Tag Archives: sakurai

Sakurai Explains Why Smash Bros Brawl Online Isn’t Thrilling Any Longer

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A Smash Bros fan recently wrote in to Smash Bros producer Masahiro Sakurai to explain that he was no longer enjoying playing Smash Bros Brawl online due to his competitors tactics. Here’s what he wrote: ”The other day, I had my first run at Smash Bros. Brawl online play. What I found was that nobody ever went on the attack; it was like everyone was taking the approach of waiting for the other guy to take the offensive. There were no items, either. I wanted to shout at them ‘This isn’t how you do Smash Bros.’! As the producer, what do you think of fights like this?”

Sakurai responded with the following: “The idea of Brawl’s ’carefree brawling’ motto was to get rid of as many restraints as possible and allow people to choose whatever play approach they liked,” he wrote. “I’d like people to take some freer approaches with their gameplay, but the sort of battle style you describe in your letter is not interesting or fun. That’s why I’ll probably be thinking of a way to deal with that in the next game. We’ve learned a lot about net play since Brawl was released, after all, so a lot more is possible. I suppose the fact that we’ve still got no-fee online battles available in a game that was released five years ago is another cause of the problem. It would have been nice if we could have revised the game rules as appropriate, but with the system we had, that wasn’t possible.”

 

Sakurai Tells People Not To Worry About His Injury And Smash Bros Development

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Masahiro Sakurai, the creator behind both the Kirby and the Smash Bros series, has told his followers on Twitter not to worry about his injury and the next Smash Bros game which is due to be released on Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. Sakurai says that he appreciates all the encouraging messages he has received via the social network. Here’s what he had to say.

“Thanks a lot of encouragement messages. Please don’t worry about my injury & SMASH BROS development.”

Thanks, PkStarstorm

Sakurai’s Right Arm Pain Is Hindering Smash Bros Wii U And 3DS Progress

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Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of both Kirby and the Smash Bros series, has revealed in the latest edition of Famitsu that he is still suffering immense pain from his right arm and hand. Sakurai says that he’s having trouble finding the time to crack on with the long-awaited project as his days are currently spent overseeing other people, holding meetings and working on other proposals. He concluded by saying that if the disorder doesn’t get sorted then there’s no telling what impact that would have on the Smash Bros project.

“As a director, I don’t have much time in the weekdays to proceed along with my own work. The entire day is spent overseeing other people, holding meetings, working on other proposals, making visits elsewhere and so on. If I can get everything squared away, then I can work on my own stuff, but most of the time there’s just an overwhelming lack of time. Often I go in on my off-days to catch up on my own work, but with my body going on me like this, I have to cut these extra days out of my schedule and even with that I can’t use my right arm very much to control things. If this disorder lingers, or if it never gets fixed, there’s no telling what impact that would have on the project.”

Sakurai noted that, until his right arm gets better, he’s forced to gnarl his left hand around a game controller in order to do any sort of playtesting work on the current version of Smash Bros. ”I’ve had to control two characters at once in a lot of game projects up to now, so as long as I keep it to simple moves, this works well enough. It doesn’t go that easy with the Nintendo 3DS version, though, and the debug camera is pretty hard to control. Still, now I realize how important it is to have your health. I’m glad I’m still in good enough shape to work.”

Thanks, Mike S

Smash Bros Creator Says Stories In Games Are ‘Honestly Irksome To Me’

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Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of Kid Icarus: Uprising and the Super Smash Bros series has taken to his Famitsu column to discuss video game narrative. Sakurai says that the majority of video game stories don’t actually match up with the gameplay, which actually makes gamers annoyed, rather than moved by the tale being told. He says he just wants to enjoy a game and thinks he is just intolerant of anything that block that enjoyment. Here’s what he had to say.

