An Audience With
The man behind Kirby on what goes into making a Smash hit
Masahiro Sakurai, the man behind Kirby, on the work that goes into making a Smash hit
According to Nintendo Treehouse’s Nate Bihldorff, Masahiro Sakurai approaches each new Smash Bros “as if it’s the last”. That’s patently obvious from the games, which practically groan under the weight of the new elements that are added each time, but also from the stories about Sakurai himself. While overseeing the orchestral recording for the soundtrack of Super Smash Bros
Melee, he collapsed from fatigue, and was briefly hospitalised. More recently, during the development of the 3DS and Wii U entries, Sakurai ended up injuring his right arm through overwork, leaving him unable to personally engage in the rigorous testing he insists his games undergo.
Happily, it seems Sakurai is managing his workload rather better these days, though the creator of Kirby and
Super Smash Bros doesn’t look like a man who’s ever burned the candle at both ends: at 48 years of age, he could pass for at least a decade younger. He keeps himself fit, exercising while he plays, but it’s his youthful exuberance for videogames that seems to be keeping him young. Sakurai varies his gaming diet, playing everything from retro games (often as research for characters making their Smash debut, whether as part of the playable cast or a minor cameo) to the latest western blockbusters. He evidently enjoys writing about games, too: he has a regular column in Famitsu, while throughout the development of Super Smash Bros Brawl, he posted on the Smash Bros Dojo website every weekday, drip-feeding new information to Nintendo fans who lapped up every update for the better part of a year.
These days it’s Smash, rather than Kirby, for which he’s best known, and so that inevitably dominates any conversation with Sakurai. Here, he reflects upon the challenges of meeting fan expectations, the importance of listening to less vocal players, and his time working alongside Satoru Iwata.
What first sparked the idea to develop a fourplayer fighting game – particularly given that it wasn’t a big-selling genre at the time?
Smash Bros was designed during the golden age of fighting games, when they were popular in arcades. In contrast to those fighting games back then, where the best players were those who could pull off the most complex predetermined combos, I wanted to design something which added an element of improvisation. There were two games that I designed and made for the N64 and Smash Bros was one of them. The N64 had four controller ports, which was perfect for the game I had in mind: a game that didn’t involve any complicated command inputs and that everyone could have fun playing together using simple controls.
You worked on that first prototype with Satoru Iwata. Did your relationship with him give you the confidence that your pitch would be accepted by Nintendo? What did you learn from working with him?
Mr Iwata was the one who handled all the programming for this prototype. At the time, I had only recently started working with 3D tools, but still took care of planning, modelling and character movements. One other person worked on the audio. So initially we only had three staff members. Mr Iwata told me that he really enjoyed programming for Smash Bros, because another game he was working on in a different team was going through some really difficult times. Although I was the one who came up with the idea of having an all-star cast of Nintendo characters, it was Mr Iwata who did a lot of the work for this negotiation. Fighting games need to have multiple star characters, so I imagined that it would be a hard sell on home consoles if it had a completely new set of fighters. That’s why I wanted to have Nintendo’s characters if I could.
It’s been said that you left HAL Laboratory because you didn’t want to keep making Kirby games. s. Yet you’ve spent almost your entire career making Smash
Bros with Nintendo. What changed?
There’s been some kind of misunderstanding about t that. I never said that I didn’t want to make Kirby games. mes. I think what I talked about in the past, about it being difficult to create a new game if I just stayed at HAL, AL, has been twisted somehow. I wouldn’t mind working orking anywhere as long as I get to create new things. s. I’m making Smash Bros because Nintendo has asked me to, and because I feel it’s a project that I should prioritise oritise above all else if I’m asked to do it. If I create a new game, that may be one more great, fun game people can play – but by making Smash Bros I can create something g with more value and wide-reaching effects. However, ver, I definitely don’t feel like I am stuck in a rut doing similar imilar things. Every time I add lots of new things, and I feel el that it’s a job I always enjoy.
Tetsuya Mizuguchi, with whom you worked on Meteos, says you have a natural instinct for game balance. How on Earth do you balance a fighting game with more than 70 characters?
I already have a rough idea for the overall characteristics of fighters from the planning stage, and when I create instructions for the character movements I may go into detail describing things like on which frames attacks should trigger. We have a team doing testing to provide feedback, and a team working on balancing the game. The testing team plays battles daily while the latter team works on making the adjustments. This setup is similar to what we’ve had before, but what’s different is its scale. However, if I let them have their way, they may try too hard to make the game fair, with the result of characters ending up playing too similarly. So I involve myself daily to point out potential problems which could cause this. I don’t directly enter in any data myself anymore, though.
You took a rare departure from Smash Bros with Kid Icarus: Uprising. In the west at least, it was divisive – it had plenty of passionate fans but had its share of detractors, too. Looking back on it now, how do you feel about it?
I could say that this was close to becoming the most difficult project in my entire career, both in terms of the team and the hardware. The team I had gathered differed greatly in culture and ways of thinking, so there was always confrontation. In addition, back when we were developing the game, we still couldn’t make full use of the power of Nintendo 3DS. Some improvements in aspects such as the middleware were made later on, but since the game was being made in the initial stages of Nintendo 3DS development, we had a really hard time doing what we wanted to. For example, I only found out that the Circle Pad Pro was going to be coming out when it was announced to the public by Nintendo. I wanted to make the game support this properly if I could, but this was impossible due to performance-related reasons. As a game in general, it’s rich in content and enjoyable, and people have even asked for a modern port. However, I don’t think this will be possible.
You’ve previously said you don’t think of Smash Bros as a competitive game, and don’t design it as such. Yet the game has become a tremendously popular esport. Has that affected your approach when designing Super Smash Bros Ultimate?
