Famous for his remarks that debug on a Super Smash Bros. title could very well take “decades or centuries,” series director Masahiro Sakurai is at it again with the fascinating (and possibly exaggerated) remarks. This time, his comments concern fighter creation in Smash Bros., and how time-consuming the process actually is from start to finish.
Sakurai explained that the reason character creation can take so long is because of the various stages of work involved. Design, 3D modeling, animation, and finally balancing are the main components of what goes into a new Smash Bros. character, but breaking the process down into such basic categories is a case of oversimplification. Check out his thoughts on the matter below.
I get the planning for each character done remarkably quickly. For example, after learning about Greninja and its abilities one evening, by late night I had already completed the design for that character’s moves and features.
The process, however, of actually creating a character often takes well over a year, where we are constantly working on the model, the animations, the audio and the balancing. For the game balance we have a testing team playing almost every day and we make adjustments based on their results. I was working from morning to night with my responsibilities as director, so I was only able to spend Wednesday evenings and weekends on the balance.
One of the important things for me was having a large difference between the characters, which I call their “dynamic range”. In a typical fighting game where you just square off against an opponent, other things like the environment have less of an impact, so even small differences between characters can be very noticeable. With Smash Bros., however, I want to bring out the individuality in the characters and I think it’s rare to see a game with such a wide dynamic range as this.
Related: Super Smash Bros. (3DS) Review
Well, there you have it. Years, I tell you! To be fair, Sakurai’s estimates in this case sound a lot more believable than in interviews past, and with the effort and attention to detail the Smash team has clearly put into the 3DS version alone, the eccentric designer’s claims really don’t seem all that crazy. The Wii U version is scheduled to release before the end of the year, so stay tuned for news on an official release date.
[Via: MyNintendoNews]
