Pokemon Go mania is sweeping across the U.S. and I’m just wondering when it will come out here in Japan.
I got to attend BitSummit this past weekend, representing Source Gaming. It was great to play so many games, and to meet some people I really respect in the industry. It was also mentally exhausting!
Anyway, this article looks at comments made from the July 6th – July 12th (Japan time).
Huh, I think it was for the “better” of the game that they decided to cut transformable characters. I loved Zelda/Sheik, The Pokémon trainer and Samus/Samus, but if it they have to choose between that mechanic and new possible modes, like the 8 player smash and the 3DS version, it was a sad but logical cut.
Thanks for the info =)
And maybe in the NeXt iteration we can get some transformable characters, they are fun but really hard to master, and that’s entertaining… at least for me =P
I like transformation characters too because it gives you access to multiple playstyles without having to go back to the CSS. I tend to rotate the characters I play (in the end, I play somewhat casually). I’m glad ZSS/Samus got separated though. Neat idea of connecting them through the Final Smash but it just wasn’t as practical.
Arthur 97
Are you holding surprise and retro characters as interchangeable?
Using Sakurai’s words. He’s called Game and Watch, R.O.B. and Duck Hunt “surprise” characters.
Yup and Game and Watch was the surprise.
Fittingly, surprise characters seem to be one of the last unlocks.
zoniken
I don’t know if you can call this a trivia but…
In Snake’s codec conversation, the reason why Snake dislikes Sonic is kept unknown. But the possibilities are…
1. Hedgehogs are snake’s natural enemy
2. Sega and Konami are rival companies
3. Snake disapproves another 3rd party than himself joining Smash
4. Dr. Eggman, the main villain of the Sonic series, was voiced by Chikao Otsuka (deceased) in the Japanese version. Chikao Otsuka is Snake’s Japanese voice actor Akio Otsuka’s father, who also voiced Big Boss (Snake’s father and enemy) in the Japanese version of the MGS series. Although this has nothing to do with Sonic himself, its simply a voice actor joke.
Also other trivia I could think of is…
Smash 3DS/Wii U’s original crossover quartet (Mario, Sonic, Mega Man, Pac-Man) all represent they’re own racing and board games…
Mario: Mario Kart series (racing) and Mario Party series (board)
Sonic: Sonic Draft/R/Rivals/Riders/Sega All-Star Racing (racing) and Sonic Shuffle (board)
Mega Man: Mega Man Battle & Chase (racing) and Rockman Board (board)
Pac-Man: Pac-Man World Rally/Kart Rally (racing) and Pac-Man Fever/Party (board)
MGS’s Otacon’s Japanese voice actor Hideyuki Tanaka also voice acted the anime version F-Zero’s Captain Falcon.
That is interesting to think about. I wonder if Plusle and Minun were going to be the joke characters in Brawl…
MagcargoMan
I feel this article is a little biased in Sakurai’s favour, leaving out several of his contradictions and trying to excuse another as “Debatable”. Namco Bandai did indeed get special treatment. Not only does “Since I am creating the new Smash Bros. in cooperation with Bandai-Namco Games, it makes sense to include one of their characters” outright contradict “Just because the game is being cooperatively developed with Namco Bandai involved, that doesn’t at all mean that they’d be given any special consideration for having characters in the game”, but Pac-Man was the only third-party to get a different new stage in each version of the game; Sonic just has his Brawl stage in Smash 3DS, while Mega Man has the same stage in both. Not to mention Nacmo was the only third-party to get its own items, the S-Flag and the Boss Galaga, as well as the only third party to have more than one enemy in Smash Run (Pooka and Bacura). Granted, this is not as bad now that things have been balanced out with SEGA and Capcom both getting a second character each, but in the vanilla game the Namco special treatment is definitely there.
As for contradictions that weren’t even mentioned, there’s Sakurai’s excuse for Takamaru not being playable which was something along the lines of not being well-known/popular enough with players, even though that didn’t stop him from adding Lucas in Brawl or Roy in Melee. Another would be how Chrom wouldn’t be unique enough and would be too similar to Ike and Marth, but then proceeds to add Lucina as a flat-out Marth clone. And before anyone excuses me of being a salty Chrom fan, I’m not; I was strongly against Chrom and wanted Robin in over him. But that doesn’t change the fact that the massive hypocrisy of someone not being unique enough and then adding an outright clone from the same game isn’t majorly facepalm-worthy.
As for the last one I can think of, and this one isn’t a contradiction but a flat-out lie, is that he said in an interview with EDGE Magazine that “we recreated all characters almost from scratch.” when it’s pretty clear that most of the veterans were ported from Brawl and updated, especially confirmed to be the case when he said in Famitsu that Mewtwo was harder to add than other characters since they couldn’t import his data from Melee. If characters were made from scratch why would Mewtwo be any different from someone who was in Brawl? Exactly.
