Is This The Mysterious New Mode In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate?

Following last week's big Smash Bros. Nintendo Direct, folks have started speculating about what might be in store for the brawler's single player offerings, and one of those theories is gaining traction. With a bit of technical detective work and a few potential clues hidden in recent trailers, many fans are now convinced that the main single player option will be known as "Spirit Mode."

During the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Direct, game director Masahiro Sakurai pulled back the curtain even further on the mascot brawler due out in December, revealing all sorts of new characters, modes, maps, assist characters and more. In the midst of all of that, viewers noted that one option in the game's main menu was blurred out, something Sakurai himself stated simply could not be discussed just yet. Since the one thing he didn't really touch on was single player modes in Smash, it's assumed that's exactly what got blurred out.

According to a report from Polygon, this spurred on Twitter user l'attarde to start piecing the pixelated image together and, based on a rather lengthy thread explaining the process, it looks like the menu option might be for something called "Spirit." According to the thread, both the Japanese and English versions of the Nintendo Direct were referenced for this project and both came up with the same result. The English version of the image appears to form the word "Spirit," while the Japanese looks to be the katakana for the same word.

You can decide for yourself if the process and results seem legit, but the recent trailers certainly seem to support it. At E3, the Ridley trailer showed both Mario and Mega Man being taken out by the evil space creature in rather grisly fashion (for Nintendo, anyway). Then, last week, we saw Castlevania's Death straight-up rip the soul out of Luigi, which turned into a floating blue flame (spirit?) until Simon Belmont showed up to crack that whip.

So, roll all of that into one big theory, and folks feel there's reason to believe that the single player mode in the new Smash game will revolve around Nintendo baddies literally collecting the spirits of heroes to further some nefarious plan. Of course, given the timeframe between now and the December launch, as well as the fact that the mode was deliberately teased during the most recent Direct, and we figure Nintendo will be answering all of our questions during yet another direct sometime in the coming months.

If I had to make a guess, I'd put decent money on a big reveal during Tokyo Game Show next month. Combine details concerning the single player mode with the remaining character reveals, and we could be in for at least one more info blowout before Sakurai and his team go back into hiding to get the game ready to launch.