Talking about the Character Roster: What We Know

[Flip]

So I realized just this morning that with the confirmation of Peach, we are now at a known roster beyond the size of the Melee starting roster: 15 versus 14.

Mario, Bowser, Peach, Yoshi, DK, Link, Zelda, Samus, Fox, Kirby, Pikachu, Pit, Wario, Meta Knight, Ike

Throw in Zero Suit Samus and, presumably, Sheik and you have 17.

Now who else do we know is playable?

Snake. That makes 18.

And we can't not have Luigi. 19.

We can't not have Captain Falcon or Ganondorf either. 20.

And it's pretty certain that, even if Ness is replaced by Lucas, we get an Earthbounder. 21.

Marth will likely return. If not, somebody else from Fire Emblem. 22.

We saw in the franchise listings there ARE spaces for Ice Climber and Game and Watch. Let's play it cool and count them in. 24.

And, with only two away from the Melee roster, let's assume they keep Jiggles and Mewtwo, as they always need more Pokemon and those two were pretty popular. 26.

We have two more third party fighters, at best. 28.

Now Melee added 5 secret fighters. I figure this will be more or less the same.

It's highly suspect we'll see another Star Fox character. Falco? Krystal? Both? We'll say just one. 29.

One more secret character (oh... let's say King Dedede) makes it 30

...Now, out of all these names I'm giving, I've only really added one new face, and the rest are all returning (and are more or less guaranteed). Damn... makes the roster seem not as fun and exciting huh?

Which is why I'm beginning to think that 35 is the number to shoot for, if only because, well... it's not much of a sequel if Sakurai is just reintroducing the same old characters. He said that himself.

Melee added 18 new fighters. So far, Brawl has added 6. And if they can squeeze an advanced single player mode into the game, complete with FMVs (Sakurai jokes "yes, we fit this all on one disk!"), then I find it very likely we'll be seeing more than just the same returning faces.

Incredibly likely new faces? Well, we had Ike, and he's in there. We also have King Dedede, Krystal, Ridley, and Diddy Kong. Funnily enough, along with Ike, they were high on the Brawl polls.

We also have that conundrum with the Animal Crossing icon. Why does it get its own world icon? Is there a fighter? Just a stage and an item? What is it?

I thought we had high hopes to see more obscure and kinda risky character additions, but another part of me is now greatly doubting that, considering all the popular conventions that are being thrown into the game (don't get me wrong: it's old school as all hell, but you gotta admit that Sakurai isn't really throwing a bone to vintage and obscure Nintendo here just yet).

So although I still hope to see the faces of Lolo, Lala, Mac, Takamaru, Sukapon, Jill, and all those others at some point in playable form, that whole Assist Trophy thing definitely makes them less likely. Hell, it pretty much killed my hopes for Geno and Waluigi.

But enough talk about worries and speculation: what I've stated above is pretty much what we know, and if you guys have any more to add, feel free to. We are guaranteed one more series following the world icon listing, thankfully, so I guess we could all take whacks at what they possibly could be. My money's on those two third parties, but that's only because I'm being a bit pessimistic after having realized we're already past the Melee quota with characters and they're more than 75% veterans

[Smashchu]

This is why I fear the 3rd party inclusion. It fills up the roster for Nintendo characters. I think, like you said before, he asdded Snake as a request to a friend, not to open the flood gates. That's why I think he'll include Sonic (he kinda has to) aand then stop.

Sakurai always has given a bone to the obscured fans. But, it was alwasy over shadowed by everything else. In Melee he added ICs and Game & Watch and that's it. In Brawl, we jhave Pit. I assum he'll add another(Mac or Takamura), but they'll be hidden. That I can assure you.

I do beleive Falco will comee back. That's just me. I wonder if the secondary characters (Like Diddy, K. Dedede and so one) will be hidden. Also, Ridley may be a starter. Maybe. That is, if the cloud thing is right. It's a 2 way street. It could be true as it would seem soomewhat intentional, but at the same time, could be complete BS and acciedental (The Master Hand one was a stretch).

