Official Smash Ultimate Discussion

[G Rank Zinogre]

I'm going to make a somewhat bold claim and say that I don't think Incineroar was in the roster at any point. Absolutely nothing suggests this besides word of mouth with shaky sources. We've no visual evidence of him being there. If the Grinch leak, and thus, the 4chan leak from September 28th are to be believed, he was not there at any point. Finally, and this is merely my gut feeling, but I don't think Sakurai had him or any other new Pokémon on the mind seeing as he was tasked with also fully recreating three Pokémon. And, as Pokémon has the largest amount of unique fighters in the series (Eight unique, one clone/semi-clone), I think it stands to reason that he might not be interested in adding another.

 

[insomniac19]

Honestly, even if I believe the leak is fake I've told myself I would've been happy if it were real. It has characters I'd love to play.

That having been said, if this theory actually holds water, I absolutely do not want it to be real. Sonic was a character I was excited to have in Smash, but he got a rushed moveset that would end up haunting him for much of the series. Banjo being rushed in under even more tense circumstances is even worse. He deserves better than that, and I'm sure Sakurai feels any potential character inclusion would deserve more care and effort.

To be fair--and this isn't meant to bash Sonic by any means--Banjo has huge moveset potential. Everything that Banjo learns in his games could be easily translated to a Smash moveset. Plus, Banjo has been on Sakurai's radar since Melee days, so who's to say Sakurai has never put any thought into a potential moveset until this year?

 

[Noipoi]

If Sakurai really tossed Incineroar for Banjo, he might as well just leave the poor boy in the trash bin and pick up a Gen 8 Pokemon later for promotional purposes.

Unless Incineroar was literally almost finished and it'd be a shame to let him go to waste. In that case dlc would work.

 

[Chrono.]

Can't watch atm, anyone mind giving me a cliffnotes version of the papagenos video?

 

[Mega Bidoof]

Cheetahman confirmed.

I thought this was SiivaGunner and was going to turn into Cornered in the beginning.

 

[Mellowy Yellow]

WE DID IT BOYS:


6500

 

[Radical Bones]

Imagine if today's blog post was Incineroar's reveal trailer lol.

 

[Megadoomer]

I just realized that it's obvious why Toad isn't playable in Smash. All of the fighters in the Smash roster are their own characters. However, Toad is not a character. It is a species. "But aren't Yoshi and the Pokemon just species, too?" First of all, Yoshi is the star of his own franchise. The Yoshi in Smash is directly based off the Yoshi that starred in Yoshi’s Island. As for the Pokemon, each of them are based off specific ones from the anime and movies. The Pikachu and Greninja in Smash are directly based off the ones used by Ash. The Jigglypuff in Smash is based off the same one from the anime that put people to sleep and drew on their faces. The Mewtwo in Smash is based off the antagonist from the first movie. The Squirtle, Ivysaur, and Chairzard in Smash all belong to the Pokemon Trainer who is based off of Red (Leaf for the female version). The Pichu in Smash is based off the one from the Pikachu and Pichu short. The Lucario in Smash is based off the one from the eighth Pokemon movie. Toad cannot be playable because it is not a specific entity. "But Toad was playable in SMB2 (USA)!" The Toad in that game didn’t have any unique abilities. It also had blue spots, which not every Toad has. When people see Yoshi in the roster, they know it is THE Yoshi from his franchise. If a Toad were to be playable, it would need to have a moveset based off of many different kinds of Toads, so nobody would know exactly which game that particular one came from. The only Toad that can really be considered his own character is Captain Toad, but he is already a background NPC in the New Donk City Hall stage. Perhaps Sakurai couldn't figure out how to give a proper moveset to a character that is incapable of jumping?

Even if you don't count Yoshi and all of the Pokemon for whatever reason, there's still Inkling, and Sakurai made it so Sonic could swim despite not being able to do so in his home games (as one of many examples). Those aren't the best arguments for why Toad/Captain Toad shouldn't be playable.

