The Official Thread For the Sal Romano/Gematsu Leak

[dimensionsword64]

We had four in brawl.

Oh. Well, it does still seem like a small number.

 

[Yoshi-Thomas]

In brawl, if we refer each game as a gen, we had ;

-4 gen 1 unlockables (Luigi, Purin, Ness, Falcon)
-4 gen 2 unlockables (Falco, Marth, Ganondorf, G&W)
-4 gen 3 unlockables (LUCARIO, Toon Link, Wolf, ROB) without counting Snake and Sonic who were known before release.
If following this patern, we will have between 16 and 20 unlockables (if 3rd party characters are too).
We should get at most four more newcomers.

 

[BassForever]

Does anyone have a link to where RosalinaX said "Ness is likely back I dunno about Lucas" or is that what someone else is saying RosalinaX said in a PM?

 

[SeatreasureReturned]

We could replace Mewtwo with someone else, tho.

But what about the Zelda and Metroid hints at the direct ?

Honestly I would be super disappointed with this. My main was cut, and no Newcomers I am interested in. But someone asked if it would hurt overall sales of the game, which I don't think it would. I would still buy it.

 

[NRool]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kb_qCZGU1Y

Thought you lot might appriciate this.
Might wanna turn down the audio for the trailer reveal start

 

[CloneHat]

Final newcomer: Dark Pit.

Decapre as on-disk DLC

 

[C3CC]

WHY THE **** DOES EVERYBODY THINK LUCAS IS GOING TO BE CUT?!?!?! Seriously, people need to remember Lucas almost replaced Ness in Melee but didn't because Mother 3 was delayed. Also let's remember that Mother 3 is pretty popular in Japan (not massively popular as some people claim, but still popular). Sakurai LIKES Lucas and I don't think he'll be going anywhere.

Besides, Lucas > Ness

 

[I_DON'T_KNOW_YOU!]

I'm for the truth.

"Goddess Palutena" is a HUGE red flag against it, but "Mii Fighter" gives it a little more credit. Until we see more characters, ones that weren't shoo-ins there's no possible way to know if it's legit or not.

Wii Fit Trainer was a shoo-in?

 

[Reila]

First: I demanded you prove me wrong 'cause you can't. You have no evidence to the contrary 'cept a crappy concept art picture from Ruby/Sapphire, and that's hardly ironclad stuff.

Second: I made a claim, all the evidence I posted points to it being right. You voluntarily chose to ignore it.

I'm sorry, but beyond a shadow of a doubt, they knew what Greninja was, what he was called and that they wanted him in Smash when you people were assuming the guy had 'faulty data' or 'old information'. There's no proof this is the case anymore, and I'll show you why.

Here's the Greninja line's concept art.

Goodness me, this looks like something that took months upon months to make and not the cluster**** that was your stupid Latiken concept art. It didn't take months to make. That was drawn up in about a half a day, tops. The funny thing is that I gave legitimate proof of MY claims, but you just kinda rationalized it. "Oh no, he made an assumption on the date!" Well, no duh, like I said, I'm not a Pokemon or Smash developer, I can only make assumptions based on the information I have because we don't have extremely accurate dates. Last I checked, though, it doesn't take a WHOLE YEAR to finalize concept art for video games. Let's do some of that 'analytical, logical' thinking with all the evidence we have.

X/Y Idea: June 2010
X/Y Conceptualized (Start): September 2010
Kid Icarus Uprising (Release): March 22nd, 2012
X/Y Release: October 12th, 2013

When did they finalize everything for X and Y? No-one knows, but I'm willing to eat a hat if it took them longer than 18 months to finalize the Pokemon concept art. Sakurai already stated that he wouldn't be working on Smash until Kid Icarus Uprising was done, so chances are he was starting work on Smash as early as January/February 2012, but who actually knows? At any rate, let's look at the evidence. Thanks to Sakurai, we now know that:

* They knew they wanted a Pokemon from X and Y on the roster from the beginning.

Fair enough, it's not Smash without at least one new Pokemon, right? Might as well take from the game that's being developed right now.

* They didn't want to wait for Pokemon X/Y to release to decide.

Smash has gotta get done, they can't wait for X and Y to release to start putting things into stone.

* They look at concept art, decide upon Greninja.

If X/Y Pokemon was a placeholder, it wasn't a placeholder for particularly long. These guys had access to Pokemon concept art to decide early on what they wanted, and likely at Gamefreak's behest (we already know Gamefreak is more involved with the process of character selection with their IP than others are), they probably settled on Greninja very quickly. I doubt they went through every single piece of concept art, and I'm willing to guarantee that they went to the starters first for ideas.

