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Okay. SWF is the largest Smash community known to the North American web-continent. SamuraiPanda is ranked 12th in the world ranks of professional Smash players. He has just come out with a theory on the early revealing of Brawl's roster... and it is not promising, considering most of his evidence is there and highly logical. o_o This worries me. I am a member of the boards and will continue to maintain contact with SP and Youko (who run the board-wide podcast, both of whom are professional Smashers), so rest assured I will forward everything here. But, for now, here is the article:
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Posted by SamuraiPanda on the Smash World Forums.
Straight from the Show Me Your News podcast is my “conspiracy theoracy” (typo on purpose) that the screenshot we got of the character selection screen on Friday is the actual starting roster. I’m just making this into a thread for those of you who don’t listen to the podcast (but should) and where we can keep the discussion. I know I've locked a few threads in the past for saying what I'm about to try and prove because they never convinced me (mostly because they never gave reasons). Sorry about that. But at least feel happy that this thread will stick around.

As a disclaimer: I personally don’t want this to be true. But I think that the majority of the facts prove that it may indeed be close to the final starting roster, if not the actual one. The points I make are counterpoints to the reasons people use to “prove” that this isn’t the starting roster. Without further ado, here are arguments often made by people, and my counter arguments:
1. This is the same character selection screen from the demo. Its obviously for demonstration purposes only.
First of all, we aren’t “supposed” to have known about the character selection screen. The Dojo is NOT tailored for people who broke down and analyzsed everything in the E4All demo, it is tailored for everyone else. So the normal response to that screenshot would be “Oh, that’s the starting roster.” Not, “Oh, that’s from the demo so it can’t be real.” Also, it isn’t strange at all for the demo to use the starting roster. They aren’t going to change up the character select screen all of a sudden.
EDIT: When I said that, I meant that they won't drastically change the initial character select screen before the game comes out because now every casual player and non-American (remember, the demo update only on the American version) thinks they have seen the character select screen.
2. There is a blatant lack of Kirby...
I direct you to this quote from the Dojo that came with the update:
“But even without this mode, given the proliferation of the Internet these days, the existence of hidden characters is going to get exposed anyway. So, this time I’m moving in the direction of not being too hung up on hidden characters. You can earn most characters by playing through Adventure Mode: The Subspace Emissary. For those of you who look forward to those encounters, I recommend you clear this mode before playing Basic Brawl.”
What is the very first battle in the Subspace Emissary? Mario vs Kirby. You unlock him in the very beginning of the mode. Next match? Petey Piranha with Zelda and Peach in a cage. Save Zelda to unlock her. Sakurai is making the subspace emissary much more enjoyable for people to play by letting you rapidly unlock characters. Don’t you think its more fun if you unlock a bunch of characters while playing through it, instead of one every 2 hours? It’ll really make you want to play that mode, probably before you do anything else in the game. Also, think of the event mode. The very first event, which was already revealed, is DeDeDe and Bowser vs Mario. Beat that and you unlock DeDeDe. Sakurai is encouraging people to play all these different single player modes by having you unlock characters really easy/early/frequently, so that you play the whole thing through. In Melee, there were really obscure ways to unlock a lot of characters that most people would, and should, have taken a long time to figure out. But, because of the internet, we unlocked them all as soon as humanly possible, so there is no point in making unlockable characters so hard to obtain anymore (although there will invariably be a few that are very difficult to unlock).
Edit: This point is where most people have trouble, so I figured I would expand it a bit. By the way, keep in mind that Kirby COULD be on the final starting roster. When Melee's "starting roster" was revealed (via demo), it didn't have Kirby or Zelda, which became starters when the game was released. So this point could be moot.
