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Smash Bros. Fans Think They Have Figured Out Where The Trail Of Dead Characters Is Leading
Like any good murder mystery, people watch as investigators make connections they hadn't considered, but seem to make total sense as soon as our minds make the connection. Since Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was shown off at E3, the newcomers have left a pile of bodies in their wake in each new CG trailer. Metroid villain Ridley killed both Mario and Mega Man, Castlevania's Death shuffled Luigi from this mortal coil, and King K. Rool made King DeDeDe pay for impersonating him.
During last week's Smash Bros. Direct, director Masahiro Sakurai placed a mosaic censor over a mode in the game's main menu, saying he would explain the mode in due time. Shortly after the stream, however, twitter user @noctulescent noticed that the mosaic blur was overlayed over the video footage and not hardcoded onto the image. That means that, when the menu is zooming in or out, the blur is not keeping up with it pixel-to-pixel. According to noctulescent, this means you can make out the word "Spirits" from the menu button.
frame by frame, the pixelated green thing in #SmashBrosDirect says "Spirits". @GameXplain pic.twitter.com/fZKN0nYmIC
— l'attardé (@noctulescent) August 8, 2018
After that revelation, other users have been able to figure out a bit more. Using a frame-by-frame analysis, another twitter user named @than_kyou was able to draw what he could make out of the emblem above the text.
I wish I could get a good shot of the top of it but as far as I can tell it's something along the lines of this? pic.twitter.com/jaFATqM3oM
— Mike LeMieux (@Than_Kyou) August 11, 2018
The image looks like a Japanese wisp, also known as an Onibi. It's a little spirit that resembles a flame, which is used in a lot of Yokai Watch designs to indicate a ghostly presence. If it is indeed that, it might explain why all the Smash Bros. Ultimate trailers so far have focused on villains taking out heroes, to the point where Luigi is shown in a spirit form at the end of the Simon and Richter Belmont trailer.
We talk a little bit about what the hidden mode could be in last week's episode of The GI Show, which you can find right here.
Whether everyone is wrong about the spirits thing or not will be known by the time Super Smash Bros. Ultimate releases on December 7.
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