Wall of text inc.
In all honesty?
I don't even think the arrangement of characters on the side is anything but a placeholder.
I know there's a rhythm of 9 characters to it, but the way it's handled here is, quite frankly, horrible to look at.
Characters appearing completely isolated from BOTH their own series and the newcomer roster of the game they starred in is incredibly jarring.
Of course they are going for the whole chronological order thing, but WHY split that up along the sides? Mario being on the other side than Bowser, Peach, even Luigi?
I think it's way more aesthetically pleasing and likely for them to go in true chronological order from the left side to the right side of the box. We'd have all 35 characters from Brawl on it ( + 5 echoes [Dark Samus, Dark Pit, Daisy, Chrom, Lucina], so we'd either end up at a total of
40 per side/ 80 total (unlikely) or they'd have to split the last few characters to the other side to make it
36 on each side and we'd again...reach
72 total. That's the last evenly divisible number until 39, but we'd have rows of a measly three characters then.
I kinda stand by my earlier Smashdown theory of it all having to be divisible by 4, but this box art requires quite a similar construct - that the roster is evenly divisible by 2, and that this half of the roster is divisible by a big enough number to make aesthetically pleasant rows on the box art. So 72 or 80 remain the most likely. This theory is of course still liable to them for example putting the
OG 8 on the back of the box or similar stuff.
I CAN however see them padding the roster out to 80 via quite a few echoes and about 3-5 more newcomers. I honestly don't believe there are only 2 spots left and i - yes, you may judge me for this - do completey believe Vergeben by now.
My 10 spots would be:
Uniques
1. You know who
2. Geno
3. Incineroar
and if we got more uniques:
4. Skull Kid/Waddle Dee (both have pretty nice evidence pointing to them)
5. Rayman/Banjo/Shantae (3rd party hype reveal)
Echoes
6. Ken
7. Shadow
8. Medusa (Palutena Echo)
9. Dixie
10. Black Shadow
if less uniques:
11. Dry Bowser
if no Skull Kid:
12. Impa/Hilda/Tetra
But now i'm hyping myself up again and the internet is telling me to scrap that, wot do?