* Greninja's popularity was a happy coincidence.

Seems like Gamefreak and Sakurai's judgment were pretty good. People love their frogs.



Clearly you can because it EXISTS. And I JUST SHOWED IT TO YOU.



Huh. Interesting thing to say after saying:



Yeah, it does bring a few things to question, doesn't it?

Look, I'm not trying to spout out things as fact, because at the end of the day, all we have are what we're given and dates we can compare. Sakurai's not going to come out and give us all the information we need to debunk the leak 'cause, honestly, it's impossible to debunk at this juncture. I'm taking the information and evidence I've been given and making something of it. Again, you guys choose to ignore it and rationalize it, but that's your prerogative.

The guy didn't want to keep it a surprise because he names everything else by name.

The guy clearly has access to some kind of roster-related information, to turn around and correct his first leak with the revelation of 'Mii Fighters'. I'd say chances are, he probably works at E3 or with Nintendo for E3, maybe marketing/public relations. Makes sense, since he never predicts anything outside of what has shown up at E3 so far and nothing else.

If the guy had access to the roster, he should have known Rosalina was coming, and Greninja was the name of the Pokemon. Since he doesn't mention either of them by name, that lends credence to the E3 theory, as both are characters mentioned outside of E3 that he completely misses.

So, to end:

* The guy is either upper/middle-management at Los Angeles Convention Center, OR public relations/marketing for Nintendo of America assigned to E3-related tasks.

* The guy never once accurately notes characters announced outside of E3. Notable exception is Little Mac, but..

* Assuming the first is fact, that means they DID legitimately plan to reveal the entire first leak at E3 '13, but didn't for whatever reason, maybe to draw information out or save it for next year.

* Chances are, since past behavior is a great indicator of future behavior, all six characters won't be announced at this E3, either. What we have right now is likely what we're going to get.

* This means the guy never had any legitimate access to the entire roster, which explains why there's no mention of Rosalina and no accurate mention of Greninja.

* Him knowing about Chrom, Shulk and Chorus Men likely means that they knew what they might want to show at E3 as far back as the Smash Direct. Chances are, they probably had the trailers ready as far back as then.

So, thanks to the Greninja information Sakurai gave us, we can extrapolate that:

tl;dr: The guy never had access to the full roster to begin with, so there's more characters to come than has been leaked, because there's no E3 between now and 3DS/Wii U version's release date. The Gematsu Leak's characters do NOT make up the final roster, which is excellent news.

And here you thought I was trying to debunk the leak. Just goes to show the lengths some of you guys go to ignore evidence, huh?

I commend you for this amazing and well-thought post. It is probably the best post I have read in this thread so far.

 

[Dairz]

WHY THE **** DOES EVERYBODY THINK LUCAS IS GOING TO BE CUT?!?!?! Seriously, people need to remember Lucas almost replaced Ness in Melee but didn't because Mother 3 was delayed. Also let's remember that Mother 3 is pretty popular in Japan (not massively popular as some people claim, but still popular). Sakurai LIKES Lucas and I don't think he'll be going anywhere.

Besides, Lucas > Ness

Theres no evidence that Sakurai likes Lucas more than Ness. All I see is that Sakurai was going to promote Mother 3 with Lucas, but since it was delayed decided against it.

 

[Ryan.]

I really hope Lucas isn't cut, he was my third favorite/main in Brawl and I really think he is different enough from Ness to be included.

So now all we need from this leak though is Chorus Men, Shulk, and Chrom. All three I would find unlikely (Well, besides Chrom, I still think he may have a shot), but this leak is just getting more and more believable to me.

 

[I_DON'T_KNOW_YOU!]

Nah, dude, see, the guy never mentioned that Pac-Man is based off of his Pac-Man World form and that he turns into Retro Pac-Man. Not to mention, he never mentions Game & Watch coming back, so there's definitely something wrong here. Plus, anyone could have guessed Pac-Man, why's anyone surprised here? Plus, he never mentions you can't use Mii Fighter online, either. Just, enormous holes in the leak, guys. The Gematsu Leak is a huge farce and you guys are totally buying into it. Seriously, why do you guys cling to it? Wake up, sheeple.

Just foolin'. I'm honestly more upset about not being able to see the reveal trailer than me potentially being wrong. The more I hear about Pac-Man the more interested I am to see him in action. Pretty hype.

Great day to be a Smash fan.

This reads like self-deprecating humor.