Before the article was researched I asked on Twitter and on Reddit for examples of Sakurai lying. The ones presented in this article was based on the ones the community presented to me as evidence.
With Bandai Namco, I put it under debatable partly as there isn’t the original Japanese available for the “just because the game is being…” quote. As I show, Sakurai has been mistranslated and misquoted several times.
Takamaru wasnt added due to not being available in the West. When adding Lucas, Sakurai was unaware of the game not releasing in the West when he originally added Lucas.
Roy was a last minute clone, who was only added because there was enough time.
With adding Lucina, it is again the circumstances of a clone. Originally she was just a costume but for record purposes, she was given her own slot. Sakurai talks about this in “I answer some questions” which is on the site. Originally when that piece was translated it had several errors, so it’s worth checking out our translation.
As for the Edge Interview, I’ll look into it. Assets were ported over from Brawl — and Sakurai did confirm that. The source is in the development timeline for Smash for Wii U/3DS.
MagcargoMan
My apologies. You did a address the majority of complaints and you can’t be expected to remember every internet complaint so I apologise if I came off as accusing.
Okay, understandable.
But Roy and Lucas have came back as DLC, and both of them still haven’t had their games release in the west. I find it rather arbitrary to exclude him for this reason alone. I can accept that he’s not playable, I just find the reason behind it a bit dumb.
I am aware of what Sakurai said about the clone trio, but I still find it ridiculous that while Chrom was (rightfully) considered too similar what is literally “Marth’s moveset with a different on the hitbox” is apparently not. Especially because it wouldn’t have been hard to just add a special customisation option for Marth that gives him the balanced blade hitbox, meaning there’s no real need to assign a character to it.
Cool. Just so you know I want to clarify I’m not encouraging you guys to attack Sakurai or anything I was just trying to ensure it wasn’t too one-sided. Again, my apologies.
No worries! We keep comments open so people can keep us in check 🙂
I hope with the news that Takamaru almost made it in, and the reception by the Smash community to that news…Sakurai will consider Takamaru more strongly.
Apparently Chrom would have been a mix of Ike and Marth…so he would be two half clones split together. Therefore, he couldn’t be an outright clone…and he wouldn’t be interesting. That’s why he wasn’t added as a clone.
We need to hold a poll so we can get a consensus. What do you guys in the comments think?
Peridot Gem
He doesn’t have to do anything. Smash isn’t like Kriby. it’s a crossover fighting game bringing IPs together than being it’s own IP meaning there’s much more options for it’s future than having to drag on like oh I dunno? Kirby. Sakurai doesn’t want Smash to suffer from too many sequels and it’s inevitably going to turn bad and a milkfest if it keeps getting game after game. It happens with crossover games. Amiibo can be one of the ways Smash can be passed on and remembered. But that’s merely only a possibility out of tons. Stop acting like Smash HAS to go on. It truly doesn’t.
Newcomers is the way Sakurai keeps Smash fresh. This is why there was such an emphasis on gimmicky newcomers this time around. Best reading for this isExhaustion and Excitement .
Back in the day, Iwata’s passing let me depressive and anxious the entire following week. I was celebrating my grandma’s birthday, that came from outta nowhere and I couldn’t stop thinking about this.
@Peridot Gem
Just like there was no reason to have a newer lord as DLC when you already had Awakening characters. Skaurai always puts the most recent FE lord/main character in Smash. The lords that get ignored in Smash are the ones that aren’t the most recent at the time each Smash game is made. Sigurd, Seliph and Leif missed out because Roy was the most recent lord when Melee was made. Hector, Lyn (who at least got an AT), Eliwood, Erika, and Ephraim missed out since Ike was more recent.
Clones are lazy padding no matter what excuse Sakurai makes. He also used them to shill Kid Icarus with his original character Dark Pit (he turned a Smash Bros palette swap into a character; he basically put an OC in Smash) and add an unnecessary addition to the Fe roster with Lucina.
Nope, Woolly World wasn’t even out when he announced the stage, and quite frankly the stage suffers for it with it’s rather generic setting and lack of Woolly World music. There was nothing stopping him from adding both or giving Yoshi a different stage. The “they’d look to similar” excuse is bad for two reasons. Firstly, Sakurai’s already added similar/redundant stages in Smash before: in Melee both of DK’s stages are generic jungle rivers with wooden platforms built over the rapids, there are both Pokemon Stadium stages in Brawl, and Smash 4 has two Mario Kart stages. And secondly, Woolly World and Epic Yarn don’t even look the same. Epic Yarn, despite the name, has most of the levels made out of felt, which looks different from wool. It’s also a 2D game, so it’d look radically different from the Woolly World stage since it’d be flat like Flatzone or Hanenbow. And lastly an Epic Yarn stage could have gimmicks like removing felt patches to uncover new platforms or pulling terrain together to close a gap. So yeah, it’s pretty convenient Sakurai decided that representing a Kirby game he didn’t make was a problem. Also, all this doesn’t explain why the 3DS version doesn’t have a stage based off a new Kirby game when they easily could have had a Triple Deluxe stage since they could reuse assets.
