So I think someone did this once before quite awhile ago, but I was bored tonight with little to do, so I decided to count up a tally of how many times each character has been featured in a pic of the day. It's just for fun and obviously things are skewed by when and in what order characters have been revealed, but hey, why not?
A couple notes:
- There are a couple of screens where only Pikmin appear or only Rush appears, but I counted these as appearances for Olimar and Mega Man respectively since they're integral part of their movesets and mean those characters are actually in the shots.
- In shots where two instances of the same character appear (i.e. female and male Wii Fit Trainer or two different colors of the same character), I counted them as two separate instances of that character.
- In shots that are divided into separate parts (like Little Mac's side smash explanation or Pac-Man's taunt), I only counted that as one instance of the character.
- In series of screenshots showing the same match (like the explanation of the 3D Land stage), I counted each screenshot (and instance of the character) separately.
- I lumped the three different kinds of Mii Fighters together because it's sometimes hard to tell what type a Mii Fighter is supposed to be at just a glance.
- There was one instance where I could not tell who a character was (the right-most character in the first 3DS Golden Plains shot). I have my guesses, but I did not count this character since I wasn't sure.
- This only includes the pics of the day, and not any of the screens from the various press packs or screenshot collections released by Nintendo.
- I don't 100% guarantee the accuracy of these numbers, but they should be really close if they're not perfect. I didn't care enough to go back and double-check everything.
So without further ado...
Mario: 52
Mega Man: 38
Villager: 35
Link: 34
Samus: 33
Wii Fit Trainer: 32
Kirby: 25
Luigi: 23
Donkey Kong: 20
Pikachu: 20
Pit: 19
Toon Link: 19
Marth: 17
Rosalina: 17
Sonic: 17
Bowser: 15
Fox: 15
Peach: 15
Little Mac: 14
Olimar: 14
Mii Fighters: 11
Zelda: 10
King Dedede: 9
Diddy Kong: 7
Pac-Man: 7
Ike: 6
Robin: 6
Lucario: 5
Yoshi: 5
Charizard: 4
Greninja: 4
Lucina: 4
Palutena: 4
Zero Suit Samus: 4
Sheik: 3
Captain Falcon: 2
I'll keep updating these numbers on my end as we get more pics of the day and do update posts once in awhile, like maybe once a month or something. Just for fun, like I said, and maybe to get some discussions going!
For me, the initial points that really stand out to me are Mario having so many more appearances than anyone else, Mega Man being in second (whoo!), Greninja having only four appearances since his reveal (that's harsh for a newcomer revealed a few months ago now), and Lucario having only five (having been revealed way back in January). Anything else stand out to you guys?