Like many people on gaming Twitter, I have an ongoing obsession with the gaming setup of Super Smash Bros creator Masahiro Sakurai.
From time to time, Sakurai will update his Twitter followers on the latest changes to his home gaming setup, and we all go crazy for it. Let me explain.
There is nothing particularly eye-catching about Sakurai’s setup. It’s honestly rather minimalist. A 55″ television perched upon a white, oddly shaped entertainment unit. There is a soundbar on the bench before the TV and a subwoofer on the floor below it. To the left of the television is a wooden cabinet with glass doors and shelving.
Sakurai had this cabinet custom-made, and in it, he keeps a hand-picked roster of functional consoles. This is where the true fascination lies.
オーダーメイドで､ゲーム機棚を作ってもらいました｡ゴチャつきが片付いてスッキリ｡こりゃいいね! pic.twitter.com/GG8oiOJ6FF
— 桜井 政博 / Masahiro Sakurai (@Sora_Sakurai) August 16, 2022
At the top, he’s positioned his PlayStation 5 and his Xbox Series X. Both consoles are quite tall, and so they live at the top in their upright configurations.
On the second shelf is his Nintendo Switch. This is where some of Sakurai’s followers expressed confusion. In defiance of the Nintendo Switch instruction manual, Sakurai has placed his Switch in its down face-up on the shelf. It seems he’s done this for purely functional reasons. It allows him to more easily store the Switch in the cabinet and still slide the unit in and out of its dock when he needs to. In his own words, translated by Google: “There was a reaction to the Switch dock horizontal placement … It’s not recommended by the manufacturer, so do it at your own risk. This is just my personal experience, but I had no problems using it until I cleared Xenoblade Chronicles 3.”
On the shelves below the Switch lie a PS4, a PS2, and a Wii U.
On the bottom shelf, Sakurai stores a few classics. A Japanese Famicom, a Mega Drive, and both the PAL and NTSC models of the Super Nintendo.
The drawers below the Classics shelf contain controllers for each console, carefully arranged, some of which Sakurai has labelled. The controllers tell us which consoles Sakurai has connected to his TV — it’s basically everything above the Classics shelf.
Behind the cabinet, Sakurai has done a bit of cable management. Each machine is connected to a power board mounted vertically behind the cabinet, and its cables are labelled.
After fans pelted him with questions about his console cabinet, Sakurai revealed he actually has more of them. The doors on the second unit, to the right of the TV, are opaque.
In front of the TV, Sakurai has placed a white, two-seater, reclining leather couch and a low, glass coffee table. He’s actually shot several videos from this couch for Super Smash Bros Ultimate videos. It looks pretty comfy, not gonna lie.
The Smash Bros videos make Sakurai’s couch something of a meme in the community. Eagle-eyed fans have even done their homework on the couch and are pretty sure they know where Sakurai got it.
I love this setup, not for its aesthetic but for its hyper-functional approach. This is the setup of a man that spends barely any time at home. On the rare occasion that he does get an hour or two to play, Sakurai just wants everything to work. He wants everything ready so that he can maximise that valuable couch time. I respect it.
Anyway, let’s all gather round and appraise Sakurai’s set-up together. Are you a fan of the sparse but utilitarian approach? Or are you a maximalist, filling every available space with geek paraphernalia? Describe the dream game room amongst yourselves in the comments below.
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