Even though Satoru Iwata only mentioned Smash Bros. in passing during his E3 keynote, naturally the news of two Smash Bros. titles coming to Wii U and 3DS was the biggest news to come out from Nintendo this year. Before we get too excited, I have some bad news. As it turns out, development has yet to begin for either game. Don’t sell your copy of Brawl just yet.
In an interview with Famitsu magazine, series creator and founder of Project Sora Masahiro Sakurai has this to say about the future of Smash Bros:
Right now, we’re devoting all our manpower to working on Kid Icarus. We’ve got no plans whatsoever we’ve got two new games out in the open when there’s no extra time to work with them at all. It makes me cringe, and I’m not sure it’s the smartest thing to make gamers wait for several years, but the early announcement was made chiefly in order to attract new team members.
Project Sora had intended to make a 3DS Smash Bros. once it had finished up a game on the system and had gotten used to the hardware’s feature set. With the advent of the Wii U, though, we had a choice to make. Iwata asked us if we wanted to make the next Smash Bros. on the Wii U or 3DS, and my thought was that we had to go on both platforms.
If we went solely for the Wii U, the HD graphics would really bump up the visual effects, but then we’d be stuck in another arms race. If we made this game another extension over previous one, we’d have to cut out the new things we could possibly do on the 3DS hardware and compete with ourselves again over the size of the character roster and the amount of gameplay we can put it. It wouldn’t be a fruitful competition, but doing something completely new would be difficult for many reasons, not least of which that the gamers may not be satisfied with it. That’s why we decided to think about ways to link the personal connection one has with his portable system to the gather-around-and-play aspect of console systems.
Even though we won’t be playing any Smash anytime soon, at least we know Sakurai is the right man for the job. With each game in the series he seems to pour more of himself into the project, which bodes well for the 3DS and Wii U versions.
What elements do you hope make it/get the ax in the next installment(s) of Smash Bros.?