 

[thisguyisnotcool]

What if RosalinaX is Sal's leaker? O.O

 

[False Sense]

First: I demanded you prove me wrong 'cause you can't. You have no evidence to the contrary 'cept a crappy concept art picture from Ruby/Sapphire, and that's hardly ironclad stuff.

Second: I made a claim, all the evidence I posted points to it being right. You voluntarily chose to ignore it.

I'm sorry, but beyond a shadow of a doubt, they knew what Greninja was, what he was called and that they wanted him in Smash when you people were assuming the guy had 'faulty data' or 'old information'. There's no proof this is the case anymore, and I'll show you why.

Here's the Greninja line's concept art.

Goodness me, this looks like something that took months upon months to make and not the cluster**** that was your stupid Latiken concept art. It didn't take months to make. That was drawn up in about a half a day, tops. The funny thing is that I gave legitimate proof of MY claims, but you just kinda rationalized it. "Oh no, he made an assumption on the date!" Well, no duh, like I said, I'm not a Pokemon or Smash developer, I can only make assumptions based on the information I have because we don't have extremely accurate dates. Last I checked, though, it doesn't take a WHOLE YEAR to finalize concept art for video games. Let's do some of that 'analytical, logical' thinking with all the evidence we have.

X/Y Idea: June 2010
X/Y Conceptualized (Start): September 2010
Kid Icarus Uprising (Release): March 22nd, 2012
X/Y Release: October 12th, 2013

When did they finalize everything for X and Y? No-one knows, but I'm willing to eat a hat if it took them longer than 18 months to finalize the Pokemon concept art. Sakurai already stated that he wouldn't be working on Smash until Kid Icarus Uprising was done, so chances are he was starting work on Smash as early as January/February 2012, but who actually knows? At any rate, let's look at the evidence. Thanks to Sakurai, we now know that:

* They knew they wanted a Pokemon from X and Y on the roster from the beginning.

Fair enough, it's not Smash without at least one new Pokemon, right? Might as well take from the game that's being developed right now.

* They didn't want to wait for Pokemon X/Y to release to decide.

Smash has gotta get done, they can't wait for X and Y to release to start putting things into stone.

* They look at concept art, decide upon Greninja.

If X/Y Pokemon was a placeholder, it wasn't a placeholder for particularly long. These guys had access to Pokemon concept art to decide early on what they wanted, and likely at Gamefreak's behest (we already know Gamefreak is more involved with the process of character selection with their IP than others are), they probably settled on Greninja very quickly. I doubt they went through every single piece of concept art, and I'm willing to guarantee that they went to the starters first for ideas.

* Greninja's popularity was a happy coincidence.

Seems like Gamefreak and Sakurai's judgment were pretty good. People love their frogs.



Clearly you can because it EXISTS. And I JUST SHOWED IT TO YOU.



Huh. Interesting thing to say after saying:



Yeah, it does bring a few things to question, doesn't it?

Look, I'm not trying to spout out things as fact, because at the end of the day, all we have are what we're given and dates we can compare. Sakurai's not going to come out and give us all the information we need to debunk the leak 'cause, honestly, it's impossible to debunk at this juncture. I'm taking the information and evidence I've been given and making something of it. Again, you guys choose to ignore it and rationalize it, but that's your prerogative.

The guy didn't want to keep it a surprise because he names everything else by name.

The guy clearly has access to some kind of roster-related information, to turn around and correct his first leak with the revelation of 'Mii Fighters'. I'd say chances are, he probably works at E3 or with Nintendo for E3, maybe marketing/public relations. Makes sense, since he never predicts anything outside of what has shown up at E3 so far and nothing else.

If the guy had access to the roster, he should have known Rosalina was coming, and Greninja was the name of the Pokemon. Since he doesn't mention either of them by name, that lends credence to the E3 theory, as both are characters mentioned outside of E3 that he completely misses.

So, to end:

* The guy is either upper/middle-management at Los Angeles Convention Center, OR public relations/marketing for Nintendo of America assigned to E3-related tasks.

* The guy never once accurately notes characters announced outside of E3. Notable exception is Little Mac, but..

* Assuming the first is fact, that means they DID legitimately plan to reveal the entire first leak at E3 '13, but didn't for whatever reason, maybe to draw information out or save it for next year.

* Chances are, since past behavior is a great indicator of future behavior, all six characters won't be announced at this E3, either. What we have right now is likely what we're going to get.

* This means the guy never had any legitimate access to the entire roster, which explains why there's no mention of Rosalina and no accurate mention of Greninja.

* Him knowing about Chrom, Shulk and Chorus Men likely means that they knew what they might want to show at E3 as far back as the Smash Direct. Chances are, they probably had the trailers ready as far back as then.