2.5a You can select Kirby in the first battle in the subspace emissary instead of fighting against him
As others have already pointed out, this game is not 64, nor is it Melee. This is 6 years after the originals were made. So why do you assume you have to battle against the person you're about to unlock? I could easily see you having to win this battle with either Mario or Kirby (who could go on to fight Petey?) to unlock Kirby. Can you imagine fighting against Pokemon Trainer? How could they twist the story to do that? I find it much more plausible that when you get to a certain part in the story, you see a cutscene with PT fighting, say, Bowser or something, and then you have to play WITH PT to beat Bowser. PT could be unlocked as soon as you play with him, or he could be unlocked when you beat that match.
Also, remember that SSE is Co-Op. I think it would be boring for the second player if only the first player could fight every time there is a 1v1. So how do you get the second player involved? You can't just make the 1v1 a 2v1 whenever you're playing Co-Op, so maybe Sakurai just wanted 2 players to be able to play at the same time throughout most of the SSE (remember, you get your second teammate really early in the game, as Kirby gets one after beating Petey, and Mario meets Pit immediately). But the only way to do let 2 players play in the first match is by letting the players choose who they want.
2.5b Peach is on the starting roster, so why not Zelda?
This may be a bit tough for people to get, but it makes perfect sense to me. When you are going to battle Petey Piranah, do you know which princess you want to save? Do you even care? Frankly, I think most people (like myself) don't care which princess they save. It simply doesn't matter either way. But wait, what if you could unlock them? Well, it still wouldn't matter since you'll have to do both at some time or the other. But what if only ONE was unlockable? That is more than enough incentive for me to want that unlockable one. Badly. And honestly, I think it would be alot more fun if you actually cared which cage you opened.
3. No Kirby, but Metaknight? Yeah right. There is no way you can have only veterans in the starting roster, that’s ridiculous. You have to include newcomers. So who do you include? Well, if I were Sakurai, I would try to include at least one really cool, fun to play, unique, and noob-friendly character. One person that fits this perfectly is Metaknight. He is freaking awesome. How many people, who didn’t know/care about Metaknight before SSBB have fallen in love with how cool he is? Including him in the starting roster would make sense. Especially since its so easy to unlock Kirby anyways. Plus, you may meet him much later in the emissary, which is a good reason to have him unlocked from the start since he is so appealing to new players.
EDIT: Don't misunderstand, I'm not saying he would be a starter because he is popular. I'm saying he would be a starter because he has alot of "WOW" factor, meaning people who are looking forward to really different characters from Melee would enjoy playing Metaknight alot because of his originality, overall coolness, etc.
4. Sonic? Sakurai said he’ll be an unlockable! And why is there no Snake?!? Yes, I know. I did the translation where he said 3rd party characters will be unlockable. But probably one of the reasons they never officially translated the blog into English was because everything he said is subject to change. Whenever I talk to casual smashers (and many hardcore ones too) about SSBB, and I mention Sonic is in the game, you know what they say? “Oh man, that is the FIRST character I’m playing with.” I’ve gotten that response incredibly often. Plus, having Sonic in the game is a HUGE selling and advertising point. It only makes sense that he’s playable from the very beginning. Snake, on the other hand, is not nearly as “huge” to the SSBB series, or to fans worldwide as Sonic. Comparing the two would be silly.
5. There is no way they can fit many more characters on that select screen. Same with the stage selection screen. But is it really that difficult to imagine it zooming out when you unlock a certain amount? Do you think they can’t simply make the icons move places or rearrange? There are hundreds of things they can do besides the silly idea of squeezing everything into the available space there. That argument doesn’t mean anything. And how sweet will it be if we unlocked 26 characters instead of just 14? Can you imagine how fast we’d be unlocking stuff in the subspace emissary? It would be awesome.
Try to be open minded with this, and don’t just say “you’re wrong because I don’t want this to be true although I can’t prove you wrong.” I don’t want it to be true just as much as you guys do, but I don’t see any gaping flaws in what I’ve said. If someone can try to prove me wrong through logic and reasoning, then by all means go ahead (keep in mind, it may take me awhile to answer you guys as I have my finals this week). Until that happens, it looks like we may already have our starting roster.
