Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s Next Character Might Be From Another Famed JRPG

There’s been a lot of supposition about who will be the next person to join Super Smash Bros. Ultimate after Persona 5’s Joker joins at some point this year, and now thanks to the work of some dataminers we finally have an idea of who that might be.

Discovered by the dataminers @KuroganerHammer, @_Mizumi and others were three parameters which are believed to be code names for three of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s future fighters:

• fighter_kind_jack
• fighter_kind_brave
• fighter_kind_packu

As well as various parameters for each of them, such as running speeds (for reference, Sonic has a maximum speed of 3.85 and Incineroar has a maximum speed of 1.18):

• fighter_kind_jack – 2.21
• fighter_kind_brave – 1.74
• fighter_kind_packu – 1.72

Among these characters, we already know two of them: jack and packu. Packu is the more obvious of the two, as that name is a direct reference to “Packun Flower” which happens to be the Japanese name for the Piranha Plant from the Mario series. Meanwhile, Jack is likely a reference to Jack Frost who is something of a mascot for the Shin Megami Tensei series which, in turn, will be represented by Joker.

With those two out of the way, all that’s left is the identity of brave, and right now all bets are on it being someone from Dragon Quest — most likely Erdrick, the central character of the original three games (he was only playable in DQ III though).

Why?

First off, brave is a possible direct translation of the Japanese word “Yuusha,” which itself is the name of the Hero class from older Dragon Quest titles. In addition, a rumor suggesting Dragon Quest was going to be represented in Ultimate has been floating around since December. Lastly, Dragon Quest is a pretty big deal in Japan and the franchise got its start on the Famicom/NES, so the inclusion here would mimic what happened with Final Fantasy and Cloud.

None of these when taken alone mean all that much, but when they’re considered together, it’s not hard to understand why all fingers are pointing towards Dragon Quest and Erdrick.

Of course, even with this new data, nothing is confirmed until Nintendo makes it official, so we’ll just have to wait for that time to (hopefully) come.