So, thanks to the Greninja information Sakurai gave us, we can extrapolate that:

tl;dr: The guy never had access to the full roster to begin with, so there's more characters to come than has been leaked, because there's no E3 between now and 3DS/Wii U version's release date. The Gematsu Leak's characters do NOT make up the final roster, which is excellent news.

And here you thought I was trying to debunk the leak. Just goes to show the lengths some of you guys go to ignore evidence, huh?

So, here's my question. If the leaker is, in fact, an E3 worker and not someone working on the game itself, what is there to suggest he got any information outside of what was revealed at E3? I mean, him having E3 information would explain things like Wii Fit Trainer and Mii Fighters, but he hasn't exactly proven himself outside of those E3 reveals. He got Little Mac and Palutena right, but then again, most of us did too. There's also the Pokemon from X and Y thing, which I guess can be taken either way. He hasn't gotten anything that significantly boosts his credibility outside of the E3 reveals. So assuming your E3 theory is correct, how do we know for sure that all the other "leaked" information is accurate?

 

[Chauzu]

Remember the days when we all agreed that Chorus Men and Chorus Men only was what would confirm this leak? Yeah, it was only like 24 hours ago but it feels like forever.

We got three of the most likely newcomers at E3 handed to us, nothing to make a big thing about. The 1st Sal leak is most likely true but jury's out on the 2nd one.

 

[Rocket Raccoon]

Remember the days when we all agreed that Chorus Men and Chorus Men only was what would confirm this leak? Yeah, it was only like 24 hours ago but it feels like forever.

We got three of the most likely newcomers at E3 handed to us, nothing to make a big thing about. The 1st Sal leak is most likely true but jury's out on the 2nd one.

When was Palutena likely? In my book if KI were to get another character it'd be Magnus or Pittoo.

 

[C3CC]

Theres no evidence that Sakurai likes Lucas more than Ness. All I see is that Sakurai was going to promote Mother 3 with Lucas, but since it was delayed decided against it.

I never said that Sakurai likes Lucas more than Ness, I just said he likes him. After Ike being revealed, I'm sure Lucas will be back too.

 

[Chauzu]

When was Palutena likely? In my book if KI were to get another character it'd be Magnus or Pittoo.

Just to mention a few non-Gematsu reasons.

1) Sakurai revived Kid Icarus and now makes the new Smash.

2) Kid Icarus as a franchise got a lot more recognition this time, even appearing in the first Smash 4 trailer among the big franchises (without being a newcomer).

3) Palutena leak. Not sure if it still holds valid but.

4) Smash Direct Palutena Troll. That basically confirmed her in my books and since she did get confirmed I am sticking with that opinion.

 

[ChunkyBeef]

So assuming your E3 theory is correct, how do we know for sure that all the other "leaked" information is accurate?

Thing is, we don't know if it's accurate. It's pretty much the only thing about the leak left that we can scrutinize at this point. I don't think we have enough information all around to really say for sure. It would stand to reason, I'd imagine, that if he's in marketing/public relations, he'd probably be aware of there being DLC characters, especially if they wind up being tied to those NFC figurines. Since no-one here really has any idea how Nintendo functions internally, we can only guess.

So it's anyone's guess, really.

 

[Reality_Ciak]

I read someone say that if they haven't decided whether to cut either Lucas or Ness therefore the roster wouldn't be finalized, but couldn't the intended roster be finalized and they are making cuts due to issues? If they chose all the characters at the beginning, chances are they drop a few along the way. Idk. I just want at least one more big time hype character to be revealed at E3...

 

[samsparta21]

I read someone say that if they haven't decided whether to cut either Lucas or Ness therefore the roster wouldn't be finalized, but couldn't the intended roster be finalized and they are making cuts due to issues? If they chose all the characters at the beginning, chances are they drop a few along the way. Idk. I just want at least one more big time hype character to be revealed at E3...

We got 3 last E3, we got 3 this E3. I'm not hoping for any more.

 

[Reality_Ciak]

We got 3 last E3, we got 3 this E3. I'm not hoping for any more.

I guess I can see that logic. Last E3 was the reveal, and this E3 was potentially the last big event before the 3DS release. The 3DS date being later than expected definitely gives them room to spread the hype. Giving us more characters now might give the hype too much time to die off.

