Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the latest entry in Nintendo's critically acclaimed
Super Smash Bros. series created by Masahiro Sakurai in 1999. The series' popularity has made other companies want to be a part of
Super Smash Bros. to the point fans are now getting the chance to have fighters like Ryu and Ken pitting against Solid Snake, Cloud Strife, or even Sonic the Hedgehog.
The latest game in the series features a smashing roster of over 70 characters from various household franchises, each perfectly balanced in order to give players a fair experience when having these characters fight against each other.
Since the very first game in the series, creator Masahiro Sakurai has been directly involved in the character-balancing process—or at least until now, since he revealed in an recent interview with
DenFamiNicoGamer(translated by
Siliconera), that he did not work in this process for
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Sakurai mentioned that the system was changed for
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, so he didn't "
directly work with the character parameters" himself.
"
Well, it was abnormal up until now. (laughs) In fighting games, multiple project leads split the balancing work by characters between themselves. But if you do that, you can have problems where “only the characters balanced by this person are strong”, and the opposite can happen to “weak” characters. In the first place, for Smash Bros., there was nobody who could do those adjustments, so I’d end up working on the parameters myself".
The
Kirby and
Super Smash Bros. series' creator also explained that he put together a team when working on
Super Smash Bros. Brawl, whose purpose was collect battle results, which he'd then analyse and propose options to adjust chracter data. He mentions that he also had a team like that in
Super Smash Bros. Wii U/3DS, but they still weren't experienced enough to fly solo.
"
For Ultimate, we greatly increased the scale of this system for both the planning and monitoring sides. We also added a certain amount of people who were good at battling… No, even before, there were good people, but this time, it was done in a more organized fashion. Of course, I would look for any points to change every day, and make comments if there were problems".
There is a lot of people involved in the development team working on
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate but Masahiro Sakurai is, undoubtedly, the one that deserves the credit he gets for making the series what it is today. It would sure be interesting to see where the series goes from now on if Sakurai leaves, but let's keep our fingers crossed so that said time doesn't come too soon.
Legendary game worlds and fighters collide in the ultimate showdown—a new entry in the Super Smash Bros. series for the Nintendo Switch system! New fighters, like Inkling from the Splatoon series and Ridley from the Metroid series, make their Super Smash Bros. series debut alongside every Super Smash Bros. fighter in the series…EVER!
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is currently available exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.