My hopes:
-Dixie Kong
-Conker (I accept his inclusion is almost impossible, though)
-Lip (we need more reps from puzzle games)
-Arle Nadja (why Puyo Puyo hasn’t been represented yet?)
-E.M.M.I. (unlikely, I know)
-Paper Mario (yeah, another Mario, but Paper Mario is hardly the same as regular Mario)
What we’ll probably get:
-A cheap character.
I cannot complain, though. Now I can see Pac-Man beating the s*** out of Kazuya with his own hands and not using a Mokujin robot, an actual Mario vs. Erdrick fight (as teased in Fortune Street), Banjo-Kazooie handling King K. Rool’s a** and a semi Wreck-It Ralph reunion (Sonic, Pac-Man, Ryu, Ken, Bowser).
Been mulling around who Nintendo would want rather than what we’d want for some time, and I’ve been thinking on the possibility of it being Paper Mario. First-party makes it easy to add without needs for negotiation, Byleth’s inclusion shows their recent timeframe looking to add characters to promote games that were still in development themselves during the subsequent Smash character’s development (Technically also true with Roy, Greninja and Incineroar but was going with the most recent example), the character has a convenient already established fan base alongside the more recent game’s new direction that they’re trying to attract new customers with and ending the biggest Smash game with Mario where it also started with Mario sounds like the sort of artistic pomp Nintendo would like to showcase.
I’d be fine with Paper Mario personally, but I only played the first two games. Have Origami King but haven’t had the desire to play it yet. So I’m quote-on-quote “part of the problem with Paper Mario” or so I hear from YouTubers. Eh. I suppose you can get a nice rounded moveset out of his hammer, spiked boots, the paint stuff from Color Splash being lifted from Inklings in Smash and those accordion arms from Origami King for grabs. Basic Mario in Smash is a nice mash-up from a bunch of 3D Mario games after all.
Two of my top three picks for FP2 were shot down by other characters from the same series getting in (Elma and Terra, we got Pyra/Mythra and Sephiroth instead), so at this point, it just leaves… Gordon Freeman. I know he has absolutely no chance of getting in of course, but he’d be my crazy dream pick at this point.
