Super Smash Bros Dev Sakurai’s True Feelings Towards Fans Explained

Have you ever wondered about how Masahiro Sakurai perceives the Super Smash Bros fanbase? You might be surprised to read the truth about this.

While being interviewed by the Chain Gang podcast, Nintendo of America employee Chris Pranger revealed that the company has had a recent change in policies, which allows them to talk more freely about work. While sharing some interesting asides about the Treehouse’s internal game library, he also spoke frankly about Sakurai’s obsession with Super Smash Bros for Wii U and 3DS, especially its fans.

Pranger describes Sakurai as an auteur in the truest sense, comparing him to Vincent Van Gogh. He gets sad when the game gets leaked, and even when any of the content he releases gets reactions (presumably this includes positive and negative reactions). This makes him sad because Sakurai wants to create. His obsession leads him to want to tell fans to stop doing some things, and mainly to feel that they don’t understand what his vision of the game is.

For core Smash players, this explains a lot. The competitive Smash community has always felt slighted and disappointed any time Sakurai says that Smash is not suitable for competitive play, and that they should move on to other fighting games. As it turns out, Sakurai is frustrated himself, because he does not want fans to treat Smash like other hardcore fighters. He never meant to come off as combative to Smash fans, so much as he wanted to preserve his vision.

Does this change your perception of Sakurai and Super Smash Bros? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.