In his latest episode of “Mr. Sakurai Presents”, Smash Bros. Ultimate director Masahiro Sakurai revealed that he often keeps figures of upcoming fighters locked away in a drawer at work while developing them. Not just Amiibo either, but the good stuff.
After giving a detailed look at Xenoblade Chronicles 2‘s Pyra and Mythra, who are getting added to Ultimate later today, Sakurai showed off two statues of the characters he said the team has occasionally used as visual references.
“Clearly, they’re not amiibo,” he said. “These are actually official statues and are incredibly well made.” Ouch.
“After it’s been decided that a character will join this game as a fighter, I often purchase 3D figures like these and share them with our modelling team as reference material,” Sakurai said. They’re not always perfect one-to-one recreations, but they show off parts of a character that 2D media wouldn’t, like the bottoms of their feet.
It’s also incredibly meta given that the fighters who appear in Smash Bros. are actually toy versions of themselves “getting into an imaginary battle,” because everyone knows that the real Mario and Link would never breakout into fisticuffs.
“I have a lot of figures at my desk in the office,” Sakurai said. “I actually hide figures of unreleased fighters in a locked drawer. Not that we can go into the office right now. Anyway we’d like to do our best to overcome this situation.”
Me too. Hopefully the pandemic is almost over, for our combined public safety and also so Sakurai can get back to his toys.
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