Masahiro Sakurai Talks Being A “Core Gamer” And the Importance of Satoru Iwata To Smash Bros

At this point, we’ve made it perfectly clear how affectionate we are toward Masahiro Sakurai. After all, the man is a gaming legend and is arguably one of the most passionate game developers in the entire world! To that end, he’s constantly revealed insights into his life, passions, and feelings on games, and via his YouTube series, how he feels the game design process should go on many levels. We know so much about him now, and yet, there’s always more to learn about a person. Sakurai did an interview recently, and he made it known that he feels that he is a “core gamer.”

As you’ll see in the tweet below by Stealth, Sakurai talked about how he not only plays video games, especially Japanese-made ones, but he plays them quite a bit. That might be a bit eyebrow-raising, given that Sakurai is infamous for how he works himself to the bone, but he’s made it known in the past that he dedicates certain times in his day to doing things like reading. So, it makes sense that he has time for gaming as well! In another part of the interview, he apparently admitted that he’s already beaten Monster Hunter Wilds! That’s crazy!

Elsewhere in the interview, as noted by Genki, Masahiro Sakurai talked about the importance of the late Nintendo President Satoru Iwata and how, without him, Super Smash Bros likely wouldn’t exist today:

“First of all, if it weren’t for Mr. Iwata, I might not have joined HAL Laboratory, and if Mr. Iwata hadn’t made the prototype for Smash Bros., Smash Bros. might not have been released to the world. If Mr. Iwata hadn’t asked me to make Smash Bros. Brawl after I left HAL Laboratory, Smash Bros. itself might have died out. There’s no doubt that he influenced me in many ways.”

One way he didn’t mention in that particular interview, but mentioned on his YouTube series, was that during one of the games’ development cycle, and while Mr. Iwata was President of Nintendo, there were some serious coding issues going on, and Sakurai himself wasn’t sure they’d be able to fix them all in time. Mr. Iwata came in, and using his own programming skills, helped everyone reach their goal, saving the game, and the franchise.

Mr. Iwata and Sakurai were great friends, and they talked often during their days at Nintendo and beyond. It’s good to see Sakurai honoring his friend like this.