Masahiro Sakurai, creator of Super Smash Bros., has made a YouTube video in which he discusses the future of the popular fighting franchise. One of the biggest things he mentioned was that “I can’t really imagine a Smash Bros. title without me.”
The founder of Sora Ltd., also known for his development of the Kirby series, is famous for his hands-on approach when making games. Although he’s admitted to doing too much of the work himself, he simply can’t see a world in which Smash Bros. can succeed without at least some of his direct intervention.
This YouTube video was part of his discussion on the making of Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008) for the Wii, the third entry in the series. As of now, Sakurai does not see anyone qualified to “simply take the reins.”
Sakurai semi-retired from game development in late 2022. At 52 years of age, he believes that continuing to work on games full-time will see the end of his life before he realizes it.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018), released on Nintendo Switch, represents the latest entry in the long-running tournament fighting series that began in 1999 on the Nintendo 64. It was also the most difficult to develop, due to the licensing issues and work necessary to represent every character from the series to date but also introduce new ones.
After several years of fine-tuning Ultimate with balancing and patches, Nintendo concluded updates for the game in December 2021 with version 13.0.1.
Sakurai has repeatedly stressed that to be able to make a new Smash Bros. entry and bring everyone back was a miracle he believes could have only happened once in a lifetime. Given how near-perfect Ultimate is, Nintendo could always just port it to its next-gen console and continue to update it rather than start from scratch.