As they do each month, Nintendo released a video showcasing some of the releases that have come out or are releasing during the month, but this specific video has a bit of extra meaning when it comes to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s newest DLC.
The games that were highlighted in this month’s video were the upcoming Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, Fortnite Season Nine, Smash Ultimate, and Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
Fortnite’s ninth season of content has been out for a while now, but players can still download the free-to-play game and enjoy the season before it ends. Meanwhile, Ultimate Alliance 3 is releasing on July 19 and has comic fans stoked to jump back into the arcadey, beat ’em up action with their friends.
This is where things got a little weird, though. Smash Ultimate was shown, with the game’s segment entirely focusing on the new character, The Hero. As the next character coming to the Fighters Pass, The Hero is a group of characters from the Dragon Quest series of games that utilize swords, magic, and various other abilities to battle monsters.
The Dragon Quest representatives were announced during Nintendo’s E3 Direct presentation and were given a Summer 2019 release window, with no specific date. Most players speculated they would be added to the game in July so that the next character, Banjo-Kazooie, would have a wider window for release before the next reveal.
In the video, Nintendo gives no further information on when the DLC will be released, but because it was shown among other games with set release dates, it can be inferred that it will release between Ultimate Alliance and Fire Emblem.
With Ultimate Alliance coming out on July 19 and Fire Emblem’s newest title dropping on July 26, that gives Nintendo just under a week to put out the new Smash update and DLC if that is truly what it is aiming for. Joker from Persona 5 was the first DLC character added to the game back on April 17, which was a Wednesday.
Going off of the timing in the video, The Hero will probably arrive on either July 17 or 24, both of which are Wednesdays.
If the new DLC and subsequent patch are released on July 17, they will make the deadline to be accepted for EVO 2019, which means players can use The Hero at the biggest Smash tournament in history. All of this is just speculation, but the timeline for this video dropping so close to two big releases almost certainly is not a coincidence.