Also, I've always assumed 30-35. 40 AT BEST, but unlikely. You have 5 spaces open. I say Krystal, Ridley, and Diddy, as you haven't namded those yet. But, also a new pokemon. 34. One more sppace. Seems reasonable enought, but remember, your assuming a lot of characters return, and Sakurai adds 2 more third party characters. He said 1-2 more so 1 could be it. So, there is always room. Keep in mind he had only 10 months with Melee, and it shows. Now, he has had over 2 years(development started in Oct. 05, but could have been later), a load more developers (not to mention some who have worjked with Melee or played the crap out of it) and Nintendo throwing money at him. He surley has the man powwer to add a load of characters. Someone has said that after launch we shpould have 30 characters reveled (at one character a week). Anything is possible.

[Flip]

I did just find something I completely forgot I posted, though, and that's a good thing.
fryguy64.proboards27.com/index.cgi?board=ssb&action=display&thread=1154885915&page=38#1183123876
The pic is gone now, as is the thread, but somebody did crack that little corner of the Character Select Screen Sakurai showed us (remember? when he talked about names? ), and they found the starting roster to be 18

If we take who we know, 15, and we know that that Zamus and Sheik would NOT show up on the select screen, we can throw in three more: Captain Falcon, Ness/Lucas, Ice Climbers. That leaves decent room to throw in a few zingers as secret fighters :3

[Flip]

And here's a link to the poll
www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=71872

And the highest vote getters:

King Dedede(5)
Diddy Kong(4)
Geno(4)
Ike(4)
Ridley(4)
Captain Olimar & Pikmin(3)
Krystal(3)
Takamaru(3)
Windwaker Link(3)
Animal Crossing MC(2)
Claus(2)
Demiru(2)
Isaac(2)
Jeff(2)
Kawasima(2)
King K.Rool(2)
Lip(2)
Lucas(2)
Mega Man(2)
Oguma(2)
Ouendan(2)
Sukapon(2)

Note that there may have been other factors behind Ike's inclusion, but it's hard to ignore the poll's influence

[nocturnal YL]

That..... I actually kinda worry about those.

We may not be able to see more than 1 FE character, and we may even have achance of not seeing any EB characters at all, seeing Pika's Final Smash move and the introduction of JPN-only Mother 3. Then.... King DDD will probably not make it...... IC and GW are also dangerous of that... To play it safe, I'd say those 15, and then Luigi and Jiggly would be a must, and then... I'd say 17 are secured.

------------------

But if that comes to the possible number, I'll guess... 37 or 38. We hopefully will see a 100% return of oiginal non-clone characters, making 14 (non-secret), plus Pit, Meta, Ike and Wario, 18 in total. And I think there'll be more starters to come too, say, we'll have 24, 25 or something. That multiplies a number around 1.3 to 1.4 (the starter-total ratio would be 1:1.3), we have 31 to 35 characters.

Then add in the (I STILL on't quite like those) 3rd party characters. There.

[TV Eye]

fliptroopa said:

And here's a link to the poll
www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=71872

And the highest vote getters:

King Dedede(5)
Diddy Kong(4)
Geno(4)
Ike(4)
Ridley(4)
Captain Olimar & Pikmin(3)
Krystal(3)
Takamaru(3)
Windwaker Link(3)
Animal Crossing MC(2)
Claus(2)
Demiru(2)
Isaac(2)
Jeff(2)
Kawasima(2)
King K.Rool(2)
Lip(2)
Lucas(2)
Mega Man(2)
Oguma(2)
Ouendan(2)
Sukapon(2)

Note that there may have been other factors behind Ike's inclusion, but it's hard to ignore the poll's influence

I'm just wondering...who in the hell would want to play as Prof. Kawashima?!

[Deleted]

Two people did apparently. I don't see how...a floating head only has so much combat potential.