“As a player, as someone who’s been playing games for a long time, the stories that get told in video games are honestly irksome to me pretty often,” he wrote. “For example, games that take forever to get through the intro and won’t let you start playing, or games that go through the trouble of being fully voiced and wind up having their tempo all messed up as a result. I just want to enjoy the game and I think I’m just intolerant of aspects that block that enjoyment. I can enjoy a story in any other form of media; I just want the game to let me play it already.”

“For example,” he continued, “let’s talk about how, in RPGs and things, a character that you spent the game raising dies or leaves your party for the sake of the story. From a gamer standpoint, that’s dreadful; it’s totally unreasonable. In games where you’re fighting against enemies, you’re playing from the perspective of the hero, and you’re being asked to basically win every time. If players wind up in a predicament because of what the story calls for, that’s like penalizing them even though they made no mistake. As gameplay, it’s lacking.”

“[In Kid Icarus] I did it so I could write a story that jibed with the game, one that took advantage of the game’s advantages,” he explained. “Every character, including the bosses, had their personalities shaped by their roles in the game, or the structure of the game itself. That let me develop the dialogue to firmly match the developments you encounter in the game. If I had had someone else write the story, I’d either have to keep explaining things to the writer whenever anything changed in-game, or I’d have to partition it away from the game and lose on that consistency. Especially with a game like Kid Icarus, which features air battles where the gameplay, dialogue, and music needed to fully mesh with each other, it was vital that the story and game were one and the same and could easily be fine-tuned.”

A game’s story absolutely needs to match the content and the gameplay. In an ideal world, we could take advantage of this to provide new story developments that you’ll never be able to see in other media.”

Smash Bros Creator Says Don’t Expect Smash Bros News Anytime Soon

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Smash Bros creator Masahiro Sakurai has announced that he is going to spend less time on Twitter engaging with fans, and will instead concentrate his time on getting Smash Bros for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS developed. Sakurai says that while engaging with the fans is good, he finds that too many people speculate about the next Smash Bros whenever he mentions something irrelevant from the franchise. Here’s some of Sakurai’s thoughts.

“I don’t like it when a tweet or whatever leads to needless speculation getting spread around. For example, when I tweet about playing some game, some people immediately get the idea that that character is in the new Smash Bros. Then people fan the flames on it, people start to think it’s really true, people get angry about it. Nobody benefits.”

“I got asked once by a student ‘Is Fox really strong in Smash Bros. Brawl because you like Star Fox?’ Absolutely not. I don’t balance things based on that. These are very important titles that the creators and fans are leaving to me. In the worldwide online rankings, Fox’s winning record is right in the middle of all the characters. The idea with him was a character that suicided often, but made up for it with other skills, but I guess that prominence gave him this image of being really powerful.”

“Instead of talking about what Smash Bros. will be like. I’m just going to say ‘I’m making you wait for it!’ and keep going along. I want to put my all into a full-on launch that really makes that wait worth it.”

Smash Bros Producer Says Next Smash Bros “Game System Is Complete”

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Smash Bros producer Masahiro Sakurai has revealed that the game system for Smash Bros for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS is now complete and that the development team isn’t looking to add 3D or additional features that will complicate the game just for the sake of it.

“The game system itself is complete, so we don’t want to make it 3D or introduce complicated controls just for the sake of it. However, I am thinking of ways we can introduce a slightly different, fun experience all the while keeping the usual frantic game play.”

“I think Snake and Sonic joining were fantastic. It made many fans happy, and it broadened the Smash Bros arena. However, introducing more non-Nintendo characters willy-nilly will lose the focus of the game, so I also recognise the need to narrow it down.”

 

Sakurai Has Responded To The Criticism Surrounding Smash Bros Wii U & 3DS

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Masahiro Sakurai, the lead game designer behind Smash Bros has called out a devoted fan on Twitter for criticising the collaboration between Nintendo and Namco Bandai for Smash Bros on Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. The Twitter follower claimed that Namco Bandai is incompetent, and ultimately shouldn’t be involved in the development of the game. Sakurai tweeted the following back to the aggravated Twitter fan.

“Knock off looking down on them with narrow-minded thinking.”