Masahiro Sakurai has been doing incredibly on YouTube since his “Creating Games” series launched. Gamers and game developers-in-training have been pouring over every video he makes to see what knowledge he can impart and the fun that is revealed along the way. However, you might not have realized that today he dropped his 100th video! That’s quite an achievement for such a young channel, and the video editing team promises that more is on the way! But what did Sakurai do to celebrate said 100th episode? Why, he talked about one of his best creations, Kirby!
If you’ve been paying attention to the Creating Games series, you’ll know that Sakurai has detailed the development processes of many games featuring Kirby. But in a special twist, Masahiro Sakurai decided to reveal something to the world that only a select few people had previously seen. Specifically, during Kirby’s 25th anniversary of life, they held a special concert in Japan. When they did, Sakurai gave a special presentation showing off the art and process behind the first game in the series.
So during his 100th video, he decided to show it off and give more detail on how things came to be. One of the things he highlighted was the process of making the art and using it within the constraints of the Game Boy system. You have to remember, back then they didn’t have all the processing power and epic graphics cards to render things in super HD. So they had to do whatever they could to make the art pop while still fitting in the system. Sakurai even noted they used a very special dev kit to make everything work.
One “trick” that Sakurai highlighted was using parts of other creatures to make new ones. That’s why there are both Waddle Dees and Waddle Doos. They have the same body on one side but a different eye on the other side. A quick and simple way to make something new while not having to create all sorts of new art. The legendary Gordo was the same way. Sakurai merely needed to make half of the creature and then flip things to make it look like it was moving.
The 17-minute video below showcases many things that will likely blow your mind about how Kirby’s first game was built and the restrictions Sakurai had. Oh, and if you stick around to the end, you’ll get a special lesson about Meta Knight!
