Starkuss
beep boop
I usually browse the r/smashbros sub a lot more often than I do this place, and that place is pretty awash with this leak in particular, so seeing no mention of it here was really surprising. I'm gonna try and summarise what the leak is and why most of us believe it over there.
This potentially leaks the entire roster of Smash Ultimate; spoilers, obviously.
On the 24th of October this image was posted to Snapchat with the caption "f*** nintendo lolol" in French. Although the leaker blacked out the photographers name, 4chan somehow did some weird tricks to uncensor it and found that his name was Eric Bricard. He was soon found on linkedIn with ties to printing companies Marina PLV and ACP-PLV, specialising in manufacturing cutouts and banners for media advertising (Here is a close up of the supposed leaked roster: it leaks Banjo Kazooie, Isaac, Geno, Chorus Kids and Mach Rider as new fighters, and Shadow and Ken as echo fighters). In case you're wondering why the printed mural is so tiny, they're said to be paper armbands for use in a pre-release French Smash Ultimate tournament, which was previously rumoured to be using a release build of Ultimate. It's worth noting that Japanese magasine Cocoroco advertised Smash Ultimate as having 108 stages (coincidentally the currently revealed 103 stages, plus 1 for each of the 5 new original fighters). Cocoroco later claimed it was an error, and changed the number to 103.
Another small note on Mach Rider is that Sakurai teased that he purchased a Vifam figure to use as a reference in a project he is working on. From the image of the figure itself, it seems to use a very similar rifle to the one Mach Rider uses, and, to an extent, to the one seems to to hold in the leaked mural.
Mockup of the possible final roster - 13 characters per row, for 6 rows, meaning all 12 veterans could take up the top row (with Dark Samus as an echo).
Now, normally people wouldn't think twice about this leak - after all, Sakurai himself said not to expect too many newcomers, and now people are considering seven new fighters? There's more to this particular leak than meets the eye, though; the thing that sets this leak apart from the rest is the never-before-seen Grinch render for the new Grinch movie coming out soon, which supports the theory that the snap really was taken from an employee of a media advertising company. As a side-note, underneath the mural itself, there is also previously unseen screenshots of a blank Battlefield.
Fast-forward a few days, and Eric's linkedIn gets deleted with a message from Marina saying they aren't currently working with Nintendo (nothing from ACP-PLV though) and the leak is generally considered false by this point. However, it doesn't take long for new information to sprout up: This new item was seen for a split-second in a promotional video by Wendy's. After a few days of speculation, it's pretty widely accepted that it is a Golden Sun item - Growth Synergy - lending credibility to the Grinch leak. It is theorised that this item was in the Wendy's build because Isaac was originally planned to be revealed alongside Isabelle in the September direct - however, Sakurai mentioned that he had to edit the script after the earthquake happened to be more sensitive, like editing out the natural disaster scenes in the Cities: Skylines trailer, and it would make sense to put Isaac's reveal on hold because of his whole earthquake motif.
And now, most recently, it has been discovered that back in September (when Isaac was allegedly planned to be revealed) there were a few cropping glitches in the mural where Little Mac's glove is partly cut off, and, interestingly enough, it lines up with the leaked mural of Isaac's position from Snapchat. There are two possibilities here - firstly, and my favourite, Nintendo messed up with the editing of the mural, likely a rush job to get Isabelle in but to cut Isaac out of it. Secondly, and maybe more likely, is that due to Little Mac and Olimar being the only characters moved around, they simply forgot to edit the final panel of the mural at first, not noticing that it didn't line up.
Remember the printing company Eric Bricard currently works for, ACP-PLV? Unlike Marina, in the past few weeks since the leak began they have yet to release a statement at all - however, users on Gamefaqs dug up an old video (that no one saved, apparently) of the ACP-PLV office space from two years ago. The interesting part about this video is that, having investigated the kinds of industrial printers the company uses, the printing codes line up with the ones shown in the original Snapchat picture. Not only that, but on Sunday the 28th of October the video was taken down. That video was hosted by an independent French bank freely advertising the ACP-PLV company, meaning that they were deliberately contacted and asked to take the video down. It's been brought up already that this may simply be because the information in the video was outdated and that the company wanted to get rid of it, but its very suspicious for them to have taken it down on a Sunday. Businesses generally don't do much of anything on Sundays, and they especially wouldn't ask for a two-year-old video to be taken down when they could have just waited until the week unless it was urgent (they would have been notified of the link between that video and the Grinch leak because the comments on the video immediately flooded after it was found). Again, I want to reiterate that, despite this, they have yet to deny the leak.
That's about it. I'll try to update this if any new information comes up, or if I have got any information wrong (please tell me).