 

[ScottyWK]

In brawl, if we refer each game as a gen, we had ;

-4 gen 1 unlockables (Luigi, Purin, Ness, Falcon)
-4 gen 2 unlockables (Falco, Marth, Ganondorf, G&W)
-4 gen 3 unlockables (LUCARIO, Toon Link, Wolf, ROB) without counting Snake and Sonic who were known before release.
If following this patern, we will have between 16 and 20 unlockables (if 3rd party characters are too).
We should get at most four more newcomers.

These patterns aren't likely to continue. Sakurai mentioned awhile back that there probably won't be as many newcomers this time around around.

@ ChunkyBeef The only problem with the theory that the leaker is an E3/Public Relations guy is his apparent inside knowledge of the Ness vs Lucas debate. That has nothing to do with E3 or public announcements Plus, if he was in public relations for Nintendo, he would have known about the ZSS/Sheik stand-alone reveals from the Direct.

If he worked for the LACC, he wouldn't know about the Ness/Lucas debate either, or specific trailers for that matter. LACC employees, even higher-ups, would only need to know timelines (like, Nintendo's presentation is 45 minutes and 38 seconds) so that they can have the appropriate people in the appropriate places. The only time they'd need to know anything specifically would be for something like Battlefield (the game), when they shot off smoke in the room. They would need to know "at 30:35-ish, so-and-so is going to announce Battlefield is playable now, and we want smoke shot off. So be ready." Logistics require deeper knowledge, but since Smash never really did anything of this caliber, they don't need to know, or care for that matter, that Pac-Man is being revealed.

The ONLY exception to this rule may be WiiFit Trainer, since her trailer came stand-alone much later. So maybe he had a disc or file to play that said "Wii Fit Trainer: Smash Trailer" or something. But still, he wouldn't need to know of Palutena's or Mii's or anything like that.

Regardless, Nintendo didn't have anything big and flashy, so it's improbable that Sal's leaker is an LACC worker.

So where does that leave us? I think Sal's source is even higher up, especially since Sal seems to have connections in other areas of the industry. But then you'll ask: "Why not know about Rosalina? Why was he left out?"

For whatever reason (one we cannot guess), the leaker is feeding Sal information in spurts. E3 last year, the Smash Direct, and E3 this year. Rosalina had already been announced on the website in either December or January, so there was no point to "release" Rosalina in the April Direct leak.

Yes, there's evidence that the leaker may be tied to E3 somehow. But someone tied to simply E3 doesn't know of the Lucas/Ness debate, unless they are also higher up in the company. So in conclusion...

this very well could be the final roster. I wouldn't be so sure that there is more to come. Possible, sure. But not necessarily probable.

 

[Deleted member]

He didn't say "Participating at E3", just "Participating". That shouldn't count against anything, unless it had been directly stated.

The "Goddess Palutena" thing is true, but nonetheless, she showed up. And about ****ing time, too.

Ah, my mistake.
I misread the post. I'll edit that accordingly to the list.

 

[ChunkyBeef]

@ ChunkyBeef The only problem with the theory that the leaker is an E3/Public Relations guy is his apparent inside knowledge of the Ness vs Lucas debate. That has nothing to do with E3 or public announcements Plus, if he was in public relations for Nintendo, he would have known about the ZSS/Sheik stand-alone reveals from the Direct.

Thing is, we don't know if that information is accurate. I think someone pointed out that we don't really have any proof of any other things he's said besides the roster has actually been accurate, but hey, maybe someone can tell me otherwise. So I just kinda assumed it'd be bullcrap filler. Really, who knows?

The rest of your arguments are definitely valid, though.

So where does that leave us? I think Sal's source is even higher up, especially since Sal seems to have connections in other areas of the industry. But then you'll ask: "Why not know about Rosalina? Why was he left out?"

Can't even fathom how high up they'd have to be to have access to information like Ness/Lucas internal debates without worrying they'd get caught. That sort of information would narrow things down real fast if it were actually accurate, besides a number of other things.

this very well could be the final roster. I wouldn't be so sure that there is more to come. Possible, sure. But not necessarily probable.

I'm willing to not throw anything out. I just preferred to be brightly optimistic about it. Hope for the best, y'know?

 

[ScottyWK]

Thing is, we don't know if that information is accurate. I think someone pointed out that we don't really have any proof of any other things he's said besides the roster has actually been accurate, but hey, maybe someone can tell me otherwise. So I just kinda assumed it'd be bullcrap filler. Really, who knows?

The rest of your arguments are definitely valid, though.

Well, Lucas potentially being cut IS roster information, so there's that (although he didn't seem so sure). The fact that there was a debate could always be heard via word of mouth in the building. Word of mouth travels really fast. The source doesn't necessarily have to be incredibly high up, but it could be someone a little lower on the totem pole that is friends with someone higher-up. Example:

12:00 PM, lunchtime, a few employees decide to go to Chipotle for lunch.