 

[osby]

whats wrong with olimar?

I just don't like how English version of the game calls him just Olimar, when in original it's "Pikmin & Olimar". It makes even less sense considering "Rosalina & Luma" is a thing and they even added "King" in front of Dedede and K.Rool.

 

[Confirmation]

The idea that every single insider got trolled by the Heel Pokemon is wild.

 

[Imadethistoseealeak]

I’m gonna be real here, we’ve hit tinfoil levels...

Going with that...one thing I gotta say is if you compare Papagenos to the other insiders he's doing the same thing. Telling you to trust him without providing additional evidence.

Now I don't blame him! It's what insiders have to do. But it's interesting he comes out as a hero for it because he's agreeing with the leak opposed to the insiders who are considered "smug, elitist, rude etc".

I'm just saying I don't see what Papagenos is doing that other insiders aren't...if someone could clarify I'll take it back, not trying to seem like a jerk or anything!

 

[KamikazePotato]

Whether or not the theory presented in the video ends up being true, more than anything else I just appreciate the presentation. The facts and opinions laid out in a straightforward, easily-digestible fashion. No *wink wink nudge nudge* bull**** that almost everyone else uses.

 

[mjmannella]

Sonic in Brawl was a very late inclusion, so it's possible Banjo could be developed in a short time window. Also, if Banjo was a last minute decision, it might explain why we've not had any new Smash news for a while. Especially if they're saving it all for a final Direct!

Sonic's inclusion also caused Brawl to get delayed significantly.

 

[Rayman001]

Honestly, even if I believe the leak is fake I've told myself I would've been happy if it were real. It has characters I'd love to play.

That having been said, if this theory actually holds water, I absolutely do not want it to be real. Sonic was a character I was excited to have in Smash, but he got a rushed moveset that would end up haunting him for much of the series. Banjo being rushed in under even more tense circumstances is even worse. He deserves better than that, and I'm sure Sakurai feels any potential character inclusion would deserve more care and effort.

How do you know Sonic's moveset was rushed? Couldn't it just as easily been specifications made by SEGA that would've guaranteed this moveset even if Sonic had more time?

 

[Jedisupersonic]

Boxes, Music, Vergeben, The Grinch. This is gonna go down in history as the weirdest hype season for a Smash game ever. And I was part of it!

"And you were there and you!"

 

[FantasyBlade]

My reaction if we get a direct with 7 character reveals

 

[Luigifan18]

I just realized that it's obvious why Toad isn't playable in Smash. All of the fighters in the Smash roster are their own characters. However, Toad is not a character. It is a species. "But aren't Yoshi and the Pokemon just species, too?" First of all, Yoshi is the star of his own franchise. The Yoshi in Smash is directly based off the Yoshi that starred in Yoshi’s Island. As for the Pokemon, each of them are based off specific ones from the anime and movies. The Pikachu and Greninja in Smash are directly based off the ones used by Ash. The Jigglypuff in Smash is based off the same one from the anime that put people to sleep and drew on their faces. The Mewtwo in Smash is based off the antagonist from the first movie. The Squirtle, Ivysaur, and Chairzard in Smash all belong to the Pokemon Trainer who is based off of Red (Leaf for the female version). The Pichu in Smash is based off the one from the Pikachu and Pichu short. The Lucario in Smash is based off the one from the eighth Pokemon movie. Toad cannot be playable because it is not a specific entity. "But Toad was playable in SMB2 (USA)!" The Toad in that game didn’t have any unique abilities. It also had blue spots, which not every Toad has. When people see Yoshi in the roster, they know it is THE Yoshi from his franchise. If a Toad were to be playable, it would need to have a moveset based off of many different kinds of Toads, so nobody would know exactly which game that particular one came from. The only Toad that can really be considered his own character is Captain Toad, but he is already a background NPC in the New Donk City Hall stage. Perhaps Sakurai couldn't figure out how to give a proper moveset to a character that is incapable of jumping?

I'll just show off this video YoshiandToad made...

