By: IntelliHeath
Edits by: PushDustIn
April 7th, 2014 – Smash 6 job posting appears online, as reported by Game Johou [Silconera link]. It states Smash 6 is scheduled for release in 2015.
Jan 6th, 2016 – Sakurai wrote in Famitsu that he was taking a short breather. He implied that he already had his next job planned out.
Jan 28th, 2016 – Dr. Serkan Toto reported on his Twitter that Bandai Namco currently developing several NX titles, and Smash Bros. is one of those games. Smash Bros. was planned to be a launch title as well.
Feb 3rd, 2016 – Corrin and Bayonetta (Last two DLC for Smash for 3DS/ Wii U) came out
March 2016 – Source Gaming reports that there are updates within Smash for Wii U which may indicate a port is in the works.
October 13th, 2016 – Gameblog claims that Smash would be a remastered version.
November 2016 – Sakurai casually confirms he’s working on a game in his bi-weekly column. In the column, he talks about the Famicom. He states many of the people around him don’t have experience developing for the Famicom system anymore as he is getting older.
November 9th, 2016 – Laura Kate Dale states that Switch is getting Smash Bros for Wii U port, not launch game with the rest of the amiibo.
December 6th, 2016 – Liam Robertson reports on a rumor that Smash wouldn’t get many new characters, in the next version.
December 7th, 2016 – Source Gaming reports on a rumor that Smash Switch would be a combined version of 3DS and Wii U.
December 2016 – Sakurai states in an interview that he bought a new Vifam model because he wanted to take a close look at the rifle that came with the figure since he planned to use it for the reference.
November 2017 – Japanese Nintendo reports on a new trademark being filed for the Smash Bros. series
Feb 20th, 2018 – Emily states on ResetEra that a Smash Bros. title will be announced and released for Switch later this year, along with brand new content and re-worked some of the existing Wii U/3DS Content.
Feb 20th, 2018 – Emily mentions on ResetEra that the Smash on Switch isn’t a straight port and emphasized that it will have new contents. However, she isn’t sure if it’s going to be a sequel, half-sequel or deluxe version.
March 8th, 2018 – Smash Switch and Inklings are announced in Nintendo Direct.
March 8th, 2018 – Sakurai tweeted, “Right now we’re just at the stage where we revealed this game, but I’ve been working on this game in silence day after day. Please wait until we can release more information or until release day”
March 8th 2018 – Imran on ResetEra implies that it’s not a port of the Wii U game, but it’s not a completely fresh start, either. It’s more likely to be referred as a sequel.
Let us know if we are missing any dates below. As always, stay subscribed to Source Gaming for more Smash development information.
- Smash Ultimate Development Timeline - May 16, 2020
- Straight from the Source: Koji Igarashi on Castlevania in Smash, Bloodstained - October 16, 2018
- Sakurai Discusses Isabelle, Echoes, and Newcomers - September 26, 2018
Developers have been using old assets in sequels since the dawn of gaming. Yet when Smash is hinted to be doing it, everyone’s suddenly very confused about what counts as a “sequel” or a “port”. The only reason it didn’t happen earlier was because of timing–except it did happen, and nobody noticed because Smash 3DS and Wii U were marketed so closely together. Why shouldn’t the developers reuse character models that work fine and bring back old stages the way Mario Kart does? Just for the sake of calling it a “brand new” game? That’s a waste of resources.
But they already did that; Smash 3DS/Wii U reuse a lot of assets from Brawl. This time Smash would really benefit from being fresh.
Been orbiting smash speculation for about half a year now, Smash 6 is certainly built off Smash 4 (and probably merged some contents of 5 if compatible) in the same sense that smash 4 was constructed off brawl it’s the only way to meet demand and avoid cuts, people just jumping in seem to have forgotten that Smash 6 listing way back when, long before anyone knew it was actually Smash 6, even with all that time it’d be very difficult to avoid cuts and put yet a large set of new fighters like people would expect, the ballot is also likely to have heavy influence in character choices, though it’ll certainly be split with the more conventional industry trend picks, I think people rooting for large story content will be dissappointed, but no reason to give up hope until they announce otherwise. Just like Imran said, it’s not a port like people expect, and it’s not a new game like people hope, it’s much better than either of those.
I want Pac man to make a return. Not just as a fan of the game but sak was the only producer/director to give him the respect he deserved as an icon on the scale of Mario donkey Kong link Kirby and the Pokemon. I loved playing as Pac man and I primarily used Kirby.
There was that one comment Sakurai made about wanting to show Japanese games had value. Knowing what we know now, and putting it in context of Smash and especially the Inklings reveal it really does look like he’s going to make that his focus. Then the other more recent one where he talks about managing large teams, and asks for advice at the end. I don’t think he’d need as large a team if it was built from the ground up, even though he mentioned it’s the new characters that take the most time. I think Imran is right about it being branded as a new game whether he has inside information or not. This is going to build upon the Wii U/3ds, just like the Wii U/3ds game used assets from Brawl. Great read.
So…I may be kinda confused about this case, but would this mean this new Smash game would be “Smash 5.5” as not “Smash 6”?
Anyways, I’m kinda concerned about the characters. Liam’s info stated that the next version won’t contain many new characters, which means we’d be getting less new ones instead; lesser than Smash 3DS/Wii U’s. It would make sense. Creating one new character from scratch takes about 4 months, and if Sakurai started working on a project from January 2016 after his short breather, that means he have created about 6 new characters so far, including more coming probably through this year, which may total up to 7-8 new characters if the game would be released this holiday season. 3DS/Wii U version have brought 21 new fighters (including the DLC and Mii Fighters), so this would be the first Smash game that’ll bring less new characters. This may mean we may not have a lot of third party characters than expected, which probably 1 or 2 can join in instead. Another thing is that Sakurai commented that he wants to show Japanese games had value, which means he may not bring characters that was originated from the Western companies…including Indies games (sorry Shantae and Shovel Knight). I may be wrong with all these speculations as I don’t know anything much, but possibly this Smash may only contain more or less than 7 new characters, probably 5-6 Nintendo characters and 2 third parties.
If that’s the case, here’s the 7-8 characters I want to see in Smash…
Nintendo: Impa, Bandanna Dee, Medusa, Spring Man, Anna, Decidueye
Third Party: Bomber Man, Arle Nadja