The DanMan

As I said, I'm a bit late to the party; and obviously he'd be after Ryu, but there's still space for him. It's a piece of official artwork that has the perfect amount of empty spots to support the Box leak. Why would they deliberately have designed the LE box to show only one side yet have enough for people to deduce there's an extra character on the other side? They could've gone with a different arrangement, yet this is what they've been going with. And it lines up perfectly with the most legitimate rumors right now. With there being less than 2 months left until release and Sakurai explicitly saying they're slowing down with the reveals, it's looking more likely every day. The main leak debunkers gave up and said it's legitimate, and every further attempt to debunk it has only further given it credence: >Based on the folds of his clothing, Ken's model seems to be directly based off of Ryu's, who got a model update in Ultimate >Moray Towers is shown without any ink, which is not possible in normal gameplay >Ken's and Pac-Man are slightly clipping through the ramp Pac-Man's shadow is glitched/only partially on the ramp-- stuff that happens on the actual stage in that area >Mappy (the mouse police officer Pac-Man can pull out with his neutral special) has a sprite that's two pixels different in Ultimate than in Smash 4, and it's using Ultimate's version (something that wasn't even really known until people started trying to debunk the image) >Pichu's icon is actually slightly different from every other one we've seen, showing slightly more of his ears >Ken's portrait being faded out is due to Pac-Man being close to it-- something that would happen in the Wii U version of Smash 4 and Brawl (character portraits fading out if characters got close to them) >Pichu at first appears to be too big-- but screenshots have shown he (and Young Link) are both larger than they were in the past. Obviously it's not a 2D drawing trying to masquerade as 3D (all of those were identifiable immediately upon closer inspection), and the pure attention to detail and improbabilities (Ken being directly based off of a model that isn't publicly available yet, the stage missing an element that's always present in footage we've seen) make it incredibly unlikely that it's anything other than legitimate. The image in question:

I mean, Rex switching between Pyra/Mythra/the Catalyst would be possible because their weapons are all swords. They could realistically merge the animations and share arts (Rex and Pyra are shown flinging out a fire projectile in cutscenes but can't in gameplay; meanwhile the Catalyst has a projectile as one of their normal arts), just with different effects. Rex would always have to use one of them, so it could be something like Pyra as the default/Mythra with greater damage and knockback but also more damage and knockback received/the Catalyst dealing slightly less damage but having a health drain effect on every hit. But nobody was really expecting either of them at base at this point, so I don't think there's much to read into anyways. Anyways, I'm a bit late to the party here but download cards for Ultimate have started coming out in Japan. And... well... look at the character ordering:

Forgot about that; even then, Fox's designs have been a gradual evolution. Link's gone through the single most radical design change/updating of any of the original 12. And I heavily lurked Smashboards and gamefaqs during 4's pre-release before joining them this time around; I know a lot of the drama that happened (including, for instance, the self-martyring and further disownment of Awakening a lot of fans did when the expectations were Ike getting cut for Chrom and the salt over Ghirahim getting revealed as an AT). But what do you think Link has that's appealing to casual fans, especially when compared to the rest of the original 12? Heck, I've encountered many people who main FE characters yet have never played the series nor have any interest in it-- probably maining them for the same reason. And I was more specifically bringing that up because of how prevalent it is on gamefaqs as an explanation for why he probably didn't have an even bigger lead on the poll.

That has nothing to do with it. Link's always been the most popular casually. And really, the only outright design change any of the original 12 ever got was Samus getting her Other M design (which had a fair bit of negative outcry). Closest to that is Yoshi gradually learning to stand up straight and brightening up his color palette. Observe, a gamefaqs poll from 3 years ago: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/633202-super-smash-bros-for-wii-u/72594669 Link doesn't have as gigantic a lead due to a larger sample and different/irrationally sword hating audience, yet he's still far and away the clear favorite-- even outdoing Samus/Jigglypuff/Yoshi getting squished into one option due to poll limitations. Characters that wield a sword just tend to be rather popular casually.

You can tell I made this when the poll only had a bit over half a dozen posts total The first part of your post answered your question; as much as a vocal group of Smash fans beat their hate drum over "too many swords", swordies tend to be popular casually.

Link. Surprised he's not winning by a landslide, like I've seen him do in other polls of this sort for Ultimate.

I've warmed up a ton to the idea of Sora with a Roxas Echo. Though really, I'd be open to most FF-related characters in general.

Bingo. It's pure speculation based on the "new" tag for Isabelle disappearing.

Also Ragnell no longer clips through the stage/"hard" platforms and kinda just slides out along them.

Isabelle is massive in Japan and has eclipsed Tom Nook as AC's overall mascot; Lucina wasn't made into her own character until late in development (while being from a far smaller series) and Daisy, while a Mario character, is more or less on the level of Waluigi-- spinoff fodder for the Mario series that have a vocal core following.

And right after I made it through the hellhole that is Chapter 10, this happens on Chapter 11.

The Japanese fighter preview list was also updated a couple days ago, listing 70 videos when there were only 69. Honestly? I'm just expecting them to reveal Ken separately from anything else. He's just an Echo and, after all, got leaked.

May as well throw in. Suck at competitive Smash (as in, went 1-15 in For Glory-- that is won 1 game and lost 15 of them), but hopefully other players are as bad as me and it evens out I'll have fun regardless.

