7 June 2023

Official Nintendo Magazine (ONM) Retrospective Series

Breaking News: Brawl Online Not Good, Never Was Good.

ONM interviews Super Smash Bros. and Kirby Creator Masahiro Sakurai

Issue 32 August 2008

Archive of The Official Nintendo Magazine UK interview with Super Smash Bros. director and Kirby Creator Masahiro Sakurai, on the (at the time) upcoming release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Transcribed verbatim from issue 32 of The Official Nintendo Magazine UK, published by Future plc in July 2008 for The Shops. Sakurai insightfully discusses topics ranging from the intended control scheme, the online multiplayer and Subspace Emissary and recalling when Iwata first approached him about the game.

FEATURE: An Audience With Masahiro Sakurai

Masahiro Sakurai is a very strong willed video game creator, not that you’d know it to look at him, His humble and quiet demeanour, combined with a youthful look you wouldn’t expect from someone with his extensive experience, is the very opposite of some of the more outspoken and self-assured Japanese developers out there. Nevertheless, Sakurai isn’t one to be coy about the things he’s passionate about, especially if you happen to be talking about one of his two biggest creations, the Super Smash Bros. series.

"l didn't have a moment of doubt about doing Smash Bros. Brawl,"

he claims when pressed on his work on the latest iteration of the series,

"because I felt that if such a game was going to be made, it should be me making it."

While this might not seem like much of an issue to most of you though, the truth behind it is slightly more complicated. Returning to work on the series meant re-crossing a bridge already burnt by Sakurai following his very public resignation from his position at HAL Laboratories, the studio previously responsible for the Smash Bros. games. A combination of discontent over the development of his last HAL project, Kirby Air Ride, and a general dislike of having to make endless sequels led to his departure and although he’s got no resentment towards his former studio, the fact that he left under a cloud was clearly a big obstacle to his returning to the Smash Bros. franchise, While coming back was a big step for Sakurai then it was actually Nintendo who came knocking for his input, rather than the other way round.

"The announcement by Nintendo at E3 2005 that there was going to be was going to be another Smash Bros. game really took me me by surprise, because l didn’t know it was even being planned!" admits Sakurai. "On the third day of the conference though, Mr lwata invited me to speak with him and although I wondered if he was going to tell me who else it was that was going to be making this game, it turned out he asked me to do it instead."

Does this mean that Nintendo effectively strong-armed Sakurai into working on the game, announcing the game before dangling the juicy carrot of his past efforts in front of him? Thankfully, no. In fact, things could have gone very wrong had he turned lwata-san down on his offer.

"When I met with Mr Iwata he explained that although the announcement had been made, Nintendo didn't actually have anything planned in terms of the game's development" smiles Sakurai "so it was perfect timing for me to get involved. I knew right after the announcement that if Nintendo wanted to make, the game in—house, or with the teams at HAL or even with anyone else, it would be possible for them to do that. Thankfully, they wanted me instead."

Decent Proposal

Being the strong-willed developer he is though, Sakurai’s involvement in the project naturally came with stipulations; not just the fact that he intended Brawl to be the most ambitious and far-reaching in the series so far, but also that he wasn’t going to cowtow whatever ideas Nintendo might have for the game.

"I appreciate that what has happened with the Wii is really quite something? he admits "but when I agreed with Mr Iwata to make the game, I made one very important condition: regardless of how interested the casual market might be in Brawl, the game I was going to make was always meant to be played with the controller held like this."

At this point in our conversation, he grabs a nearby GameCube controller and waves it enthusiastically towards us. So, Mr Sakurai agrees with ONM’s opinion that playing Brawl with anything other than the GameCube controller is a mistake?

"Personally, I believe this is the best way to experience the game," he nods. "The Classic Controller has its merits, but if you're pushing the thumbsticks together your thumbs are going to clash, which could cause problems for people with bigger hands."

Any suggestion that Sakurai isn’t afraid to speak his mind soon goes out the window when he mentions the other control methods.

"l was never going to force motion controls into the game, but what we've done certainly works."

It’s a rather backhanded compliment of the Wii’s motion controls and one made with a high-ranking Nintendo executive in the room listening closely to what he’s saying no less.

