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Sakurai Had Trouble With Smash Bros Release Due To Pokémon Voice Actors

In an interview with Nintendo Dream, Sakurai talked about Smash 4’s release date was put in jeopardy because of trouble with Pokémon voice actors. Luckily, Source Gaming has provided a translation of the interview. Sakurai explained that because Smash Bros uses voice actors from the Pokémon anime, he wanted each language’s dub to provide their version of the voices. As you can imagine, this was an incredibly long process as each of the Pokémon needed all of their lines rerecorded multiple times. However, Pikachu’s voice actress is the exception as she voices him worldwide. This is yet another example of Sakurai’s intense attention to detail when crafting the Smash Bros series.

Sakurai: I thought it’d be good if we could release Smash in North America and Europe at the same time, but it turned out to be very difficult because of the voices for individual Pokémon.
Masuda: The voices for Pokémon?
Sakurai: That’s right. Unlike the mainline games, Smash uses the voices from the anime, and in Europe the same Pokémon will have a different voice actor in each country.
Horii: Is that so?
Sakurai: Since there were so many, I couldn’t fit them all in…
Masuda: And you needed to have all the voice actors record their lines…
Sakurai: So I had to wait for all the recordings to come back…

Source

48 thoughts on “Sakurai Had Trouble With Smash Bros Release Due To Pokémon Voice Actors”

  1. still of been better if Cloud, Roy and Marth would of been dubbed in english and add Snake,Shantae and Shovel Knight

    1. Way to take a shit on perfection. You’re the type of person Sakurai is talking about when he says he will never be able to please everybody. This game was in development for 5 and half years and you still find a way to complain about it. Just shows you dont appreciate the effort that goes into making smash.

          1. I’m not being racist

            I’m simply saying if your going to localize something go the full mile nad not half ass it just to please some weeaboo eliteists!

            and this is why i dont buy anime games due to that poor choice in localization
            and Japanese Weeb speak not English audio like it should do being localized if they do this crap they should just leave it in japan

              1. normally i’m ok with this but with 99% of the voices being english you would think it would make sense to do something like that

  2. Nintendo First Order Commander Quadraxis

    ||Next time I’ll send my own team to do your voices Sir Sakurai, they are very fast…||

    1. Greninja -Quajutsu
      Eevee-Evoli
      Jigglypuff-Pummeluff
      Fenniken-Fynx
      Piplup-plinfa (if he is still in Smash 4)
      Here a few examples

    1. The character roster was a monstrosity. More time was put into each character’s fighting ability than anything. If more time was put into other things it probably would’ve felt less bare boned.

      1. “Character roster was a monstrosity.”
        Something tells me a character you voted for didn’t get put in.~

        Yeah, it sucks that we have a game with Mario, Cloud, Mega Man, Pac-Man, Bayonetta, Ryu, and Sonic in it. That’s awful.

                1. Think of it as if there is a music festival coming up with a bunch of your favorite bands, you might say “THAT IS A MONSTER LINE UP!”. I think that’s what he meant, the roster in smash4 is huge, hence… a monstrosity. That’s how I interpreted it anyways.

    2. Yet it has much more content than all of them.

      – 58 total playable characters, 20+ more than Brawl had
      – 55 total versus stages, with the added bonus of stages having Omega forms. 10+ more than Brawl had
      – 55 stages in Solo Event mode, 10+ more than Brawl had. 24 Co-op stages, couple more than Brawl had.
      – Classic mode still present, was vastly changed for both 3DS and WiiU versions.
      – Added Special Orders, a single player mode letting you choose between Master Orders and Crazy Orders. Basically survival modes.
      – Online mode was given more options of how to play. 1v1, 2v2, and FFA. For Fun and For Glory modes. Online 2-player teams from one system. Online Tournaments. Vastly improved from Brawl.
      – Added 8 player Smash. You can now play with up to 8 players on screen at once.
      – Custom Mii fighters. Create your own fighter based on your Mii and unlock accessories for them to wear.
      – All-star mode returns, now playable in Co-op.
      – New Trophy Rush mode – you spend coins to try to capture trophies within a small arena.
      – Special Smash returns, you can now mix special rules together.
      – Smash Tour added, a crappy party mode.
      – Home-Run contest returns, now playable with up to 4 players.
      – New Target Blast mode. A couple different arenas to challenge. Playable with up to 4 players.
      – Multi-man mode returns. Now playable with up to 4 players.
      – Trophy Box added. Trophies are split into separate collections, which you can view through a gallery-esque perspective.

      But, you’re right, it’s bare-bones.

      1. And yet no Ice Climbers (I’M AWARE AS TO WHY THEY WERE CUT!), Wolf (for unknown reasons), Ivysaur, Squirtle, and Snake

        But we get one worthless literal clone, a FEF promo, and a fetish (courtesy of Europe).

  3. Give the situation, this would be a case where it wouldn’t hurt to just keep the japanese Pokemon voices (unless one of them actually talk). I mean, we have Donkey Kong and Diddy sound like realistic apes.

    1. I believe it was unions that caused this. Smash uses all non-union voice actors (everyone they re-casted was because of unions).

      In general Square Enix had a lot of royalty issues it seems. That might be why there is only 2 songs.

    1. Fun fact, during Brawl Miyamoto actually told Sakurai to just focus on the multiplayer but Sakurai was insistent on including a robust single player. Originally Subspace Emissary was going to be outsourced to another company too, but Sakurai wasn’t satisfied, so he decided to work on both the single player/ multiplayer aspects of Brawl. Subspace Emissary was kind of a mess as they had to reanimate videos of Sakurai acting out the scenes as they didn’t use motion capturing and Sakurai wanted the characters to be authenticate.

      (Basically summarized this: http://www.sourcegaming.info/2015/07/06/subspace-emissary/)

      So…yeah. I don’t think Sakurai could have done two console releases AND a robust single player. Yeah, he said that he was also upset about the cutscenes being leaked (I might be too if I put that much effort into them) but I think logistically he couldn’t do it. OR he found out Miyamoto was right and the multiplayer portion of Smash is the part that people play the most.

      I’m not happy with the single player modes either (Well, Crazy Orders is pretty awesome), but I’d rather have the two releases/ expanded roster over another Subspace Emissary (which had amazing cutscenes but mediocre platforming).

    2. The Sm4sh games are great pieces of this man’s work but yes I was very sad to find out that there wasn’t a story mode this time around. I still played countless hours but all i’ve really done is online For Glory matches because I love Smash. I spent plenty of time in the other modes but none of them grabbed me like the Subspace Emissary or Adventure Mode in the games before 4. Hoping that Adventure Mode makes a return if they make another Smash but I doubt it will. Most people don’t even seem to miss it and frequently bash other people when they say they wish 4 included it. Kinda feels like wishing for Paper Mario to go back to it’s RPG roots.

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