If Super Smash Bros. Melee was for hardcore players, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl was for casual players, the next Smash Bros. game will fall somewhere in between, creator Masahiro Sakurai says. This time around, Sakurai is going for the best of both worlds.
This morning, Sakurai and I had a long chat about all sorts of Smash-related topics, like third-party characters and tripping. I’ll have a longer story up in the coming days about everything we spoke about, but for now I wanted to share a few words on the vision of the next game in Nintendo’s massively popular mascot fighting series.
I had asked Sakurai what sort of weaknesses he thought were in the last game, Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I asked what he wanted to fix for this new one.
“I would consider the changes that we’re making this time around not as fixes, but that we’re changing the direction,” he said through a translator. “And so the vision for the overall balance of the game in Smash Bros Melee, it was sort of more focused towards more hardcore players. Then when it came around to making Brawl, this was a game that was targeting a Wii audience where there were a lot of beginner players, so it sort of leaned a little bit more in that direction.
“So now, for this time around, we’re sort of aiming for something that is in between those as far as the speed of the game. Because I don’t really think this time we’re in a situation where we’re trying to accommodate that many new players.”
Super Smash Bros. Goldilocks. Look out for more from my conversation with Sakurai in the next few days.
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4 responses to “The Next Smash Bros Will Balance Casual And Hardcore, Creators Say”
There was a hardcore Smashbrothers game??? Really??? O_o
Yeah, apparently long ago some people set up camp and claimed the game for themselves.
Man, the fanbase for Melee was friggin’ insane. The level of spreadsheet gaming that went into determining how a cartoon fox can beat up a cartoon bird was enough to rival Starcraft.
Admittedly, we did buy the Wii version but never actually played it that much. My son played it to death. I guess we might get into the Wii U version when we eventually get one when it hits AUS 199/299 or so.
*cough*Wave Dashing*cough*
Competitive enough that it raised about half a mil to be included in the next Evo.
Misrembering man, the total raised for evo was $223,000 across all games, $94,600 of which was Melee. Still good.
Sooo… he’s aiming for the gamer?