Masahiro Sakurai has released another one of his famous columns in Famitsu, this one dealing directly with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate content shown off in the month’s early Nintendo Direct. Source Gaming has kindly translated the content, which both reiterates the information and adds new tidbits. Here’s a rundown:
- Sakurai states that the hurdles taken when adding a third party character are “mountainous,” but he feels that the team did “everything they could and then some” when adding Castlevania content. He notes that a lot of people probably wonder who Richter is, and hopes that people get to know him.
- Each of the new Echo Fighters was highly requested in different regions. Chrom was popular in Japan, while Dark Samus was big overseas.
- He also notes that Echo Fighters are more than reskins — they each have taunts, animations, artwork, and recolors that take up quite a bit of effort, and that’s not including the adjustment of their parameters.
- Many of the game’s stages (reminder: over 100; 300+ if counting Battlefield/Final Destination forms) require a lot of manhours. This includes returning stages, as the work needed to update the graphics is staggering. Some took “upward of a year” to complete! (With how good Fountain of Dreams looks in HD, it’s hardly a surprise.)
- Sakurai jokes(?) that the number of songs in the game (over 800) might be enough to earn the game a Guiness World Record. Amazingly, technological advancements have allowed the team to include that much into the game in only a quarter of the space it took for Wii U, all without sacrificing audio quality.
- In Squad Strike (the 3v3/5v5 crew battle mode), there are two potential methods of play — you can either do “Winner goes on” or “Best of X.” In the former, whoever wins the match faces the next opponent. In “Best of X,” a judo/kendo styled scoring system, you match the teams off in pairs and see which side wins more matches.
- On the Final Smash Meter, Sakurai says it makes the game wilder, and is probably suited more for casual play than competitive.
- King K. Rool was a character who received a ton of votes in the Smash Ballot, which is why he was selected. While he’s shrunk down a bit to accommodate the fighting, he still stands up tall and straight, as his station dictates it should.
You can read the full column over on Source Gaming. Smash Ultimate comes out December 7th.
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Written by Amelia Fruzzetti
A writer and Nintendo fan based in Seattle, Washington. When not working for NinWire, she can be found eating pasta, writing stories, and wondering about when Mother 3 is finally going to get an official localization.
