Ghirahim Revealed as Smash Bros. Assist Trophy, a Proper Smash Bros. Debug Would Take “Decades or Centuries”

Today’s Super Smash Bros. update may be disappointing to some and “better than nothing” for others. Via Miiverse and the official Smash Bros. website, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword‘s villain Ghirahim has been confirmed as an Assist Trophy in the upcoming games.

I’d personally been hoping Ghirahim would be a playable fighter, so the announcement does sting a bit. Still, he is playable in the upcoming Zelda and Dynasty Warriors crossover Hyrule Warriors, so perhaps I should count my blessings.

The reveal is part of director Masahiro Sakurai’s recurring “pic of the day” series, and came with the following caption.

 Pic of the day. “No, I’ll just beat you within an inch of your life!” Demon Lord Ghirahim makes an appearance in Smash Bros!! He’s an Assist Trophy, so he could conceivably back up Link, too.

That nasty threat is a Ghirahim quote, of course, so it’ll be interesting to see just what the Demon Lord does to assist fighters when his trophy is tossed.

Related: Every Super Smash Bros. Wii U & 3DS Character Detailed

In other Smash Bros. news, a translated Famitsu interview with Sakurai reveals that the testing and debug process (currently underway for the 3DS version) is absolutely insane. Would you believe that a proper debug would take “centuries?” Sakurai explains.

Checking is done both domestically and overseas, so for a game like Smash Bros., several hundred people are employed. So, debugging alone becomes a huge project. So much so that one of the biggest reasons for the separate release dates for the 3DS and Wii U versions was so that we could shift the debugging periods.

Considering not only the different fighters, but items, stages, color settings, play rules, and game modes, the number of varying combinations are astronomical. In order to properly debug, every pattern must be tried, but such a task would be impossible no matter how many decades or centuries you take.

Sakurai also noted that nine times out of a ten, a delayed game is delayed because of bugs that couldn’t be fixed in time. Let’s hope he’s not dropping a hint about one of the upcoming Smash Bros. titles.