Hello! We are working very hard on translating the Melee website. We decided to ramp up our translation focus on the character introduction pages in order to give everyone a better picture of Melee, and its character. Special thanks to soma for providing assistance with this translation.
All comments were originally written by Sakurai himself. You can see Sakurai’s individual picture comments by hovering your mouse over the image. Originally pictures were given their own page, but for the sake of brevity I combined them. The original page can be accessed here.
Sheik:
Updated: October 30th, 2001
Sheik, one of the descendants of the Sheikah tribe.
I’ve kept this a secret until now, but “Zelda can transform into Sheik!”
To put it another way, Zelda exists as a fighter you can choose.
Rather, Zelda is the character, and she can transform into Sheik as one of her special moves. The input is Down + B. So with her down special, you can transform between Zelda/Sheik.
When you Transform, everything from her traits, to her attacks, and specials, change.
A– amazing. 
And Sheik’s elegant, flowing moves are so fun.
I can play as Sheik for a long time.[TN1]
The reason her specials are written in kanji is because I wanted to reinforce her image as a “warrior from another world.” Her moves are ninja-like as well, and a lot of them require a lot of flexibility.
When I was trying to communicate her movements, “twist her body more!” might have been a catchphrase of mine…
It was also difficult for the motion team to understand her character, so it was pretty difficult overall.
Zelda will be covered in the next reveal.
(Images taken during development)
1. Sheik appears!
2.Vanish. A teleport move that leaves behind an explosion.
3.The two shot.
4.The Chain. Control it and elegantly keep your enemies away!
5.All these needles. Even seeing them is pretty difficult.
6.And the transformation into Zelda! We’ll cover Zelda next time.
| Special Moves | |
| Neutral Special: | Needle Storm |
| Side Special: | Chain |
| Up Special: | Vanish |
| Down Special: | Transform |
[TN1]Sakurai uses an interesting analogy here, where what he says amounts to “She’s simple, but I could go for three refills of rice,” so basically he’s comparing Sheik to a simple food that’s still really tasty. I think.
- Sakurai’s Internal Smash for Wii U/3DS Development Notes - June 23, 2017
- Kirby’s Development Secrets - April 19, 2017
- Sakurai Discusses His Game Design Philosophy In a Podcast [2002] - March 28, 2017
Nice translation, but I think you mislabled Sheik’s side special as “Burst Grenade”. At the time it was Chain.
That was my mistake (not Soma’s!). Thanks for pointing it out! Should be fixed now :).
Even back in Melee, Sakurai didn’t care much for spoilers. The Chaos Kin’s mention in Palutena’s trailer, Lucina’s identity, and the Omega Yato’s existence are nothing new!