Having followed this leak, watching it develop for the past few weeks, I suppose it's easier for me to believe it because it feels like it has a lot more history behind it. Do you guys believe this, having (maybe) this be your first exposure to it?
This potentially leaks the entire roster of Smash Ultimate; spoilers, obviously.
On the 24th of October this image was posted to Snapchat with the caption "f*** nintendo lolol" in French. Although the leaker blacked out the photographers name, 4chan somehow did some weird tricks to uncensor it and found that his name was Eric Bricard. He was soon found on linkedIn with ties to printing companies Marina PLV and ACP-PLV, specialising in manufacturing cutouts and banners for media advertising (Here is a close up of the supposed leaked roster: it leaks Banjo Kazooie, Isaac, Geno, Chorus Kids and Mach Rider as new fighters, and Shadow and Ken as echo fighters). In case you're wondering why the printed mural is so tiny, they're said to be paper armbands for use in a pre-release French Smash Ultimate tournament, which was previously rumoured to be using a release build of Ultimate. It's worth noting that Japanese magasine Cocoroco advertised Smash Ultimate as having 108 stages (coincidentally the currently revealed 103 stages, plus 1 for each of the 5 new original fighters). Cocoroco later claimed it was an error, and changed the number to 103.
Another small note on Mach Rider is that Sakurai teased that he purchased a Vifam figure to use as a reference in a project he is working on. From the image of the figure itself, it seems to use a very similar rifle to the one Mach Rider uses, and, to an extent, to the one seems to to hold in the leaked mural.
Mockup of the possible final roster - 13 characters per row, for 6 rows, meaning all 12 veterans could take up the top row (with Dark Samus as an echo).
Now, normally people wouldn't think twice about this leak - after all, Sakurai himself said not to expect too many newcomers, and now people are considering seven new fighters? There's more to this particular leak than meets the eye, though; the thing that sets this leak apart from the rest is the never-before-seen Grinch render for the new Grinch movie coming out soon, which supports the theory that the snap really was taken from an employee of a media advertising company. As a side-note, underneath the mural itself, there is also previously unseen screenshots of a blank Battlefield.
Fast-forward a few days, and Eric's linkedIn gets deleted with a message from Marina saying they aren't currently working with Nintendo (nothing from ACP-PLV though) and the leak is generally considered false by this point. However, it doesn't take long for new information to sprout up: This new item was seen for a split-second in a promotional video by Wendy's. After a few days of speculation, it's pretty widely accepted that it is a Golden Sun item - Growth Synergy - lending credibility to the Grinch leak. It is theorised that this item was in the Wendy's build because Isaac was originally planned to be revealed alongside Isabelle in the September direct - however, Sakurai mentioned that he had to edit the script after the earthquake happened to be more sensitive, like editing out the natural disaster scenes in the Cities: Skylines trailer, and it would make sense to put Isaac's reveal on hold because of his whole earthquake motif.
And now, most recently, it has been discovered that back in September (when Isaac was allegedly planned to be revealed) there were a few cropping glitches in the mural where Little Mac's glove is partly cut off, and, interestingly enough, it lines up with the leaked mural of Isaac's position from Snapchat. There are two possibilities here - firstly, and my favourite, Nintendo messed up with the editing of the mural, likely a rush job to get Isabelle in but to cut Isaac out of it. Secondly, and maybe more likely, is that due to Little Mac and Olimar being the only characters moved around, they simply forgot to edit the final panel of the mural at first, not noticing that it didn't line up.
Remember the printing company Eric Bricard currently works for, ACP-PLV? Unlike Marina, in the past few weeks since the leak began they have yet to release a statement at all - however, users on Gamefaqs dug up an old video (that no one saved, apparently) of the ACP-PLV office space from two years ago. The interesting part about this video is that, having investigated the kinds of industrial printers the company uses, the printing codes line up with the ones shown in the original Snapchat picture. Not only that, but on Sunday the 28th of October the video was taken down. That video was hosted by an independent French bank freely advertising the ACP-PLV company, meaning that they were deliberately contacted and asked to take the video down. It's been brought up already that this may simply be because the information in the video was outdated and that the company wanted to get rid of it, but its very suspicious for them to have taken it down on a Sunday. Businesses generally don't do much of anything on Sundays, and they especially wouldn't ask for a two-year-old video to be taken down when they could have just waited until the week unless it was urgent (they would have been notified of the link between that video and the Grinch leak because the comments on the video immediately flooded after it was found). Again, I want to reiterate that, despite this, they have yet to deny the leak.
That's about it. I'll try to update this if any new information comes up, or if I have got any information wrong (please tell me).
Having followed this leak, watching it develop for the past few weeks, I suppose it's easier for me to believe it because it feels like it has a lot more history behind it. Do you guys believe this, having (maybe) this be your first exposure to it?
