Fans think theyve discovered clues as to the identity of all five DLC fighters, as rumours intensify of Persona 5 R coming to Switch.
It may have been one of the last releases of 2018 but Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was already promoted as Amazon.coms biggest-selling game of the year before it was even out, and thanks to promised new DLC its going to stay relevant long into 2019.
Nintendo has confirmed that five new characters, plus stages and associated music, will be added to the game as paid-for DLC and already announced the first as Joker from Persona 5.
The only clue as to who the others are is what could be construed as a hint about Rex from Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but rumours started by fans and data-miners points towards some very different additions.
Ok so since the secret's out, here's confirmation. Params in Ultimate confirm the code names of 2 future characters, "jack" and "brave".
The labels for these characters:
fighter_kind_jack
fighter_kind_brave
fighter_kind_packu (piranha plant) pic.twitter.com/rCRRg8KR3W— jam1garner (@jam1garner) January 3, 2019
Hackers have examined the latest update for the game and found references to three new characters. Theyre all given codenames, with packu matching the Japanese name for the piranha plant (already announced as a free pre-order bonus), jack being a reference to Joker, and brave believed to be a reference to Dragon Quest.
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The fan theory is that brave refers to the hero class in Dragon Quest, whose direct translation in Japanese actually means brave. More specifically, the characters is believed to be Erdrick, the hero from NES game Dragon Quest III – a game that is little known in the West but which is massively popular in Japan.
Assuming Joker is jack then the data-mining shows that hes a fairly lightweight and fast character, with a wall jump and rapid jab. Brave is a middleweight and about as fast as Young Link, but theres no hint as to any of their abilities.
Given how rare it is for any Nintendo rumour to turn out to be true, especially with regards to Smash Bros., youre probably rightly unconvinced by the above.
But the interesting thing is that a separate list of all five new characters is also doing the rounds at the moment, which is where the Erdrick angle comes from. A leaker on 5Channel (as summarised by GearNuke) appeared to have knowledge of Joker before he was announced and also claims to know who the other four characters are.
According to him the other fighters are Erdrick (plus palette swaps for Anlucia from Dragon Quest X and the protagonist from Dragon Quest XI), Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden, Steve from Minecraft, and Doomguy from Doom.
There are numerous reasons to doubt the list, not least the fact that it doesnt include Rex from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and that all the characters are from third party games not owned by Nintendo.
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However, the leak claims that there are direct tie-ins planned for all five games, following speculation that Persona 5 R, which was announced over Christmas, will also be coming to Switch.
On top of this the leaker claims that Dragon Quest XI S and several other Dragon Quest games will be coming to Switch in 2019. And while there hasnt been a new Ninja Gaiden game for years, its claimed a 30th anniversary project is planned for some time in 2019.
Steve from Minecraft was apparently going to be part of the initial line-up of fighters, but was instead delayed to coincide with Minecraft Dungeons. Hell allegedly be announced at E3 and include palette swaps (not echo fighters) for both Alex and Master Chief from Halo.
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Doomguy will also have palette swaps for both his old school Doom 64 version and the new Doom Eternal incarnation – a game which has already been confirmed for Switch.
Its worth noting that Bethesda hinted to us back in August that they have been speaking to Nintendo about Smash Bros. and since theres nothing in the game at the moment from them it means the Doom rumour – and by association the rest of these fighters – is perhaps more likely than it first seems.
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