He doesn’t pull any punches either when talking about Brawl’s other most ambitious element: online multiplayer. As one of the most anticipated games on the Wii so far, giving Brawl an online component would help consolidate the rush of people getting their consoles online when Mario Kart Wii came out. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy as it should have been for Sakurai

"It was a lot of work to get online gameplay to the standard where I was happy with it," he admits "In fact, I initially had serious doubts as to whether it'd even work or not. It's not like Mario Kart, it's an 'action/reaction' dynamic thats far more complex."

Hook, Online and Sinker

The problems lie in the game’s fast paced action that sees up to four players (not to mention all the various Assist Trophies) causing mayhem all at the same time. Data needs to be passed around incredibly rapidly and, according to the man himself,

"if anything goes wrong then the game is done, which is totally unacceptable".

Of course, the finished result does work but much like the controls, Sakurai isn’t as enthusiastic about it as you’d think.

"Admittedly, some things got cut from the online side that I feel would make it a better experience but sadly, i can't talk about those."

While Sakurai might not be entirely happy with how the online mode has turned out though, it wasn’t shoehorned into Brawl. Rather, he feels it’s an important part of the overall package.

"Brawl is obviously meant to be played as a multiplayer game, but there are people out there with not many friends" he says before realising his mistake. "Perhaps I should say have many people to play along with for whatever reason."

Not surprisingly this belief is also why Brawl features a much more extensive range of single—player modes, not least the Subspace Emissary that offers players both a solid ten—hour adventure and the chance to unlock most of Brawl’s in-game content.

"There’s so much in this game to discover," says Sakurai, “there needed to be a way of finding it all on your own if you need to and that's the main reason why I decided to include the Subspace Emissary."

After talking to Sakurai for over an hour, one thing is very clear: he uses the word ‘I’ a lot. In an age where games are made by hundreds of people though, as opposed to the old days of lone programmers in their bedrooms, surely he doesn’t make all the decisions by himself?

"I decide what goes in the game; nobody else." Oh, right. “But when it comes to the characters," he continues, “there’s a degree of balance to getting it right. The popularity of the character is important, for instance, as is the consideration of whether the character has a unique ability that only he, she or it can bring to the game."

Out Of Control

It’s not all about positive points though. It’s important to avoid any negative points that might hamper the development process.

"I also have to think about if the character pulls the gameplay in a direction l don’t want it to go in," he agrees "and, of course, whether there are any IP issues to get over and if it'd be too hard to get that particular fighter in the game. Dealing with the Pokemon Company, especially, is quite difficult. They have a lot of details that need to be just right before they'll agree to anything."

Having written about Pokemon ourselves in the past, we know exactly what he means. Of course, having played Brawl extensively and seen just how much material Sakurai. and his team – a group of individuals hand-picked from nearly 20 different development teams, we might add – managed to squeeze into the game, it’s hard to see where he drew the line for adding new content. Interestingly though, that line was drawn earlier than you might think.

No Vacancies

"It's taken over three years to make Brawl but I actually stopped trying to include new ideas early on in the development," says Sakurai. “What happened over the next year and a half was that we distilled the game down, worked out which ideas we had time to include and which we didn't. Sadly, we had to trim out many great concepts just to keep things practical within the time constraints. I had a lot more characters, for example... but sadly, I can't discuss which ones didn't make it?"

Regrets over the cuts necessary to finish the game aside, there’s no denying that Sakurai is extremely proud of what he has created.

"It's interesting, because after every Smash Bros. game I've made, I've always felt at that time that I've left nothing out," he says. “However, I also understand that there are millions of fans out there who love the series so if Mr Iwata came to me in a few years time and asked me to make another one, I'd have to give it some serious thought."

Considering just how packed the finished Brawl has turned out to be, it’s obvious that the next Super Smash Bros. game will need to be something really very special and Sakurai’s involvement hinges on just how different it’ll end up being.

"There are 39 characters in the game this time around," he says, “and just adding a few more wouldn't be enough to justify another game in my opinion; I'd have to draw a line in the sand and have a new approach to the game to make it worthwhile. As long as the fans enjoy it though, that’s what matters and in the distant future, I guess that might be something I'll have to consider."+
tags: Official-Nintendo-Magazine - Archive - Retrospective - Interview - Game-Development - Nintendo - ONM - ONMUK - video-games - Super-Smash-Bros - Smash-Bros - Super-Smash-Bros-Brawl - Brawl