Masahiro Sakurai shared behind the scenes details about Super Smash Bros Ultimate in his latest YouTube video. He revealed how soon the game was developed after the previous installment, how new fighters were decided, and how the pandemic impacted development of DLC.
In the latest episode of Game Concepts on his Creating Games YouTube channel, Sakurai looked at the development of Super Smash Bros Ultimate. He described it as his final mission from Satoru Iwata, long before the Switch had been revealed. Development started early, with Sakurai submitting his proposal on the same day as Bayonetta’s reveal for Super Smash Bros for 3DS and Wii U (SSB4).
Sakurai also gave insights into how Super Smash Bros Ultimate was put together. The team was mostly the same as the one for the fourth entry, which allowed the team to include every returning character, which Sakurai was passionate about. Despite the easier transition, returning fighters still saw an average of 70-100 changes during development. However, even with the huge amount of new content, the team managed to compress the game onto a Switch cartridge. This includes the music library, which the team compressed to a quarter of its size.
Sakurai also touched on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected development of the game’s DLC. The biggest challenges he faced included maintaining secrecy and playtesting. Online playtesting was especially problematic.
With Super Smash Bros Ultimate being his most recent game, this video marked the final episode in Sakurai’s Game Concepts series. Each episode had focused on a different game from his career. Previous episodes have looked at Kirby Air Ride and Kid Icarus Uprising, for example. Other videos on his Creating Games channel have looked at general development topics such as motion sickness.
Super Smash Bros Ultimate is available on the Nintendo Switch.
