Yeah, I'll basically be spending all week trying to convince myself that Club Nintendo doesn't hate me for some reason. >.>
(never saw Smash Bros. in the "intend to buy" section; last game I filled out for that was Layton vs. Wright)
I saw some rumor flying around about linking to the WiiU version unlocking more characters. Of course, the characters they gave were an obvious fanboy wishlist (you know the drill: Ridley, Mewtwo, Dixie, and Chorus Men who are now a popular pick for some reason). Still, the method/marketing logic makes sense.
I am hoping they add something, if only to keep the excitement up for the WiiU version. 3DS and WiiU Smash will both be awesome regardless, but it really would be nice to have some decent surprises left for the WiiU version. Some part of me doubts it'll happen at the game launch, but maybe as DLC later, like what they did with Mario Kart 8?
About the clones, I agree they don't truly come at anyone's expense since they're likely cheaper to produce. Picking Falco over Wolf bugs me a little, though, not that I play the Star Fox characters that often, but Wolf did add more variety. Falco may have different A attacks but he's still the same basic weight class/style as Fox; Wolf was not only a decidedly more "out there" style, he was also unusual in the grand scheme of Smash Bros. in being a heavyweight of relatively small size. And, while I'm happy for PB and others who missed Dr. Mario, he logically could have been an alt skin with Mega Vitamins as a custom move. Online restrictions are about the only reason NOT to do that. I'll reserve judgement on Dark Pit until I actually get to play as him, but the knee-jerk reaction to him is understandable; he literally IS an alt color of Pit, design-wise. The only thing I can imagine is that he's an excuse to expand the list of custom moves (God knows Uprising has enough weapons to choose from). As for Lucina, "female Marth" is all the justification they need, really. But I am curious as to how their attack range compares, since they seem to keep shortening Marth's reach. I don't expect ANYONE to believe that the lack of tipping is favorable, but if Lucina actually has longer range as a tradeoff, that would make sense.