Fans of the Super Smash Bros. series are passionate, to say the least. Remove the wrong character, and the community lashes out in anger. Add a personality that doesn’t belong, and a certain segment of the audience may not even pick the game up. It’s a delicate balance, and game director Masahiro Sakurai feels this pressure more than anyone else.
Nintendo finally showed the first footage of the next Super Smash Bros. at last week’s E3, and along with the appearance of a few series favorites, new characters like Mega Man, Villager from Animal Crossing, and the Wii Fit Trainer made their debut. The reception of these inclusions was positive, but for Sakurai, the process of adding and taking away fighters involves an unbelievable amount of time and stress.
"The amount of stress I feel, it's almost to the brink of death," Sakurai said to Polygon through a translator. "Because it's not just a matter of me personally thinking this character or that character is going to be in the game; it's that we also have the game balance, animation, graphics and sound to think about in order to make that character fully fleshed out in that universe. I have to think about all of that when I go through this decision-making process."
Without a solid list of fighters, a Super Smash Bros. game just can’t work. It’s the personalities that drive the experience, and while not every desired character can make it, no single member of the team is added or removed without hours of discussion.
"Whether it's a minor character or a character that is one of the most highly skilled and most played, if that character is removed from the game, the people who live for that character in Smash Bros. are going to have their feelings hurt,” he continued. "I think we have to really consider that, so I take a very serious, hard look at that and have empathy for the players who look for these type of characters when we're making these decisions."
It’s a tough job, but if we should trust any developer to handle all of the stress, it’s the man who’s done it three times before.