He did mention Kid Icarus favouritism when he answered why there’s so many Kid Icarus enemies in Smash Run, which was because of easily importing models. But then why not add more Pokemon enemies when you can import them from X and Y? Instead we get only five Pokemon enemies. Kid Icarus has more enemies in Smash Run than Mario. It has more enemies than Nintendo’s flagship franchises.
You still try to claim he’s unpopular so I don’t really see what difference it makes.
So you just admitted the ballot doesn’t matter even though Sakurai made a big deal about it regarding Bayonetta? Sakurai made it clear it was due to how high up she was but he didn’t even want to say what position she was in the Top 5 for America.
So you conveniently have no answer and won’t provide an example? Guess you really do think Sakurai is above criticism. And what, I would wait for him to botch another Smash before I should question him. Wait another six years only for disappointment?
Relevancy plays a huge role in Smash, especially with FE. He mentioned it outright in the FE Anniversary Interview. We translated it as “the trends of the time” I believe.
Character development takes a long time. Each of the DLC characters easily took 6+ months (with the possible exception of Roy and Lucas, who could be ported over/ built off preexisting assets). For Ryu they literally had to change the way the game handles inputs.
You do have a valid point about doubling stages. Especially with the two Mario Kart stages being Mario Circuit.
I think the Kid Icarus assets makes sense. It’s also a game Sakurai worked on, so he had direct access to them + knew how they worked. In Pokemon’s case there is issues with the Pokemon Company, and possibly additional programming/ modeling.
Bayonetta was the #1 for realizable characters. I have a feeling Sakurai wanted third party characters for DLC — it’s something I was saying in a lot of the first SourceCasts. It makes sense — it’s easier to negotiate contracts and they are more exciting then a lot of the Nintendo characters that aren’t in Smash. Look at how Cloud’s inclusion almost broke the Internet. The data will be used for future games though, so we’ll see.
Nintendrone
Even if some of his business decisions turned out to be duds, Iwata was an amazing face for Nintendo. His undying passion for video games clearly showed wherever he appeared, be it in Nintendo Directs or Iwata Asks segments. It was always comforting to know that the man in charge was one of us. It’s good that Kimishima has succeeded Iwata, as a good businessman is what Nintendo really needs right now, but it came at the price of the friendliness that gamer-first Iwata had. Rest in piece, Satoru Iwata.
I wish Kimishima would still host interviews. Iwata Asks was an amazing source for information, and it’s a shame it’s not continuing. But I do agree Nintendo needs more of a businessman now.
MagcargoMan
They tend to separate retro stages from the rest of the stages in their series. In Brawl both Mario Bros and 75m were far below and separate from the rest of the Mario and DK stages. In Melee, the Mushroom Kingdom and Mushroom Kingdom II stages aren’t next to Peach’s Castle and Rainbow Ride. Even Smash 64 has Mushroom Kingdom separated from Peach’s Castle.
I thought I was the only one who thought Iwata was best for the company. While content planned for the next 2 years continues from when he was in charge Nintendo’s approach to E3 this year was influenced by their new management. Its good that they’ve found success by expanding their franchises but I hope they don’t abandon hardware because I enjoy their systems.
Magcargo is waaay too lost in his delusions. From his comments he wants literally everything from characters to something as insignificant as trophies to be based around how big the franchise is.
“We need to hold a poll so we can get a consensus. What do you guys in the comments think?”- PushDustin
So long as we still get good content, your call. Neutral.
We can be “Flying Sourcerers” (Like flying saucers) or the “Source Sorcerers”… I like Pun-names, don’t hate me =S
Puns are an art form and you should never apologize for them.
Huh, 100 already. Also, you can keep track of that?
Wow, that debate over Sakurai as director is still going? I’d have grown tired of the debate by this point.
I second the “Sourcerers” name. Poll please.
I thought I was the only one who thought Iwata was best for the company. While content planned for the next 2 years continues from when he was in charge Nintendo’s approach to E3 this year was influenced by their new management. Its good that they’ve found success by expanding their franchises but I hope they don’t abandon hardware because I enjoy their systems.
Magcargo is waaay too lost in his delusions. From his comments he wants literally everything from characters to something as insignificant as trophies to be based around how big the franchise is.