant. Furthermore, she uses realistic weaponry, such as her signature dual pistols, for most of her attacks, and it is unknown whether this could translate into to Smash similar to Snake or Bayonetta, both of whom were toned down in that regard. Finally, she's a British developed character, which subjects her to the stigma against Western character which seems to be present within the series, with Diddy Kong, King K. Rool, and Dark Samus being the only character created outside of Japan.


While Lara Croft as the Square Enix character is worth being discussed as she is iconic and historic, I would say that she's the dark horse pick of the bunch and is overall unlikely. Keep her in mind though.

Spoiler: Gex

YOU THOUGHT I WAS SERIOUSLY GOING TO ARGUE FOR GEX?!

Joking aside, Gex has appeared on Nintendo consoles before, and his three games have sold a total of 15 million units worldwide, which is nothing to laugh at. I'd say it's more possible than you'd think, but still very unlikely.

Spoiler: Misc.

I acknowledge that the Square Enix character could be someone not previously argued for. So, I'm going to be doing small arguments for other character I believe could be the Square Enix rep, but wouldn't necessarily hold out hopes for.
Crono
Crono almost got his own section, but in the end I couldn't justify that as much as I could justify using him to start this section. Similar to Terra and Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger appears on many, if not every list of the greatest JRPGs of all time. However, he's in a similar place as Geno wherein he hasn't had a recent game in his series for around 20 years, but doesn't have the vocal fanbase to keep him going.

Neku Sakuraba
The World Ends With You is a critically acclaimed cult classic (that's a tongue-twister) that's appeared on the Nintendo DS and iOS/Android alongside the Nintendo Switch. That said, it's only a cult classic and has failed to establish itself as a series. I would say he has good chances as a predominantly Nintendo character, but compared to other, larger Square Enix picks he fails to compare.

Agnès Oblige
Another Square Enix character predominantly on Nintendo systems, Bravely Default 1 & 2 were critically acclaimed JRPGs on the 3DS. However, with a third entry in the series for Nintendo Switch unconfirmed, she lacks the relevance required to make her a notable pick for DLC.

2B
While 2B is a popular Square Enix character and has even made an appearance in Soul Calibur 6 as a playable character, she's never appeared on a Nintendo console and is therefore ineligible for Smash Bros. Sorry @NineS.

Spoiler: Wrap-Up: My Thoughts

If I had to bet on which Square Enix character I think will get in, I'd put all my money on Dragon Quest. Every factor seems to line up in the series' favor, and the most notable counterarguments are made up for and can't really be used against it. If I had to make a chart for it, it would go like this:

Dragon Quest >> Final Fantasy Character > Lara Croft > Geno = Sora = Crono > Neku > Anyone else

While speculation about the Square Enix representative was initially exciting, I've quickly found it to become tiring and monotonous, as speculation continues to circle around the same rehashed topics and every time we get a new piece of information we end up right where we started in terms of what we know. Hopefully this piece clears up some misconceptions and offers some closure to the circuitous arguments that the fanbase has found itself mired in. At this point I would suggest that everyone just sit back and relax, for it seems like similar to Mr. Bone, Mr. Square Enix's Wild Ride won't be ending anytime soon.

This is the content I log on for.