Look, when it comes to Masahiro Sakurai, there’s little doubt that he’s one of the most detail-oriented people you’ll ever meet in the game development field. His YouTube series alone has proven this, as he’s revealed sometimes insane insights into how he’s crafted games, tested them, or just made them stand out from other titles. Nothing is “too little” for him, and his latest video proved that. In the video, which was about “polish,” he revealed that a key level in Super Smash Bros Ultimate needed some revisions because of how one of the walls looked when it was destroyed.
Specifically, it was the Mishima Dojo level, which was made to honor the Tekken franchise, which got a rep in the game via Kazuya. Anyway, in the dojo, you can destroy various parts of the level so that you can launch opponents out of it, including leveling the walls.
On the surface, that might seem like a pretty basic thing. However, as Masahiro Sakurai reveals, it was a case of doing something “the right way” versus the “easy way.” In the video, he shows how, in the initial passes of the level, the wall that was destroyed looked like it had “a bite taken out of it” versus being destroyed by an impact from someone crashing into it. Then, when it came to fixing that, he had to personally draw out what he was thinking with the boards and jagged edges so that it would truly look like a broken set of boards.
He was adamant about making this happen, and the results speak for themselves:
Why does this matter? On a certain level, it doesn’t. After all, no one would’ve blamed Sakurai for that or called it out as an “error.” After all, when you’re beating up people in a fight within the title, you’re not really focusing on how the wall looks, nor how “accurate” it is in regards to the looks of the boards.
However, what this once again shows is that Sakurai takes his game design very easily. He did admit in the video that, at times, you need to trust your team and move on, but you also need to spell out sometimes what you want and even push for things to happen so that they look a proper way. Even Sakurai admits it’s a fine line to walk, but we think he’s walked it pretty well, given how his games turned out.
