On this week’s Harada Bar, Katsuhiro Harada of Tekken fame interviewed Masahiro Sakurai, with the entirety of the episode available on the show’s official YouTube channel. Earlier this week, Harada teased Sakurai’s appearance on the talk show on his Twitter. You can watch the entire interview below, as well as on the Harada’s Bar YouTube channel, but here are some main points from the interview.
The interview touched on topics about Sakurai himself, as well as anecdotes between Sakurai and Harada. Harada also showed off several images, including the “Never ask me for anything again” meme, and asked Sakurai’s opinion on them. Sakurai noted that he has never actually said those words. He adds that he wishes for people to stop using his face to say false things.
When talking about PR, Sakurai said that the team doesn’t have money to make videos showing off DLC characters, which is why he shows off how to play them himself. But Harada commented that in this day and age, especially in America, players prefer when a game developer directly involves himself in PR. The two of them worked together on the video introducing Kazuya’s addition to Smash.
According to Harada, fans’ image of Sakurai is not so far off from what he is actually like when he’s around industry contemporaries. However, Sakurai commented that he heard people refer to him as a scary tyrant who takes total control of everything. But Harada followed up by commenting that in a game like Smash, where many characters are borrowed from other companies, you must adhere to given standards. Being strict is positive and professional.
Harada then added that Sakurai is rather mysterious, to which Sakurai joked that he should play the X-Files theme whenever he walks around. Harada even thought that Sakurai could see ghosts because of his sensitive and mysterious personality. Sakurai did note that horror movies and games do not affect him, as he focuses more on how the games are programmed. Harada agreed by commenting that when playing fighting games, he’s more interested in the programming rather than whether he wins or loses.
This is the first part of Masahiro Sakurai’s interview on Harada’s Bar. The next episode will focus on the theme of “retirement.”
