Smash Bros. series creator Masahiro Sakurai made a YouTube channel in late August 2022 with the goal of sharing his journey as a game designer. In addition, he has been showcasing many of his ideas over the years which led to many of his best creations.
In one of his latest videos, Sakurai leaks footage of a prototype fighter named Dragon King: The Fighting Game, which many historians of the Smash Bros. series have known about for years through screenshots but never got to see in motion before.
The ability to get a full demonstration of this prototype is a dream come true for many people.
This prototype for Dragon King, which dates back as early as 1996, was a collaborative effort by Sakurai and the late Satoru Iwata during their years working at HAL Laboratory. It was initially pitched as a standalone game for Nintendo, before forming the basis for what would become the world-renowned Smash Bros. series everyone knows and loves today.
It’s quite easy to see exactly how Smash came about from the foundation of a “four-player free-for-all fighting game with no health bars.”
Even though the characters have blank colors and look comparable to Smash 64’s fighting Polygon team, nearly everything else feels like Smash Bros. This includes the damage percentage modifier, camera, and player count.
It turns out that Sakurai actually had a difficult time creating between 8 to 12 original characters for the game. Instead, he got permission to borrow the most popular characters from Nintendo’s major franchises. Although it was not a popular move with the higher executives at the time, it turned out to be one of the company’s greatest investments ever.
The latest entry in the franchise is Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which was released on December 7, 2018, exclusively for Nintendo Switch.
