Some more info trickled out of the blog this week. http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/newsArt.cfm?artid=13729 While there were no huge announcements this week, a couple assumptions were confirmed regarding a new character and player profiles.
New Character: Zelda
Zelda was officially announced as playable, making her the first character that wasn't previously revealed in a trailer to be announced on the blog. She isn't exactly surprising though, as the Sheik/Zelda combination was one of the most popular characters in Melee. It's important to note that nothing has been mentioned about Sheik yet on the blog. Did the transformation get pulled? Are they just holding back the announcement until they talk about Zelda's special moves? Only time will tell.
New Song: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Medley
A clip (1:28 long) of a new song was posted. You can hear it here. The composition supervisor was obviously Koji Kondo. Interestingly enough, the arrangement supervisor was Michiko Naruke, who composed most of the music in the Wild ARMs series of RPGs, which have all been released on Sony platforms.
New Item: Banana Peel
Presumably borrowed from the Mario Kart series, players will now be able to chuck banana peels at each other during a match. If a player walks on it, they will slip and fall. It's currently unknown exactly how this will affect the slipping player. Will they take damage? Will they just become incapacitated for a second? Can they recover from it if they slip and fall off a ledge? Only time will tell.
New Feature: Names
Player profiles make a welcome return as well. Names will be entered using a cell phone-like entry system. These names will have control layouts tied to them. That means that not only will the game support four different types of controllers (as previously reported), but each of those controller types can also be customized on a per button level. These unprecedented customization options can be saved into your profile, which can then be saved to a Wii Remote and brought to a friend's house.
Special Moves: Wario
A couple of Wario's special moves were revealed, but both were shown in one form or another in previously released trailers and screens. First his side special move is called Wario Chopper. During this move, Wario jumps on his motorcycle and runs over everyone in his path. It sounds like it will work similarly to the Yoshi's egg move from Melee, in that you will be able to change his direction. Also, apparently Wario can fall off the motorcycle and it will remain on the screen. It can then apparently be picked up by other players. Wario's down special move is called Wario Waft. This is is trademarked passing gas technique that has been hinted at all along. There's an interesting twist to the move though. Apparently if the move is used often enough, Wario can run out of gas and the strength of the attack will go down. Therefore, if you give Wario plenty of time to build up gas, a massive explosion will occur!
Those are the announcements for this week. As always, you can see these as they are posted over at SmashBros.com and we'll have the weekly summary posted here every Friday.