It’s all been leaked.

Check out Joystiq for most of the information.

Here are a few images to whet your appetite.

UPDATE III: The real final roster for Super Smash Bros. Brawl with Star Wolf present, rendering my speculation about Krystal (below) irrelevant. Of course, I was still right about a character missing.

The starter roster, showing that the unlockable characters are: Marth, Mr. Game and Watch, Luigi, Falco, Snake, Ganondorf, Wolf, Lucario, Ness, Sonic, Toon Link, R.O.B., Captain Falcon and Jigglypuff. Sure, it is a lot of names. But most of them are secret characters from the last game. At least in Super Smash Bros. Melee, C. Falcon and Ness were unlocked from the start (since they weren’t all that secret anymore). I would really prefer if most of the secret characters from previous instalments would become regular characters, so that the actual new characters can become secret characters.

Twilight Princess Link faces off against Wind Waker Link.

Captain Olimar and Captain Falcon: The perfect team?

UPDATE: Found this image a few minutes ago. Apparently Captain Olimar and Captain Falcon met because Captain Falcon killed a few dozen Pikmin. How barbaric!

UPDATE IV: I went through the new Final Roster and highlighted my various predictions. The legend still applies.

UPDATE II: I went through the Final Roster really quickly and highlighted various predictions. Here is the breakdown: Green: Successfully predicted Orange: No prediction Red: Listed under The Rejects, but somehow still made it in.

UPDATE V: Thought I should include a note to first time readers that the speculation below was made before Star Wolf was announced…and it ended up being irrelevant. Oh well.

My heart is breaking. However, I think there is still a character missing from this roster. Look at how they line up. For the majority of the first three rows, they line up by franchise. Check out this image:

I’ve got them all listed by column according to franchise. Mario, Luigi and Peach are all mainstream Mario. Donkey Kong and Co., Yoshi, and Wario all have franchises that spun-off from Mario. Next is Zelda, Misc. Platformers (although Metroid and Kid Icarus are spiritual siblings as far as game design goes), Kirby, Star Fox, Pokemon, Japanese Only RPGs (Fire Emblem and Mother have seen more releases in Japan than in North America), and finally 3rd party. However, between King Dedede and Lucario, there appears to be a break in the pattern. The Pokemon and Mother characters get shifted over, and Bowser is - for whatever reason - miles away from the nearest Mario character. So, I made this shift:

Now the distinction is clearer. Bowser lines up with the rest of the Mario cast, Wario joins the Mario spinoff characters, and Toon Link joins the Zelda characters. Furthermore, Lucario and Jigglypuff now line up with the Pokemon characters and Ness and Lucas line up. Sonic also lines up with Snake, his 3rd party brother. But now, we have a gap beneath Falco. Who will it be filled by? Krystal? I sure hope so. Sakurai said he wanted to add more female characters, and in Brawl he managed to add…um…zero new female characters. Peack, Zelda, Samus and Jigglypuff were already kicking around. Maybe Krystal will make it in after all. It is - after all - the only way the character select screen makes sense.

And, from what I’ve seen of other character screen images, it does not expand predictably. Characters that start out side by side have other characters injected between them, and they spread out. Behold:

NOTE: Normally, I’d believe that images such as these were fake. But there is also over half an hour of new gameplay footage and we are only two days away from the Japanese release date. It isn’t uncommon for some stores to break the release date.

UPDATE AGAIN: Interestingly, they could conceivably fit another four characters on the character select screen. I think that would be pretty cool. Of course, this is extremely unlikely. There was another image I saw that only allowed for 36 characters (I believe), whereas this arrangement would allow for 39 + random. Still. Dare to dream.