Nintendo had promised 3 third party characters, but the third (turned out to be Geno from Super Mario RPG according to hackers, and Square owns the rights to him)
...Where are you getting this information from? As far as I can tell that's complete and utter BS.
(PS: Geno SAWKS. Mallow is where it's at! )
If you were referring to the three third party characters part, that was sort of on the official Brawl blog. If I remember correctly, it only said that there would be a maximum of 2-3 third party characters, not necessarily a guarantee or anything.
For the Geno part, that I cannot confirm. However, I believe he was the most popular choice for a playable third party character back when JPN fans could vote for who they'd want to see in Brawl most and that isn't exactly surprising, seeing as Geno is a very popular character. With that in mind, it may certainly be possible that he was originally intended to be in the game, but ultimately wasn't for some reason.
_________________ The Local Video Gaming Lunatic
Recent stuff I'm into:
Watching: A Certain Scientific Railgun (ep.14, stalled), Hoshi no Kirby (ep. 71, stalled), Nazo No Kanojo X (ep. 8), Acchi Kocchi (ep. 8)
Reading: nothing