Sakurai Explains The Reason For Duck Hunt Joining The Battle In Super Smash Bros

Were you surprised that Duck Hunt Dog was included in the recent Super Smash Bros on the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U? Well you will be interested to know that Super Smash Bros creator Masahiro Sakurai says he was one of the first characters to be introduced at the very beginning of the project. Sakurai also explained that the shoot-em-up on the NES could be the most-sold shooting-game in the world, so Duck Hunt Dog was a natural inclusion.

The reason for Duck Hunt joining the battle
MS: You think Duck Hunt is a rather minor character, right?
ND: We…think so. (laughs)
Everybody: (laughs)
MS: Please try to have a look at the sales-numbers. It might be the most-sold shooting-game in the world. It might be because it came bundled with the NES outside of Japan, if you look at worldwide numbers you come up with a huge number. I thought to create a character based on that would be appropriate, so we included that character from the very beginning of the project.
ND: So it was a candidate all along for the whole Smash Bros.-franchise?
MS: No, that would be exaggerating…in past titles we had our hands full with the characters we included back then. Even if we had tried even harder back then we couldn’t have included it. But this time it was fun to do “Duck Hunt” and its shooting-like presentation. Like having a third person intervening the action, being able to say “It’s actually a trio” was fun. That’s how we finalized it during development of the concept, saying “That’s how we can make it work!”.

Thanks, MasterPikachu6