New pac-man tin-foil-hat theory (by me):
Pac-man stage is going to be in the game. Maybe pac-man isn't, but his stage will be.
What's the most famous part about the stage other than the characters and pellets (and power pellets!)? The fact that you can wrap around once you go through the edge of the screen. Nintendo knows this, so they had to make code that allows characters to wrap around from left to right and right to left.
This is something NEW, not present in other smash games.
The 'Mario Bros.' stage SHOULD have allowed for this, but didn't.
You died if you hit the edge of the stage, making this not fun. While, in the original Mario Bros game, the wrap-around was a mechanic, it wasn't FAMOUS for this mechanic.
Pac-Man *IS* famous for this mechanic. Everyone knows that. Tons of pop culture references to it. Futurama refers to it in the episode 'raiders of the lost arcade.'
It's so famous, it
has to be programmed into smash 4 for the
pac-man stage.
Now, nintendo is thinking, well, what franchises do we have that also incorporate this mechanic, maybe we can implement it into stages from those franchises.
As they're going down the list, the come across this game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSKXykKsIiA
Balloon fight. This game, too, features this mechanic.
now look here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpT0gLC7-vU#t=286
What's that? Peach and samus wrap around? Well of course, balloon fight does that, but it isn't FAMOUS for that.
So that's my theory. The wrap-around mechanic was created because of the Pac-Man stage, and therefore implemented onto the balloon fight stage.
*Takes off tin-foil-hat*
I'll be here to quote myself when pac-man stage is revealed and has a wrap-around mechanic. Thanks