"How's the 4th floor going?"
"Nothing too exciting. Same ol s***, just processing this that and the other, sending e-mails to confirm venues for this, etc. How's the 10th floor?"
"Dude we had this huge argument today...the room was totally split. Can't decide on Ness or Lucas...valid points to both side."

All it takes is for a brief little conversation like that to happen, and the lower-totem-pole guy can throw that in his leak.

...but this is just baseless speculation. So I digress. Also, nothing wrong with optimism. At some point, things start clearing up more and more, and this leak is becoming far less cloudy by the reveal.

 

[ChunkyBeef]

...but this is just baseless speculation. So I digress. Also, nothing wrong with optimism. At some point, things start clearing up more and more, and this leak is becoming far less cloudy by the reveal.

Yeah, I get where you're coming from. Still, the guy's been 100% accurate so far with newcomers. Veterans haven't really come up, as has been pointed out before, so I just assumed it was filler. Either way, as long as one or the other gets in the game I'm pretty content.

 

[HugoBoss]

My Take: While the leak still holds a lot of weight now that predictable but still surprising newcomers like Palutena, Mii Fighters, and Pac Man have been revealed, I shall still remain skeptical until the launch date. Mainly to keep my hype but also because of some of the contradictions. The Lucas VS Ness debate leak makes little sense, the roster should have been already finalized a long time ago. Also, Sal seemed to never leak Rosalina, even if the leak was only about newcomers, he seemed to miss one. My two cents, and I don't need gigantic walls of text trying to "win the argument" or very sarcastic and trollish posts replying to make me say otherwise. I couldn't care less about this leak anyways. It's still a "leak", I will personally wait until everything is revealed and confirmed on the site before immediately jumping on the bandwagon and I will not doubt and ignore that this leak does hold some weight and seems to be very accurate.

Long Story Short: Mostly indifferent to this leak. Could be real, I personally somewhat think otherwise.

 

[CaptainCrisb]

So I heard the latest Sal Romano deconfirmed Squirtle, Ivysaur, Lucas, and Snake? I only remember Lucas... can someone fill me in here?

 

[TheAnvil]

First: I demanded you prove me wrong 'cause you can't. You have no evidence to the contrary 'cept a crappy concept art picture from Ruby/Sapphire, and that's hardly ironclad stuff.

Second: I made a claim, all the evidence I posted points to it being right. You voluntarily chose to ignore it.

I'm sorry, but beyond a shadow of a doubt, they knew what Greninja was, what he was called and that they wanted him in Smash when you people were assuming the guy had 'faulty data' or 'old information'. There's no proof this is the case anymore, and I'll show you why.

Here's the Greninja line's concept art.

Goodness me, this looks like something that took months upon months to make and not the cluster**** that was your stupid Latiken concept art. It didn't take months to make. That was drawn up in about a half a day, tops. The funny thing is that I gave legitimate proof of MY claims, but you just kinda rationalized it. "Oh no, he made an assumption on the date!" Well, no duh, like I said, I'm not a Pokemon or Smash developer, I can only make assumptions based on the information I have because we don't have extremely accurate dates. Last I checked, though, it doesn't take a WHOLE YEAR to finalize concept art for video games. Let's do some of that 'analytical, logical' thinking with all the evidence we have.

X/Y Idea: June 2010
X/Y Conceptualized (Start): September 2010
Kid Icarus Uprising (Release): March 22nd, 2012
X/Y Release: October 12th, 2013

When did they finalize everything for X and Y? No-one knows, but I'm willing to eat a hat if it took them longer than 18 months to finalize the Pokemon concept art. Sakurai already stated that he wouldn't be working on Smash until Kid Icarus Uprising was done, so chances are he was starting work on Smash as early as January/February 2012, but who actually knows? At any rate, let's look at the evidence. Thanks to Sakurai, we now know that:

* They knew they wanted a Pokemon from X and Y on the roster from the beginning.

Fair enough, it's not Smash without at least one new Pokemon, right? Might as well take from the game that's being developed right now.

* They didn't want to wait for Pokemon X/Y to release to decide.

Smash has gotta get done, they can't wait for X and Y to release to start putting things into stone.

* They look at concept art, decide upon Greninja.

