If there was one game (or games, rather) that fans walked away excited for after the Big N's latest Nintendo Direct presentation, it was undoubtedly Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS. The pair of brawlers have been highly anticipated since they were prematurely announced back at E3 2011, and gamers have been waiting with bated breath ever since they were first announced.

One of the most surprising turn of events that's happen throughout the games' incredibly slow development was the revelation that Namco Bandai would be aiding Nintendo with the development of Smash; alongside franchise creator Masahiro Sakurai and his crew at Sora LTD. This new found partnership instantly spawned rumors that a Namco Bandai-owned character would be joining the imminent brawler, and lead to copious amounts of speculation.

According to Sakurai, this is not the case, and Namco Bandai won't be given any special consideration when it comes to including its characters in the forthcoming games.

"Just because the game is being cooperatively developed with Namco Bandai involved, that doesn’t at all mean that they’d be given any special consideration for having characters in the game. Smash Bros. can still be considered as an all-star collection of Nintendo characters. Just like with Mega Man or any other third-party character, it would have to be a very special situation."

"Adding third-party characters should be considered a very special case. In the last game, when we added Sonic and Snake, there were lots of different hoops to jump through as far as getting approvals and making sure all the parties involved were happy with the way things went. You can consider it a very special circumstance for that to happen."

Understandably, it's hard to please third-parties when it comes to their character's inclusion, but that hasn't prevented fan demand from getting other characters like Sonic the Hedgehog and the recently revealed Mega Man in Super Smash Bros.. Sakurai also admitted that there are even hoops his team has to jump through to include Pokemon characters — making it a significant process when everything is said and done.

"Even in cases like adding Pokemon characters, there are a lot of parties involved and there’s a lot of wrangling. It’s much tougher than people can imagine. I know lots of people have requests and their own ideas about third-party characters that would work, but I want people to understand that adding a third-party character like Mega Man is a very special situation."

There are fans out there who'd prefer that Smash Bros. stick to Ninty characters, but the inclusion of iconic mascots such as Mega Man really are appreciated and understood — especially considering their prominence within Nintendo history. Sakurai hasn't ruled out the possibility of a Namco Bandai character joining the fray (as some may recall, Pac-Man came in at number one on our list of top 10 third-party characters that may appear in Super Smash Bros.), so it'll be interesting to see if Masahiro's claims are simply a misdirect.

There's still plenty of unknown details about the pair of Super Smash Bros. games coming to Wii U and 3DS, so stay tuned to Game Rant for updates on new characters, stages, items, and more.

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Source: IGN