This reads like a joke; people always want to go overboard with movie adaptions.

Does anybody have tips for Chapter 10? This is the angriest I've ever felt at a game.

That doesn't change that it's fundamentally poor design to be getting units killed by enemies you can't even see (which is why I suggested the solution of their being some radio chatter telling you their positions).

I can only assume at this point that Sega is unfamiliar with the concept of "challenging but fair" difficulty and thinks bullshit sells. Tagged due to length

Impressions so far: >With the exception of Chapter 2, everything up until Chapter 5 is fairly easy and straightforward. >Squadmate missions are painfully shallow after 2's and 3's, with characters awkwardly infodumping their entire personalities, relations, and backstories, with the bare minimum done to "develop" them. They feel really tacked on; I'd much rather they'd taken 3's set-up, axed permadeath, and in general let you see the cliques interact in and outside of individual character missions. >The cutscenes are too split up, making them feel even more dragged out. >The game seems to have 3's approach of "what's a difficulty curve isn't it an on/off switch?" Chapter 5 is a massive difficulty spike, throwing a bunch of bunkers and anti-tanks cannons on a massive map with several tanks and a bunch of proximity-triggered tank reinforcements. It's been walling me >Some tales from Chapter 5: -Held back, tried to take things out with Grenadiers. Moved one of them forward a bit, had them crouched behind sandbags. Forgot that unlike 3 sandbags don't provide a gigantic defense boost, ends up getting killed by an enemy shocktrooper. -"Okay, I'll just send my scout over there who has body armor equipped giving him as much defense as a shocktrooper. I'll just shoot the enemy, then tag the downed Grenadier." -Gets half a dozen feet away from the downed ally, hits the crouch button but stupid medic evac scene plays, meaning I didn't crouch and since there's lag at the end my Scout was downed. Resets. -Keeps Grenadiers firmly held back, tries picking things off, things going smoothly... light tank fucking snipes the Hafen's generator from halfway across the map.

Smaller characters have been made larger in Ultimate. For instance, in this Zelda cast comparison YL's almost as tall as Link.

Honestly, it seems real.

Disney and Nintendo did do that family-themed Switch-focused gameshow earlier this year, and at least one of the Smash 4 EVO finals were broadcast in Disney XD; they have an existent connection. Ultimately, I feel like the most likely thing is the producer tweeted "yes" meaning "yes I'd love this" then realized "oh this can be misconstrued and I probably shouldn't have said anything to begin with" and quickly deleted it. Minecraft, Fortnite, and other games supporting cross-platform play have had advertisements emphasizing both Nintendo and Microsoft; in addition, Minecraft is the second most prolific game in history behind only Tetris. I don't think it's exactly out there for this to happen. I do think at this point a lot of these rumors would be more likely as DLC (Sora, Steve, the Granblue stuff).

Because Cloud's already broken As for 3rd parties already in Smash getting more characters: >Namco: Heihachi's the most likely, due to Sakurai explicitly considering him for Smash 4-- with Villager, Miis, and Pac-Man showing that rejected characters can still come back. If it weren't Heihachi, then likely a Tales character; when it came to Mii Fighter costumes, Sakurai said "Lloyd was the only option", but a few years later with Vesperia Definitive and Yuri's absurd popularity among the fandom (outright banned from official popularity polls) + Namco also doing the main development work for Smash (I believe one of Smash 4's producers had even worked on the Tales series), I'd say there's enough going for him that it would be 50/50 between the two. >Capcom: Monster Hunter. Already has Rathalos in the game-- halfway in the door already. I rest my case. >Sega: either a new Sonic character or a Persona protagonist, due to them being their two biggest global franchises. Sonic has more popularity, but Persona would make waves and have more of a WTF factor to it (plus, Sakurai's a fan of the series). And if Cloud can be skewed to represent all of Final Fantasy, then you can do the same with Persona and the entirety of MegaTen because it's wholly eclipsed it at this point.

Ah yes, claiming Ridley would be playable and that Snake would come back on top of Simon Belmont as a newcomer months before E3 was easy? What's next, Gematsu was bogus and Wii Fit Trainer was an easy call? You know who people were also predicting after Ridley? Ashley from WarioWare. You know how that went? Not very well. And Verg was beating the Incineroar drum while most were on the Decidueye train. Loz18 had some specific information about the E3 showing and Smash Direct then started peddling fanfiction over Skull Kid and Isaac, saying too much and killing his credibility. Funnily, the only newcomer Loz called was K. Rool-- who's the only non-Echo Verg missed. None of the characters Verg has talked about were bandwagon characters or considered super safe guesses; heck, even when he talked about Isabelle he mentioned how "a source claims she's an Echo but there's a measure of uncertainty"-- and whaddya know, she ended up mostly unique, going against the bandwagon. Heck, he's even said he can confirm Incineroar and Ken at least; he's not going all-in on the LE Box bandwagon which even the likes of Source Gaming are on. With Smash, Verg has been uncharacteristically straightforward, professional, and on-point.

From what I'm seeing a couple people say, the language used is identical to how Sakurai expressed the total amount in the Direct-- which seems to further the typo theory. Anyways, Verg weighs in on the Box theory:

I get the distinct feeling it's supposed to be Fates Leo.