Where's Sherlock when you need him?

How lucky am I? I had just got in from the frigid cold of shoveling my front walkway before the mailman shows up this afternoon when I see an update on the VGcats website. Lo and behold, the final roster roster for Super Smash Brothers Brawl has been released!!

...

Err wait a minute, that doesn't seem right at all? Although it would be great fun to play as Jesus and watch him turn everything into wine, something seems too suspicious.

Either way, I had a good laugh from the VGcats website, something that seems to be consistent with only that webcomic. However, he does seem to be making a very valid point.

This is the original final roster that was under suspicion. I had to download the picture myself and zoom in to see all the wonderous characters I could potentially be playing on March 9th. The point that Scott (the VGcats author) is trying to make is that if he can doctor up a final roster of Smash Brothers, then anyone can. Although all of the characters shown in the supposed real roster seem completely feasible and even enjoyable, something definitely seems fishy about it. Joystiq.com seems to dissect the alleged official roster pretty good:

So is this the holy grail of Brawl information? As much as we'd like to believe it so, we just can't. For one thing, the background seems to be taken directly from this official image of a much smaller select screen. Everything matches a little too perfectly, from the transparent background image to the floating cursor in the bottom left corner. For another thing, the images many of the "newly revealed" characters are 2D drawings that don't match up well with the 3D renderings for the officially revealed characters. Even for those that are renders, a closely matching source image can usually be found with a quick Google image search, suggesting an overzealous photoshopper.

There is also a 1UP article that seems to contain pretty official Brawl news from the developer himself. Here's what they say:

According to the French-based site LiveWii, Super Smash Bros. Brawl director Masashiro Sakurai commented on Japanese radio's "The Gaming Show" about various changes to the game's roster.

Sakurai announced Bowser Jr., the "Celda" version of Link, and Ridely, the archenemies of Samus, would all be joining the cast of characters for the Wii release.

This makes sense considering Bowser Jr. has had more prominent placement in various Mario sports titles, as well as being his dad's right hand man in New Super Mario Bros., and the "Celda" version of Link was seen on GameCube and now on the Nintendo DS in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Plus, with both Samus and Zero Suit Samus appearaning in SSBB, it makes sense her foe would get a chance to fight back.

We've also, unfortunately, learned of three current characters that will not be returning: The Ice Climbers, Mr. Game & Watch, and Young Link have no home in SSBB. We don't know who exactly will take their place just yet, but Sakurai stated he wants a roster 40 deep, with 1-2 more non-Nintendo characters.

Time to start the guessing game.

The funniest thing about all of this information is that you never know what is legitimate and what's complete BS. Who knows if the developer was actually on a Japanese show called "The Gaming Show"? Is that even a real Japanese show? This all reminds me of a time way back in the day when Vic decided to make up a rumor about Mortal Kombat 2. He made this rumor that you could Fatality someone by hanging their head on one of the sharp hooks found in the Dead Pool. The next thing I know, I'm hearing from a friend about a Dead Pool hanging fatality that I had never heard of. And then you get things like this on the internet.

(Note: I didn't even realize it had gone as far as people making fake videos of it until I just looked it up for a picture of the Dead Pool.)

I think what fascinates me most is the amount of buzz that's happening about the game. You can spend 2 minutes googling the term Super Smash Brothers Brawl, and you'll find countless rumors and fake screenshots claiming to be the inside information about the game. This is nothing new to highly publicized games though if anyone remembers the Halo dubacle with their mysterious 'I Love Bees' invention for Halo 2. I definitely think that this is a dimension that is totally unique to video game news. You never see people photoshopping photos or trying so hard to convince others about fake movie or casting news. At least I haven't.

So when will we know the final verdict on Super Smash Brothers Brawl? I guess our best chance is when it's released on January 31st in Japan. But even by then, that's not gonna stop some people from photoshopping more photos and claiming them to be from Japanese sources. I guess the best thing would be to wait until March 9th, when the game is finally released in North America. (which probably means March 16th or something for us). Even then, who knows if Nintendo is gonna go ahead and delay the game further for the 600th time and push it back to March of 2011 (which probably means never for us). By then, I'll be enjoying my Starcraft Ghost, thank you very much.... Hey wait a minute...