If X/Y Pokemon was a placeholder, it wasn't a placeholder for particularly long. These guys had access to Pokemon concept art to decide early on what they wanted, and likely at Gamefreak's behest (we already know Gamefreak is more involved with the process of character selection with their IP than others are), they probably settled on Greninja very quickly. I doubt they went through every single piece of concept art, and I'm willing to guarantee that they went to the starters first for ideas.

* Greninja's popularity was a happy coincidence.

Seems like Gamefreak and Sakurai's judgment were pretty good. People love their frogs.



Clearly you can because it EXISTS. And I JUST SHOWED IT TO YOU.



Huh. Interesting thing to say after saying:



Yeah, it does bring a few things to question, doesn't it?

Look, I'm not trying to spout out things as fact, because at the end of the day, all we have are what we're given and dates we can compare. Sakurai's not going to come out and give us all the information we need to debunk the leak 'cause, honestly, it's impossible to debunk at this juncture. I'm taking the information and evidence I've been given and making something of it. Again, you guys choose to ignore it and rationalize it, but that's your prerogative.

The guy didn't want to keep it a surprise because he names everything else by name.

The guy clearly has access to some kind of roster-related information, to turn around and correct his first leak with the revelation of 'Mii Fighters'. I'd say chances are, he probably works at E3 or with Nintendo for E3, maybe marketing/public relations. Makes sense, since he never predicts anything outside of what has shown up at E3 so far and nothing else.

If the guy had access to the roster, he should have known Rosalina was coming, and Greninja was the name of the Pokemon. Since he doesn't mention either of them by name, that lends credence to the E3 theory, as both are characters mentioned outside of E3 that he completely misses.

So, to end:

* The guy is either upper/middle-management at Los Angeles Convention Center, OR public relations/marketing for Nintendo of America assigned to E3-related tasks.

* The guy never once accurately notes characters announced outside of E3. Notable exception is Little Mac, but..

* Assuming the first is fact, that means they DID legitimately plan to reveal the entire first leak at E3 '13, but didn't for whatever reason, maybe to draw information out or save it for next year.

* Chances are, since past behavior is a great indicator of future behavior, all six characters won't be announced at this E3, either. What we have right now is likely what we're going to get.

* This means the guy never had any legitimate access to the entire roster, which explains why there's no mention of Rosalina and no accurate mention of Greninja.

* Him knowing about Chrom, Shulk and Chorus Men likely means that they knew what they might want to show at E3 as far back as the Smash Direct. Chances are, they probably had the trailers ready as far back as then.

So, thanks to the Greninja information Sakurai gave us, we can extrapolate that:

tl;dr: The guy never had access to the full roster to begin with, so there's more characters to come than has been leaked, because there's no E3 between now and 3DS/Wii U version's release date. The Gematsu Leak's characters do NOT make up the final roster, which is excellent news.

And here you thought I was trying to debunk the leak. Just goes to show the lengths some of you guys go to ignore evidence, huh?

****ing A post.

We also need to remember that even legitimate leakers have given out false or vague infomation after the real information that they know has dried up (PSABR guy, Lupinko both spring to mind). Supposing the guy works some role at E3, and had access to that Smash information there, there's nothing saying that he didn't take educated guesses at future newcomers. He's clearly a fan, so he'd be in the know about who exactly is wanted/requested/expected (Pac Man, Little Mac, Mii, Palutena in this instance). Especially as Little Mac's trailer gives us reason to believe that he wouldn't have been shown at E3 (seriously, everyone knew that Mac, Pac, Mii, Palutena were going to be included).

The whole Lucas/Ness thing is ridiculous because; the game is going gold in TWO months as it's out in September in Japan. Which can only mean that the roster was finalized MANY, MANY months ago. Therefore they would not be discussing which characters they'd be cutting at this point in time. The end part of development for games is ALWAYS dedicated to bug testing and balancing tweaks in fighting games. This would give credit to the theory that the leaker, or Sal just tacked on extra info that we have no way of disproving until the game releases. And would explain his somewhat lucky guess of Wii Fit Trainer, and why he changed the listing from "Mii" to "Mii Fighter" between leaks.

 

[ScottyWK]

So I heard the latest Sal Romano deconfirmed Squirtle, Ivysaur, Lucas, and Snake? I only remember Lucas... can someone fill me in here?

No, Sal had nothing to do with those 3. He said Lucas vs Ness was a debate, and Lucas was losing. The other 3 is a mix from another leak that is very questionable and just happened to fit in with the Sal leak.

Lesson to everyone: don't try and combine leaks! It confuses people.