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Some new counterpoints were stated after the podcast was released. I don’t believe any of them are strong enough to counter my argument, but they are worth point out:
Quote: Originally Posted by Boofer View Post The order of the characters. The characters are in a pretty random order, unlike the previous games.
Actually, Pikachu was in the middle of Mario and Bowser before you unlocked secret characters in Melee. So rearranging the character select screen has been already done in Melee. I guess that actually strengthens my argument ^_^''
Quote: Originally Posted by Arrow View Post The major problem I have with the Conspiracy Theoracy is that it doesn't go along with the current box art. While it may be a moot point if Kirby, PT, and Wario are all unlockable relatively early (or of course, if the box art changes), it just seems weird to put characters on there that won't immediately be available to the person playing the game...But you made a very good case for the theory, so I don't think anyone can rule it out completely until we get an official announcement on the Dojo saying "Th... This is the starting roster, isn't it!?"
Other than the counter points you already stated yourself, newcomers are the selling point of SSBB. If the game had exactly the same characters as Melee, not nearly as many people would care about it. If they want to sell the game even better than it already will, then advertising their newcomers are a great way to do it. And yes, I agree, nothing is truly confirmed until the Dojo announces it.
Quote: Originally Posted by Cless View Post The only thing I could think of that might refute the conspiracy theoracy is that most of the 64 vets were starters in melee (Jigglypuff and Luigi being the exceptions, but they're more suited as unlockables), and they added some obvious choices for newcomers like Bowser, Zelda, and Peach, and the Ice Climbers were the wtf character. I would think that they would keep most of the vets in melee and add 4 or 5 newcomers like they did in the transition from 64 to melee.
Well, that is just opinion, and I can’t really prove opinion wrong But I can say that it has been 6 years since Melee came out. Maybe Sakurai wants to give us a new experience at first. I know that I’d enjoy that.
Quote: Originally Posted by 2.72 View Post I don't think that we have enough information to make a guess as to whether we start with the shown characters.
Agreed.
Quote: Originally Posted by 2.72 View Post It's reasonable that Sakurai didn't want to show the starting roster, and if that's the case what would he put up? The E for All roster, of course; using anything else would be odd. What did he put up? The E for All roster. No contradiction there; this theory is sound too.
Easy, he can just say “then you go straight to the character selection screen!” There is no reason to show it. He does that often in Dojo updates, which makes me think he purposefully wanted to reveal the starting roster (plus, I don’t think he can justify a whole update for the starting roster).
EDIT: I think many of you are focusing on details that are too small. I misstated an aside comment I made above and was torn apart for it. What I meant to say was more along the lines of "plus, this is the best kind of update to show us the starting roster, because the update would be much harder to understand without actually seeing what they're talking about."
Quote: Originally Posted by 2.72 View Post The only argument that it must be the starting roster (rather than that it may be it) that I recall was that someone watching Brawl news casually may not be aware of the E for All demo, so they would naturally assume that the shown bunch of characters are starters. If they aren't, they would think "WTF? I thought that I could play as Sonic right from the start" First, I don't think that Sakurai would necessarily care. His updates haven't been exactly crystal clear; a few of them ("up until now") have caused a great deal of confusion. Additionally, casual people who didn't pay any attention to E for All probably aren't interested in analyzing each DOJO update to see what little tidbits of information have been leaked. We are, and I would bet that he is aware of it. It would follow, then, that the little details that we love so much to over-analyze are aimed towards us. I agree that the little details are aimed towards us. Things like attacks, taunts, etc. But something like the character selection screen is a BIG detail that even the least analytical Dojo reader will be able to catch.
Quote: Originally Posted by 2.72 View Post As far as I remember, everything else argued that it was a reasonable starting roster, but not that any other starting roster was unreasonable. Correct me if I missed something. True. But what other starting roster is “reasonable,” other than all the characters currently revealed being starters?
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