Personally, I’m happy as long as different people can all enjoy the game in the way that they like. Although I’ve added lots of features such as items and Spirits into the game, if people enjoy playing only Final Destination and without any items or random elements, that’s fine as well. I also welcome the idea of playing it as an esport. I want this game to be something that will embrace the wide range of different ways that people play. If we only focus on areas that get the most attention, such as the esports or competitive aspects, then the game will fail to maintain this stance. In fact, I think it is important to pay attention to children or families whose voices may not be as loud.
You’ve brought in a host of non-Nintendo characters to Smash Bros, which must pose challenges. Which ones did you find particularly difficult to get right? How much do you collaborate with the original developers to reinvent these characters for Smash while ensuring they stay true to their creators’ vision?
There are cases where I will meet with the original creators myself once or twice, but in general communication is carried out through Nintendo. In addition, it wouldn’t necessarily be the original creator I would meet – rather like how I was directly involved with the Kirby series, but don’t know about other projects now. We’ve made various changes so that both cartoonish and realistic characters can appear on the same screen together with it seeming natural, and the characters still looking cool. Character movements are also developed with a Smash Bros style first. The end
“WHAT’S IMPORTANT IS THAT THE CHARACTER HAS SOME KIND OF CHARACTERISTIC OR FIGHTING STYLE THAT IS UNIQUE TO THEM”
result from this is then passed on for review by the other companies, so they can point out any problems for us to fix. Though there might be differences in what is regarded as acceptable in terms of Smash Bros and in terms of the original series, in the end we try to find something that both sides will be happy with. What I’ve always thought throughout my time working on this series is that if what I make is of good quality, more people will support it. I can feel the expectations coming from both inside and outside the company that Smash
Bros Ultimate will be able to do it right.
Can you explain your approach in bringing Ryu and Ken into the game? In fighting-game terms, that’s like being asked to rewrite the Bible.
I feel there’s no point overthinking it all. The system in
Smash Bros is drastically different compared to other fighting games. However, I’d like to think that I put a lot of work into implementing these characters. I don’t think it would work if I simply mimicked or reproduced the original game. Instead, I think the key is to make it a kind of exaggeration of the characters based on their original characteristics. I’d really like people to try out Ryu’s route in the Classic Mode in Super Smash Bros Ultimate.
Of the new characters introduced in Ultimate, you’ve got a mix of more predictable choices – Splatoon’s Inklings, for example – and more leftfield picks, such as the Piranha Plant. What are your primary considerations when you develop a new fighter?
When selecting the fighters for this title, we referred in particular to the Super Smash Bros Fighter Ballot we held in the past. Since the results for this included characters whose inclusion into Smash Bros was impossible due to copyright-related reasons, we picked fighters from these results not necessarily in the order of the highest ranked, but instead taking into account achieving a good mix of fighters – making sure to include ones that are cute, cool, thirdparty, cartoonish and realistic. What’s important here is that the character has some kind of characteristic or fighting style that is unique to them.
Throughout your career you’ve worked with, for, and around some of the biggest legends in game development. Who has been the most important influence on you in your career, and why?
I’ve almost entirely been working solo, so it’s a bit tough to think of a particular person who has had influence on me. However, in terms of involvement, I think Mr Iwata shines in first place.
You’ve spoken in the past about how stressful your job is. And it’s clear you work hard. What drives you? How do you keep going?
“SIMPLY INCREASING THE CONTENT DOESN’T NECESSARILY MEAN THAT USERS WOULD ENJOY THE GAME MORE”
There are several things, but one of them is realising how truly impressive recent games are. I’ve recently played games such as Marvel’s Spider-Man and Red
Dead Redemption 2, and I have to take my hat off to the sheer scale and detail in these games. As someone who creates games myself, I really do understand the extraordinary amount of effort that is required to make them. It’s definitely difficult to create games like that here in Japan. But of course once they are out there, users will come to expect such a standard. That’s why I think that we need to work hard too. That aside, Smash Bros is something quite special. I don’t think I could ever feel I was working too hard, as long as I am borrowing from all these game series and characters with such histories behind them.
Will you be taking a break after completing development of Super Smash Bros Ultimate? What are your plans? And is this, as the name implies, to be the last Smash Bros game you’ll work on?
I expect I’ll be busy working on the DLC, though it would be great if I was able to go on holiday somewhere. A great deal of possibilities lie in the future, so I’m not really in a position to say if this latest Smash Bros will be the last one. Although I do question whether I would be able to create one with a scale that’s greater than this. Simply increasing the content doesn’t necessarily mean that users would enjoy the game more. I can’t really comment any further since the game hasn’t been released at this point in time, and I still need to work on the DLC.
You’ve described your videogame collection as being like “pearls of wisdom from my predecessors”. You evidently still make time to play modern games, so what can they teach someone who’s been making games for 30 years? Are there any specific games that have made a particularly strong impression on you?
As I mentioned before, I do enjoy playing different kinds of games. However, since I don’t have that much free time, I basically try to get through the content quickly and sometimes combine this with my exercise routine, like while riding an exercise bike. When making a Smash
Bros game, there are sometimes cases when knowing about other games becomes an asset in unexpected ways. For example, for the Spirits in Super Smash Bros Ultimate, it was very important to have played the games they originated from. I’ve played so many games, so it’s hard for me to name a specific one that’s made the most impression on me. But I will say that I am always very thankful to the vast number of developers who bring such great games to life. It’s remarkable that so many titles are being released now. It’s thanks to the hard work of an awful lot of people that we are seeing such a fantastic lineup of games.