One of the biggest joys about the “Creating Games” channel that Masahiro Sakurai hosts is that we learn not just about the games he’s made or the insights into other titles that he has, but we get to learn about his “creative process.” Past videos have highlighted how he views “gaming concepts” and what he feels is the true “essence” of video games as a whole. To that end, the latest video of his series touches on Super Smash Bros Ultimate in a way you likely didn’t expect: his supervising role. Specifically, how he surprises and “touches up” certain things with art to showcase how it should be changed.
He noted in the video that this became even more necessary during the global pandemic when the Super Smash Bros Ultimate team was working on the DLC characters. To that end, he showed off many things about Minecraft Steve, Pyra and Mythra, Kazuya, Sephiroth, and more to explain how the team would send him stuff, and he would make notes about how things needed to change for the better.
For example, with Steve and his other skins, he had to look at the art, how the characters blended into the stages, and how their attacks would look when done. He even pointed out that Enderman blended into certain environments within stages so much that you couldn’t see him! Thus, his model needed to be changed so that it wouldn’t hinder things for the player.
With Pyra and Mythra, many of their changes came not only in the aesthetic level but also in positioning their attacks so that the player would know what was going on while also doing proper damage and not making attacks impact foes beyond what they were supposed to. Some of their abilities were the hardest for Sakurai to manage in the game.
With Kazuya, he took several references from Tekken 7 and ensured they were implemented in the game properly so that fans could have an Easter Egg to recognize. But easily the most interesting thing was how far he went with the Mishima Dojo stage to make it stand out. He ensured that every piece of debris from the cracked ceiling stood out properly and that the floor looked right!
Then, with Sephiroth’s CG trailer, he intentionally augmented things in certain shots so that it could feel more like Advent Children.
You can see the full video below, and hopefully, by the end, you’ll realize just how much Sakurai cares about the details.
