Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Free Content Coming?

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will get a paid DLC of five "Challenger Packs", where each of them come with a fighters, a stage and some music. There don't seem to be any plans beyond that, at least not for paid DLC, but it's always possible that Nintendo might add some free goodies like some Echo Fighters or an additional stage. And by looking at the current menus, there are some gaps here and there supporting this thought.

It's noticeable that the Training Stage replaces the random stage selection button in Training Mode, so the bottom right corner of the stage selection screen is still open and there would be space for a 109th stage in addition to the five stages coming with the DLC. It could be the rumored Minecraft stage, but at this point I would really like it more if Minecraft got its own Challenger Pack instead, because the player character ("Steve") would have lots of potential for Smash.

But it could really be that we might be getting an additional DLC stage for free. Both Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U even got one as well, with the Duck Hunt stage on the 3DS and the Miiverse stage on the Wii U. So, it's a possibility. Maybe they'll bring another past stage back (like Rainbow Road or Woolly World), maybe there will be something new. Or maybe there will be nothing at all... We'll see.

It could also be that the last slot will be used for a "second page" button like we had in past Smash games, which leads to your custom-made stages. Well, stages from a Stage Builder could also get their own tab on the top, so this doesn't necessarily need to be the case, but it would fit and make sense. (However, it's unlikely that the Stage Builder will return as a download. Sakurai's team will probably operate on bare minimum to get the new fighters and stages done from now on, while the rest of the development team moves on to new projects.)

In addition, if you look at the character select screen with different options and scenarios, it does look like there are still three spaces for potential Echo Fighters. Together with the random button, the roster usually does form a perfect rectangle when you look at the combined character screens, where Echo Fighters share a slot with their originals and the Mii Fighters get combined in one slot as well. This looks perfect and this won't change with the six DLC fighters, because by expanding the roster there will simply be another column with six additional slots, where it adds up perfectly.

The full roster, where the Echo Fighters and individual Mii Fighter types are separate, however, always has three open spaces in the last row - with and without the DLC. Again, the six DLC fighters will be handled by another column for the six rows, so they change nothing. But theoretically they could add three more Echo Fighters to make it a perfect rectangle in all scenarios and to make it a nice total of 10 Echo Fighters. And with that they could cover some more fan requests like Dixie Kong, Impa and Jeanne...

The last two could even be there to promote new games on the Switch, like Skyward Sword HD and Bayonetta 3. And their Fighter Spirits could even be different from the Spirits they already got in the game. Impa's Spirit is based on Ocarina of Time, so her Skyward Sword incarnation could become the Fighter Spirit. And Jeanne's Fighter Spirit could be simply use her design from Bayonetta 3.

Alternatively, one of these slots could go to a Mii Magician type for the Mii fighters. This class makes way too much sense, where it's weird that this isn't already in the game. Some of the Mii costumes, like Skull Kid, Viridi or Ashley, don't even really fit any of the three existing classes, but would be perfect for "Mii Mages".

Of course this is wishful thinking. Hyrule Warriors never got a 30th character for example and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U didn't have a perfectly even character select screen at the end either. So, these three slots on the character select and the one slot on the stage select might stay empty forever. But since Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is quite the ambitious project, adding some free Echo Fighters and some more stage content on top could turn into a reality. Let's hope for the best.