If you’ve ever wondered why the Super Smash Bros. franchise stands out as the premier platform fighter across all of gaming, one of the pillars that answer rests on is the incredible work ethic and attention to detail of creator Masahiro Sakurai.
In his latest video, Sakurai describes “a small part” of his supervision feedback process as he shares small but important changes he directed his team to make when creating Kingdom Hearts’ Sora as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s final DLC character.
Almost immediately after Sakurai begins showing the kinds of changes he made in Sora’s basic animations, we get yet another glimpse into just how detail-oriented and extra mile-minded the Super Smash creator is.
Simple alterations such as a few degrees difference in the angle of a pose or the slight adjustment of the placement of a foot probably took significant time and money to effect, but little adjustments add up and ultimately bring more life to the final product. Even Sora’s post-loss clapping animation had to be perfected, lest it give off the wrong energy or fail to capture a moment properly.
Digging through the character and concept at this level of detail naturally leads us to consider how specific and meticulous the process must have been. Sakurai had to have watched all of Sora’s animations, frame by frame, time after time during development.
Then one might consider how Sora is just one of more than 80 characters across Smash Ultimate’s roster, then one might consider just how much more there is to the game than just it’s characters.
Indeed, we’ve heard before about how Sakurai uses an IV drip to continue working while sick, and has wound up in the hospital multiple times while developing Smash titles.
The work is seemingly endless, but it’s this kind of elbow grease that leads to Smash Ultimate garnering over 30 million sales. Give the full video a watch and let us know if you think you have the discipline to work under Sakurai in the comments.