Incineroar being used to hype up Gen 8 doesn't make any sense. He's a Gen 7 Pokémon, he'd only represent Gen 7.

Greninja represents both Gen 6 and Gen 7. Ash-Greninja became a thing in the games in Gen 7, after all. How do we know Incineroar won't be getting similar treatment?

Indeed. If Banjo's in, I'm 99% certain it was from the 2015 ballot, after Spencer's tweet, and resulted in the Nintendo/Microsoft relationship we are now seeing the reverberations of (collaborations like that, particularly rivals in a console space, must take years to develop behind the scenes). I think his chances are still fairly likely, I'm just not sure it's involved in the Incineroar situation.

But didn't papagenos ' video postulate that Incineroar was taken out for Banjo? That wouldn't make sense to do unless Incineroar had barely been started itself.

Well in only a few days all this chaos will be over, as a matter of fact in the first few seconds of the next direct the world will burn...

Hoo boy. There is definitely going to be salt from a lot of fanbases. Lip, Shantae, Elma, Bandanna Dee, Incineroar, Steve, and Skull Kid's threads are still reeling.

 

[GoeGoe]

my guess would be it has more to do with man power, characters might have had "teams" working on them or something and sakurai took people off that to add banjo. just speculating that of course i have no idea how they run development.

Please. I only have one question. has any of your sources saw, heard, know anything, just anything about The Mystical Ninja Goemon? even if it was a DLC.

 

[Fortnite4Smash]

I'm going to make a somewhat bold claim and say that I don't think Incineroar was in the roster at any point. Absolutely nothing suggests this besides word of mouth with shaky sources. We've no visual evidence of him being there. If the Grinch leak, and thus, the 4chan leak from September 28th are to be believed, he was not there at any point. Finally, and this is merely my gut feeling, but I don't think Sakurai had him or any other new Pokémon on the mind seeing as he was tasked with also fully recreating three Pokémon. And, as Pokémon has the largest amount of unique fighters in the series (Eight unique, one clone/semi-clone), I think it stands to reason that he might not be interested in adding another.

Kind of on the same boat

 

[Ramen Tengoku]

The idea that every single insider got trolled by the Heel Pokemon is wild.

But they might not be...
Let's not jump to conclusions so soon

 

[Senselessbreak]

Honestly Papageno's video was a let down. The whole "Banjo was decided last second" is such a stretch. First of all Vergeben said Minecraft content was coming before E3. If this proves to be the case, it means Microsoft already actively had their hand in the game. Plus we know Mojang was in Japan in October 2015 right after the ballot wrapped up and shortly before the project plan was complete. It was shortly after that Minecraft got its Wii U port announced.....coincidence?

How about the 3DS version, and the Switch version with Xbox cross play? To say that Microsoft only started working with Nintendo after E3 is a hugeeeeee leap. So since we set the basis that Microsoft and Mojang have been working with Nintendo since late 2015, wouldn't it seem strange that Banjo wasn't brought up beforehand in their meetings? Sakurai had the ballot results so clearly he knew Banjo was popular, and Phil Spencer could see it too and was open to his inclusion.

And with the tight schedule to get the game out this holiday, if they were to add Banjo last second, wouldn't it make sense to make him the early DLC character that way hes not rushed and feels unfinished/unpolished? Bowser Jr was released missing animations that were later patched in, but he wasn't nearly as requested as higher priority characters so fans forgave that. Imagine if Megaman and Bowser Jr were swapped. Fans would have been initially annoyed much more so.

If anything Incineroar could have been low priority for a handful of reasons. The games workload itself is already extremely ambitious. But the evidence clearly exists for confidence in his inclusion, so it would seem hes far along. Whether hes in the final game or day 1 DLC, I don't doubt hes on the way.

 

[FallofBrawl]

Incineroar if he gets announced next direct:

 

[Waluigi is not getting in]

Going with that...one thing I gotta say is if you compare Papagenos to the other insiders he's doing the same thing. Telling you to trust him without providing additional evidence.

