I want to believe in you and I heard you

[shamanicshaymin]

Was removing Geno from Brawl the reason for the delay?

With the final roster having been revealed, there is a new rumor floating around the internet stating that the character Geno, from Super Mario RPG on the SNES was originally a character in Brawl. Supposedly, copyright issues arose between Nintendo and Square-Enix (who owns the character) and Nintendo was forced to remove Geno at a late stage of the games development, causing the original delay.

Those who have been following the development of Brawl extensively know that Masahiro Sakurai, the man himself regarding Smash Bros development, had a survey in Japan a few years back where he asked gamers what characters they would most like to see in Brawl. Every character in the top 10 of that list is in the game except Geno, who was the #1 character on the list.

Makiko Ohmoto (Kirby/Ness) originally going to voice Geno? Damn...

Ugh. I'm holding hope it's a rumor too, but it breaks my heart that Geno and certain folks are locked away all because of copyright issues. I also feel a little angry at Squeenix; why keep a character you have no development plans for and just intend to forget about them? I don't want to say they're gone forever, mainly because I don't believe that. I mean, we've seen little cameos. Remakes. All that. Still, if this is true, this is dang disappointing.

Bah, I'll cope. This makes me want to draw/write Geno and the SMRPG cast even more, if just to keep these guys alive. :(