Indeed!
I would like to bump my post for everyone to read!
DUCK HUNT HYPE!
Seriously. Im glad that Sakurai decided to model the dog after the
official Japanese art. He looks like an adorable dog and not the
bipedal monstrosity that mockups tend to favor. The sprite of the dog laughing behind the bushes doesnt mean that he should look like a dwarf in a mascot costume at all times.
Same here. I really appreciate the notions that they made the model based on Japanese game box's dog art and the sprites.
Ironically that's when Duck Hunt in fake leak stood out a lot for me. For example, No one ever gave Duck Hunt Dog and Ducks the name, Duck Hunt. People always coined, Laughing Dog, Duck Hunt Dog, Mr. Pepper, and Dog and Ducks. No one ever mentioned Duck Hunt ever since Smash 4 started.
Also other thing that stood out for me as well is that fan arts and models always portrayed Duck Hunt dog as bipedal character that can fighting with frontal paws and used a lot of special moves as if he's human. Leak's Duck Hunt Dog didn't. The picture implied that he is more likely to be quadruped fighter, along with a duck or more.
I have a highest res picture of Duck Hunt as I could find. Please take a look at Duck Hunt Dogs. Here the pictures that y'all can compare models.
He clearly still have black freckles ongoing for him on his cheeks and he still have black eye rings around his eyes, like Dog's sprites. Also you can see that he have black collars just like he did in NES.
Heck, I better see this animation as Duck Hunt's introduction.
Alright, back to topic. I would like to share other people's perspectives on Playable Duck Hunt Dog and you will see why it's different from leaked model.
Conclusion: Heck, if it's fake render or real model by Sakurai and the team, it's practically best take on Modern Duck Hunt's Dog and Duck. It was completely different from other models that I have seen over the time. Either, They have done fantastic job with the models and I would like to tip my hat off to everyone who got involved in this.
I'm still waiting for hard confirmation for Duck Hunt being playable before I set up my hype mode to highest.
P.S. Also I would like to bring up that Sakurai did mentioned that Nintendog and Villager wouldn't able to fight during Brawl Dojo. I suspected that Sakurai really intend to make a nintendog as playable character but there is a problem that Nintendog look so realistic so no one want to hurt realistic puppies.
I'm not sure why he didn't think of them in first place but I'm glad that he reconsidered trying to give a dog moveset a shot again but somehow he noticed that Duck Hunt actually have a dog in the game. He decided to give it an other attempt to make dog moveset to come to fruition. He succeed to give Villager a moveset and become playable character in Smash 4. Also we just saw Nintendog stage in E3 trailer so I assumed that Sakurai managed to find a way to bring Nintendog in. Few people convinced me that Nintendog didn't have a chance to become playable character so I held a hope that Sakurai might consider Dog from Duck Hunt and somehow make it work with Duck and Imaginary Hunter (Final Smash) Yeah, it's all speculations on my behalf.