why are you confident about Ice Climbers?  just curious.  (i was surprised myself when they were back for Brawl)

Yeah, Rosalina and Luma has probably taken their place.

They're unique, from an otherwise-unrepresented franchise, they were given starter status in both Melee and Brawl, and their game was re-released on the Wii, 3DS, and Wii U virtual consoles.

Besides, they'd be relatively easy to add to the game, since outside of a couple of animations like the up-special, pretty much all of their animations are just duplication, and would be able to be transferred almost entirely from Brawl with minimal tweaking. So really, the only real element to handle would be the automation of Nana when separated from Popo, which would probably be handled the same way as Luma, the Pikmin, and any other characters that can act independently.

In short, I see Ice Climbers as a no-brainer inclusion.

That isnt necessairly right. By that logic all characters will be back and I am talking all characters not just missing ones from Brawl. They try to reduce the charcter roster sometimes cuz some of the characters are dying and will be forgotten soon and with more characters added in each game balancing th game is going to be harder.

I'm sure some will disappear, but I doubt that Ice Climbers will be one of them. Among other reasons for my expectation is that I'm expecting some sort of new Ice Climber game to be made, not unlike what they did with Kid Icarus (although I'd expect it to be a 2.5D game similar to the NSMB games, rather than a 3D reimagining).

And the only character known to have been dropped from Smash that wasn't just a clone of another character was Mewtwo, who was replaced by Lucario (another pokemon). Some people have been suggesting Rosalina+Luma as the replacement... but Rosalina+Luma don't represent the Ice Climber series as Lucario does the Pokemon series. The fact that Ice Climbers have been in two Smash games, in both cases as a starter, suggests that they're rated sufficiently highly by Nintendo to remain in the series. Furthermore, no dropped character from Melee to Brawl was the sole representative of their franchise (unless you count Dr Mario... but I wouldn't because it's Mario), and all dropped characters were replaced by other characters from the same franchise - Dr Mario with Wario, Roy with Ike, Mewtwo with Lucario, Pichu with Pokemon Trainer, and Young Link with Toon Link. Who would they replace Ice Climbers with?

If one character that uniquely represents its "franchise" with a unique moveset were going to be dropped, it would be ROB, since ROB isn't really a character in the way that the rest are (I don't actually think ROB will be dropped, either).

A new Ice Climber game? Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel.lol

Also, let's not forget the gamers who wanted fucking Spongebob to be in Smash 4! I am not really sure if those guys were trolling or not when they requested that!

No Jigglypuff = No Sale

ITT: People who don't know that there are still a lot of veterans who will obviously be in the game, yet may not receive official announcements.

Besides them, I want Chrom! Still holding out for a Professor Layton appearance- either as an assist trophy or even better as a playable character.

It also bears remembering that there were several veterans who *never* received confirmation for Brawl, right up until the game came out.