Now I don't blame him! It's what insiders have to do. But it's interesting he comes out as a hero for it because he's agreeing with the leak opposed to the insiders who are considered "smug, elitist, rude etc".

I'm just saying I don't see what Papagenos is doing that other insiders aren't...if someone could clarify I'll take it back, not trying to seem like a jerk or anything!

Easy. He's actually analyzing the leak and entertaining every possibility which is the opposite of what these insiders are doing.

 

[PsychoIncarnate]

Cheetahman confirmed.

This would unironically be considered a classic if it wasn't in a crap game. imo

 

[osby]

How do you know Sonic's moveset was rushed? Couldn't it just as easily been specifications made by SEGA that would've guaranteed this moveset even if Sonic had more time?

Because his two specials are really similar to each other.

Aside from that, I think his current one is perfectly fine.

 

[SuperSceptile15]

Even if you don't count Yoshi and all of the Pokemon for whatever reason, there's still Inkling, and Sakurai made it so Sonic could swim despite not being able to do so in his home games (as one of many examples). Those aren't the best arguments for why Toad/Captain Toad shouldn't be playable.

The Inklings are avatar characters like Villager, Robin, Miis, and Corrin.

 

[CosmicQuark]

Going with that...one thing I gotta say is if you compare Papagenos to the other insiders he's doing the same thing. Telling you to trust him without providing additional evidence.

Now I don't blame him! It's what insiders have to do. But it's interesting he comes out as a hero for it because he's agreeing with the leak opposed to the insiders who are considered "smug, elitist, rude etc".

I'm just saying I don't see what Papagenos is doing that other insiders aren't...if someone could clarify I'll take it back, not trying to seem like a jerk or anything!

I think the difference, however, is that they come off as smug and elitist by not even entertaining the notion that it might be real, even though the only thing they can confirm in public is something that--doesn't directly contradict the banner. They may know other stuff that leads them to believe it's fake--but we don't know that, and some of us don't just want to take their word for it. So, for all we know, they could be basing their dismissal of the leak on faulty assumptions. Whereas Papagenos is honest, authentic, and shows his thought process, without completely dismissing the other side.

 

[Robertman2]

Anything happen today?

 

[doomedtacox]

Going with that...one thing I gotta say is if you compare Papagenos to the other insiders he's doing the same thing. Telling you to trust him without providing additional evidence.

Now I don't blame him! It's what insiders have to do. But it's interesting he comes out as a hero for it because he's agreeing with the leak opposed to the insiders who are considered "smug, elitist, rude etc".

I'm just saying I don't see what Papagenos is doing that other insiders aren't...if someone could clarify I'll take it back, not trying to seem like a jerk or anything!

Except he's actually explaining his thought process and being open, unlike insiders like Gameexplain.

 

[Pakky]

The idea that every single insider got trolled by the Heel Pokemon is wild.

Is it really a troll if he's in anyway?

Though I wonder if & got top billing at the start of development.

I believe to be so due to the boss in 4 being two shakes away from being a character.

 

[link2702]

Even as someone who doesn't want goku at all i gotta say..

I can’t be the only one who saw that and thought it said Hershey at first right?

You can tell I’m hungry right now...

 

[Rayman001]

Because his two specials are really similar to each other.

Aside from that, I think his current one is perfectly fine.

Again, how do you know SEGA didn't want 2 of his specials to be that similar? Maybe they just didn't accept any other ideas Sakurai made for specials, forcing two of them to be similar.

 

[mjmannella]

Incineroar if he gets announced next direct:

More like this tbh

 

[Polan]

This is a very interesting development papagenos . And you know what....I believe you entirely on the fact of who we're dealing with here: Masahiro Sakurai.

Masahiro Sakurai, the man who developed Melee on a 13 month development period with a destructive lifestyle.
Masahiro Sakurai, the man who delayed Brawl for several months just so he can squeeze an additional 3rd party character at the last second.
And now Masahiro Sakurai, the man who sacrificed a potentially developed Pokemon character so he can make full use of a recent deal with another game industry giant.