[TV Eye]

sgtmajorkururu said:

Two people did apparently. I don't see how...a floating head only has so much combat potential.

I couldn't resist.

[Saim]

He could like... shoot numbers and stuff.

[thores]

fliptroopa said:

I did just find something I completely forgot I posted, though, and that's a good thing.
fryguy64.proboards27.com/index.cgi?board=ssb&action=display&thread=1154885915&page=38#1183123876
The pic is gone now, as is the thread, but somebody did crack that little corner of the Character Select Screen Sakurai showed us (remember? when he talked about names? ), and they found the starting roster to be 18

Whoa whoa hey! Not that the number isn't likely, but they didn't find that at all. What they dscovered was that the character roster was capable of holding 9 characters per row. Whether or not it will be that way at the start, or if that means the starting roster will be 18, are just assumptions you made. They're nice educated guesses and all, but don't go around stating them as fact/ a proven discovery just yet.

[Dances in Undergarments]

^ Also don't forget that in Melee, the bottom row had a different number of characters to the other row. So it could be, say, 7,9,7,9 characters or something.

Anyhoo, I think the main thing to look at with the updates is the fact that, in 12 weeks of Dojo updates, we've had 14 characters, with a character a week for the past few weeks. I can't see Sakurai going 'cold turkey', so to speak, and dropping from one character a week to any less than one character a fortnight. I mean, they seem to have no problem stretching out updates, but they haven't, and of course these updates are very carefully planned, so there has to be a reason for us seeing 14 already.

Lets say that, worse case scenario, starting next week it drops to an update every fortnight - with 17 weeks left, thats still 8 updates, which gives us a total of 22 characters. If we continue to get a character every week, thats 31. What we've heard before is that Sakurai will try not to reveal secret characters before the games release, but they may have to. So lets say that some of the secret characters are revealed, but not all of them... in the first case, about 30 seems right, in the latter, 40 characters is not really a stretch at all.

I'm still sticking with 40 characters. It surely can't be that hard, since they are using the same engine, to bring Mario, Link, etc over - so there should be plenty of time to make new characters.

So yeah, my money is on 40. As a side note, with like, 4 3rd Party characters. 10% of the roster, that works.

[Smashchu]

4 would be a bit much for me.

I think I have said this before, but I'll say it again. They were only going to have 10 new characters in Melee. They stoped and made the clones due to a potential delay. This is why the list probobly won't have 9 rows and a 7. But, this is also why I feer we won't get many characters.

Of course, I have faith in thge man. We've come so far. There's no turning back now.

[Flip]

thores said:

fliptroopa said:

I did just find something I completely forgot I posted, though, and that's a good thing.
fryguy64.proboards27.com/index.cgi?board=ssb&action=display&thread=1154885915&page=38#1183123876
The pic is gone now, as is the thread, but somebody did crack that little corner of the Character Select Screen Sakurai showed us (remember? when he talked about names? ), and they found the starting roster to be 18

Whoa whoa hey! Not that the number isn't likely, but they didn't find that at all. What they dscovered was that the character roster was capable of holding 9 characters per row. Whether or not it will be that way at the start, or if that means the starting roster will be 18, are just assumptions you made. They're nice educated guesses and all, but don't go around stating them as fact/ a proven discovery just yet.

Woah, oh yeah. I guess it wasn't seen as 18, just 9 per row *smack* I didn't read my post--just linked it. Anyways, that's a logical number, considering the last game was 14.

But I also fear we will not have as many new characters, considering that there is already a huge potential roster filled with all veterans. It leaves little room for new characters if he cuts it off at, say, 30. If he pushes the game to 35-40 fighters, then we have some nice breathing room for new faces, but that's really stretching it.

[spjd]

Wwll I don't think we need to worry about the roster. I suspect I can be up to 50 characters, of course I in no way know this.

[Smashchu]

spjd said:

Wwll I don't think we need to worry about the roster. I suspect I can be up to 50 characters, of course I in no way know this.

50 will not happen.