 

[False Sense]

Thing is, we don't know if it's accurate. It's pretty much the only thing about the leak left that we can scrutinize at this point. I don't think we have enough information all around to really say for sure. It would stand to reason, I'd imagine, that if he's in marketing/public relations, he'd probably be aware of there being DLC characters, especially if they wind up being tied to those NFC figurines. Since no-one here really has any idea how Nintendo functions internally, we can only guess.

So it's anyone's guess, really.

So, in other words, it seems almost certain that this guy has some sort of inside information, but how much he knows and where he's getting it from is up for debate. And if he is getting his information from E3, it opens up the possibility of him making up filler information to appear more credible.

Well, I think the leak being real seems likely at this point, but I think the possibility of false information is a very real possibility.

 

[CaptainCrisb]

No, Sal had nothing to do with those 3. He said Lucas vs Ness was a debate, and Lucas was losing. The other 3 is a mix from another leak that is very questionable and just happened to fit in with the Sal leak.

Lesson to everyone: don't try and combine leaks! It confuses people.

Hm? What's this other leak?

 

[TheAnvil]

Hm? What's this other leak?

The RosalinaX leak, which I'm pretty sure was discredited at some point.

 

[ScottyWK]

The whole Lucas/Ness thing is ridiculous because; the game is going gold in TWO months as it's out in September in Japan. Which can only mean that the roster was finalized MANY, MANY months ago. Therefore they would not be discussing which characters they'd be cutting at this point in time. The end part of development for games is ALWAYS dedicated to bug testing and balancing tweaks in fighting games. This would give credit to the theory that the leaker, or Sal just tacked on extra info that we have no way of disproving until the game releases. And would explain his somewhat lucky guess of Wii Fit Trainer, and why he changed the listing from "Mii" to "Mii Fighter" between leaks.

Anything is possible with the Lucas/Ness thing. I gave a hypothetical a few posts ago as to how he may know there is a debate, but not know the outcome yet. The leaker didn't say the argument was still going on, he just said there was a debate (unless I'm mistaken - don't feel like going back and finding it). So the "going gold in 2 months" thing doesn't really apply, especially for those that believe it's all dated information.

Hm? What's this other leak?

Mods have threatened us if we talked about it here (lol). But it's a leak that basically says the roster is 48 characters, with 4 veterans being cut. The guy was really sketchy though when people contacted him really passively, so it's assumed to be false by many.

 

[Noiblade]

I'm still holding out for at least 1 more newcomer this E3.

The treehouse people said "We're gonna be showing some more SM4SH and maybe even a-"
And someone else brought something else up. soo.

 

[CaptainCrisb]

Mods have threatened us if we talked about it here (lol). But it's a leak that basically says the roster is 48 characters, with 4 veterans being cut. The guy was really sketchy though when people contacted him really passively, so it's assumed to be false by many.

The RosalinaX leak, which I'm pretty sure was discredited at some point.

Ah! That one! Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was confirmed to be fake. Going back on topic, idk, this is crazy. I've a friend who's a Lucas main. He's really good and I almost lost to him in a tournament (he PK Froze me and I started to tumble down to my doom... before barely escaping and BARELY grabbing the edge) but we have two things here: On one hand, them cutting down a character in their series doesn't seem to make sense, but on the other hand, Sal's tipper has been rocking it lately. Anyone who doesn't believe this at this point is blind. I just wish that he would reveal some veterans though...

 

[TheAnvil]

Anything is possible with the Lucas/Ness thing. I gave a hypothetical a few posts ago as to how he may know there is a debate, but not know the outcome yet. The leaker didn't say the argument was still going on, he just said there was a debate (unless I'm mistaken - don't feel like going back and finding it). So the "going gold in 2 months" thing doesn't really apply, especially for those that believe it's all dated information.


Mods have threatened us if we talked about it here (lol). But it's a leak that basically says the roster is 48 characters, with 4 veterans being cut. The guy was really sketchy though when people contacted him really passively, so it's assumed to be false by many.

Outdated information makes ZERO sense considering "Mii Fighter". Clearly at some point he got a new set of information as his original named it as "Mii".

This only really makes sense if he got the information as an E3 employee. Meaning he wouldn't have access to insider discussions on whether or not a character would be cut.

 

[thisguyisnotcool]

This thread is gonna be pointless when everything is said and done isn't it?

 

[samsparta21]

I just noticed another thing... there's more going for this leak. The debate between Ness and Lucas matches up with that whiteboard drawing of Sakurai's from awhile ago.

You can see there's no Ness or Lucas, but a generic Mr. Saturn. If they really weren't considering cutting Ness, wouldn't they have put him there instead of the Saturn?

Also the Pikmin there seems to suggest that they were considering Alph instead of Olimar