OK, I'm now ready to do this essay. I just want to mention that I realised that it's highly subjective, but it's not a 50/50. What this means is that you could either think it changed nothing or helped. I didn't find any evidences pointing towards a decrease. This will be detailed, but I mostly think that it helped with a minor possibility of not changing.
Also, I'm doing an essay to not tell everything in small posts, but in a big one. It helps since if you entirely disagree, I have no reason to argue because I would've said anything I wanted to.
So, let me put the mandatory music:
Paper Mario's chance after July 29 2014
< realtalk >
On July 29 2014, Sakurai revealed a Paper Mario stage via his usual picture of the day (aka, POTD). For reference, I will put the pictures and captions here since it's so far the only evidences available that confirms the existence of the stage:
Pic of the day. For the first time ever in the Super Smash Bros. series, here's a Paper Mario stage! It's made of paper, so strong winds will blow it away.
Then, he released a second pictures some times after:
Since the stage is paper, it transforms when it folds over and opens up again. This ship is the S.S. Flavion from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.
Source:
https://miiverse.nintendo.net/replies/AYMHAAACAADMUKl5xngkHw
Now, it does confirms that the series will get at least a stage as a rep, but showing the stage now lead to a more important question...
Does that means that Paper Mario has more chances to be playable?
If you view the reveal in itself, it would help him. That's because most of the stages so far have at least 1 character that is specifically related to it is playable. There's some exceptions, but they all seem to have a motive behind. In brawl, smashville was one of them because the villager was actually planned and that, is common knowledge.
"In fact, we had previously removed the villager from Super Smash Bros. Brawl in the planning stages because he wasn't suited for battle."
Source:
http://www.polygon.com/2013/6/26/44...es-mega-man-smash-bros-s-other-new-characters
There was also hanenbrew and pictochat, but here, the former didn't have any candidates and the latter was to represent a console application which does the same.
In SSB4, we have balloon fight and the living room. The former would have to be a balloon fighter which wouldn't really fight without his balloon and that could cause problems. As for the latter, well, it's true that it was repped by an assist trophy, but honestly, It's more to represent another way of gaming that the nintendogs series does.
This of course excludes battlefield and final destination as those are meant to be global. The exceptions though are more meant to represent something globally. If Sakurai judged that including balloon fighter wouldn't make any sense, but still wanted to represent the game, a stage could have been the best option here.
But if you count out of all stages, that's a really low number. Everything else was meant to represent something related to at least 1 playable character. In this case, a Paper Mario stage could hint at him being playable because of this, but it's not the only possibility.
Remember that the Paper Mario series is a BRANCH of the main Mario one. Because of this, it could be considered that all 4 Paper Mario games are globally mario games. It could mean the same for the stage as it could just represent mario which is already included and if it was the case, it wouldn't change that much Paper Mario's chances.
However, the captions tells imo otherwise. At least more Paper Mario related than Mario in general. The key sentence here is the following:
For the first time ever in the Super Smash Bros. series, here's a Paper Mario stage!
It might sounds trivial, but this sentences tells me 2 things. The first is that he didn't mention "Paper Mario" as the character, but as a stage. It's proven even further by this stage repping at least 2 games out of 4. So, it's more considered as a general Paper Mario stage than the actual character. It doesn't really affects him because in no way it tells me what playable character this stage would rep.
But the second thing is the most interesting one. He said "For the first time ever in the Super Smash Bros series" to then follow up immediately after to the reveal. The words itself seems insignificant in itself, but I heard the EXACT wording last Friday on his POTD. He showed the menu and the caption was:
Pic of the day. For the first time ever, I present to you…the main menu for the 3DS version!!
Source:
https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAADMUKl5HASABg
Why using the same wording for something that aren't even related? I know it can be interpreted in different ways and it's subjective, but I think he used this wording as an hype for the menu. We haven't seen the menu since the beginning so I guess it was appropriate to hype it.
But why on the stage? It's like we know we would see at some point the menu, but the stage was totally unexpected to see. His wording was like referring getting a Paper Mario one for the first time as "overdue and was about to be done at one point". I may go a bit too far, but in this case, why not just saying "Here's a Paper Mario stage!"? What I think I'm sure is that he wants to hype this fact, but why exactly?
It's like he would welcome this new repping more than it should. I know it's something that is asked a bit, but to hype the stage like this really is weird. He wanted so that we are aware about this fact, I just question why because it might think there's more.
Also, I don't think that it would end with only this stage despite being ok with just this one. I know it repped TTYD, but the problem I see is that it STARTS on sticker star which is the handheld game. I seem to find "something fishy" about only repping TTYD in the 3ds while the WiiU would get none. It's like sort of general repping, but not really on the right system.
For example, I have to say it, but this stage does NOT obsolete the theatre. If you would include this stage AND the theatre on WiiU, the theatre would be included for a different purpose and would rep even more. In fact, it wouldn't obsolete any stages on WiiU because why exactly putting one stage on 3ds ONLY while 3 of the 4 games were released and made for home console? I really found this a little weird and that's why it might get one on WiiU, but if it's the case... would he NOT talk about it?
It's far-fetched, I know, but would the reveal of this stage be a teaser to then revealing the full deal after? Sakurai did this for the Palutena's temple and the boxing ring already and it wasn't clear that it was a tease (except Palutena in the direct tough). The pattern of Sakurai's teasing is always the same: partial reveal, wait, full reveal. I agree that he did fully revealed the stage, but what if the partial case was the series in global? He would have revealed the stage while hyping it for a wording that I personally question the purpose to then make us wait a while and to finally reveal him.
I see this as a possibility, but the wording is really what makes me think it's more to rep Paper Mario than Mario. If what I said is accurate, he would hide another stage on WiiU which I think is pretty possible. But while doing this, he would have t hype the already revealed stage which he did by using the same wording when he talked about the menu for the first time. It's kinda annoying to interpret, but it could have mean like the menu that it was "bound to happen". And with the reveal directly after, I think it has a high chance to be related to Paper Mario while the other possibility is possible too.
Which is why I'm going to be safe, but positive on my verdict:
I think Paper Mario is [quite likely] playable in Super Smash Bros 4 for 3ds and WiiU.
< /realtalk >
There you go. I may have typed too quick, but that's a pretty good idea of what I think. Feel free to review it.