It is two o’clock on Friday morning (2:16 actually) and I have decided that I might as well use my waking hours for something unproductive and work on some images for the links. It is something that I have wanted to do for a while, but the colour scheme on the old blog would not allow for it.

The current template is more colour neutral, with the nice white/grey/blue colour scheme. So, I figured I would make up some nice images. Check them out in the sidebar. They all have some subtle or obvious connection to the person’s blog that they link to. I think they all turned out really well, although there is no denying that the Binks link is the best. I was so lucky to find an image of a hat like that, and it was already in the right colour scheme.

What a lucky break!

In the same vein as Peek-A-Boo related tragedies, it appears as if the ineptness of some patriarchs knows no limits. Tyrone Spellman cracked open the head of his 17 month old daughter - killing her - because she accidentally knocked over his Xbox 360 during a game, disrupting his game session.

He has been convicted of third degree murder and endangering the welfare of a child. He faces up to 47 years of prison. Perhaps he and the “cage fighting pappy” can become friends in prison, and start some sort of club for “World’s Worst Fathers”.

Source

I’m kind of disappointed with all the characters that Sakurai added in as secret characters. I mean, sure. We added in some good characters as main characters, but none of the hidden characters are unique or cool in anyway.

Luigi, Jigglypuff, Ness and Captain Falcon were in the first one, so we knew they’d be back.

Mr. Game and Watch, Marth, Falco and Ganondorf came back from the second, so they aren’t anything original.

The new unlockable characters are R.O.B. (who is a common enemy in the adventure mode, and was probably just made playable because it was easy), Toon Link (clone of Link), Wolf (clone of Falco, who is also a clone of Fox), Lucario (meaning we swapped out Mewtwo’s original moveset for Lucario’s), and then Snake and Sonic (who are both actually cool).

Why did he leave so many disappointing characters to be secret characters? I was expecting some Nintendo mainstays, or at least people from his poll on the Japanese Smash Dojo. Here are that poll’s results, ranked by popularity. The people who got in are labelled:

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

So, why did he even have the poll if he wasn’t going to listen? I mean. Okay. He did his best. Geno doesn’t belong to Nintendo, he belongs to Square Enix (they developed Super Mario RPG, the game Geno was in). As a result, I can understand that adding him was hard. So, he jumped to the next on the list, Ike. Ike was confirmed. Then Sakurai had to skip Ridley, because - I guess - Ridley is too big. So he jumped to Captain Olimar. Wicked. But Krystal is next…so, how did people like Windwaker Link and Lucas even get considered before Krystal? And more importantly, how was Wolf considered AT ALL if he isn’t on the list? Instead of Star Wolf, we should have Krystal (who would have an original moveset) and instead of R.O.B., we should have Isaac, or one of the other two rankings.

I mean, come on. Why have the poll if you aren’t going to listen to the results? You tell the fans that you’ll change things. You promise them no more clone characters, and then fill three spots with Foxes. You say you want to add more female characters, but when it comes time to add a female with a unique moveset (Krystal), you add a clone. You also promised that you would pick main characters from more obscure titles rather than obscure characters from mainstream titles. So, why Lucario then? Because he is the Pokemon “bad-guy” flavour of the month, as Mewtwo was last time around? As far as I can see, the only main characters from obscure titles that I see are Pit and Olimar. We definitely should have had more people like Isaac in there, to spice up the lineup. Instead, we can play as three Fox clones. Hurray. I wonder if Ganondorf has an original moveset or not.

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.

Good 3D modelling software for the creation of the new (or first?) logo for The Box. If anyone has some suggestions, or knows of an available copy somewhere that will not plague my computer with malware, I would be eternally grateful.

Leave a note in the comments.

I need help altering my archive plugin so that it returns an archive list that is formatted better than what is on the left. If you can assist me, drop me a line in the comments. Thanks.