No, this isn't generally how game development works. In fact, it's pretty sloppy. But it is how the guy himself works. If he sees an opportunity he goes for it no matter the challenge. So I do believe this is the case, if the leak is real.

the only reason why melee had a hellish development schedule and why sonic was a last-minute addition to the game was because there was no way to add characters post-development. in the era of dlc, it makes no ****ing sense whatsoever to pressure and overwork your team with a last minute character addition when all of their focus and time should be on polishing and finishing the game up. it's just bad planning that is very uncharacteristic of someone like sakurai.

 

[osby]

Is it really a troll if he's in anyway?

Though I wonder if & got top billing at the start of development.

I believe to be so due to the boss in 4 being two shakes away from being a character.

He uses a completely different model, though.

Also, let's not kid ourselves, Inklings were the top priority, regardless of who was the most popular.

 

[Pyra]

But it's interesting he comes out as a hero for it

That's what gets me too.

No offense to anyone, of course, but I feel like a lot of the "anti-insider" crowd really are just saying that cause they're challenging their desires.

I'd go as far as to say I would consider every insider's actions, including people like PapaGenos, under the same filter.

 

[Deleted member]

Compared to the other Third Party characters, Sonic’s moveset is pretty basic.

 

[Chrollo.]

I don’t think that papagenos theory is that bad at face value. I mean, anyone with a brain would know that it’s obvious that MewTwo was supposed to be in the Base game of Smash 4 but got cut again due to being low priority. You don’t reveal DLC before your game releases (Well, releases for the second system it was on) if you weren’t working on it beforehand. I don’t doubt that Incineroar was the last character decided, because with how the vast majority of the roster picks are fan favorites AND the plan to bring every cut character back, a new Pokemon rep based off concept art would probably be the last thing on the development team’s mind. Yeah, Pokemon is Nintendo’s biggest IP, but they were bringing back 4 Pokemon characters who already have success under their name in the first place, so if Incineroar was the last one decided, I can see why.

However, if Incineroar was cut, I don’t believe it was solely because of Banjo. I think it was a combination of things. Again, if Incineroar was the last character decided on, I imagine bringing EVERYONE back plus characters like Ridley and K Rool would be put in front of him. If you assume that the Chadandorf leak was real, then Dixie, Ray MK, and Monster Hunter were also cut, so it’s not out of realm that Incineroar would be cut too but placed on priority for DLC. However, I don’t think Banjo’s rights were JUST decided at E3. I imagine that they had a handshake deal done awhile ago but E3 may have them finalizing it, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have gotten the okay to work on him beforehand. Hand shake deals are still legally binding, it’s just paper work is stronger. If anyone was decided on late I gotta go with Sora since he’s likely to be revealed as DLC at the VGA. I don’t think the supposed Banjo situation is similar to Sonic in Brawl either. IIRC Sonic was apart of the original Roster plan, Sega pulled him out mid development then decided to let Nintendo use him again towards the end of development. So Sonic already had early work done on him beforehand.

Also mind you, Incineroar could’ve gotten a working model and such before being cut if the theory is true. Sal (The Gemastu leaker) outright said that the Chorus Kids had a working model and all before being cut in 4. MewTwo and I think Roy also had a ton of work done on them before being cut from Brawl. I’m not saying I believe the theory, as I don’t think it was as simple as them getting the rights for Banjo late and cutting Incineroar, but I don’t think the theory is that far fetched. However, if Spirits is a story mode, then how important was Incineroar to the story? And will Banjo be in Sonic’s role from SSE?

 

[Deleted member]

Real talk, if the next Direct confirms that the leak is real, and Isaac and Banjo & Kazooie get revealed, I will lose my mind.

 

[osby]

Again, how do you know SEGA didn't want 2 of his specials to be that similar? Maybe they just didn't accept any other ideas Sakurai made for specials, forcing two of them to be similar.

...I guess that's possible but I can't really see it happening.