Sakurai sparks Smash Ultimate DLC speculation with cryptic clock tweet

Super Smash Bros Ultimate creator Masahiro Sakurai has opened up the DLC fighter speculation floodgates by tweeting a mysterious picture of two clocks on his official account.

The tweet was part of the Smash Ultimate boss’s picture of the day series where he tweets out a random photo from the game, often with little to no context.

However, his most latest picture has turned up fan speculation to eleven, as it features two stopwatches in front of a blue warp background. Although it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact time on each clock, the left one is sitting at about 12:15, while the right one is around 10:30.

Some players, including major pros who rarely post speculation, have taken this tweet to suggest it’s related to the next Smash Ultimate DLC reveal.

Smash Melee God Juan ‘Hungrybox’ Debiedma took the 12:15 to mean December 15, and suggested that this could be the date of an upcoming a new fighter reveal.

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He also took the 10:30 to mean 10/30 and theorized that we’d be getting a new patch on October 30, which seems likely, as patch 9.0.0 brought in Minecraft Steve and some major glitches.

Others have suggested that the blue warp looks like a gateway portal from Chrono Trigger. “The clocks, if you go left to right, appear to be rewinding,” noted one user.

It should be noted that Sakurai is a fan of Chrono Trigger. In a 2020 Famitsu column, Sakurai wrote that he views Chrono Cross as the game’s sequel, but views thinking of the original game without a sequel as an “interesting perspective.”

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So, it’s possible that this tweet could really be a reference to that game.

“Even still, Crash 4 involves time manipulation, so that’s my tinfoil hat message of the day,” Diabetic added.

The suggestion that Sakurai’s tweet could be about Crash is also a possibility, considering that the character has been a popular pick among players for a while.

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As Dexerto previously reported, a supposedly leaked document from Activision claimed that the company had a five-year plan for the Bandicoot, setting Crash to appear in Smash by 2021.

One other possibility is that this tweet is somehow connected to The Game Awards in December. During the 2018 event, Smash Ultimate’s first fighters pass character Joker was revealed.

While no fighter was announced during the 2019 installment, it is possible one could show up in 2020. With TGA scheduled for December 10, it’s possible that a reveal takes place then followed by a release on the fifteenth.

In any case, we’ll have to wait and see if the tweets really have any sort of meaning to them or if they were just thrown together on the fly by Sakurai without any hidden messages.