Tagged with: Masahiro Sakurai

Masahiro Sakurai, the man in charge of Smash Bros. is suffering from considerable arm pain as of late due to RSI. Aside from the pain itself being a problem, it’s also made it difficult for him to get work done. He’s turned to Twitter though to thank people for their encouraging messages, and says “don’t worry about [his] injury and Smash Bros. development”. But of course, it’s only human to hope he gets better soon.

A few weeks ago, we learned that Masahiro Sakurai — the director of the Smash Bros. series — has been dealing with RSI (Repetitive Stress Injury), and was adapting his workflow to accommodate for the pain.

Unfortunately, the situation has not improved:

Not only am I getting calcific tendonitis, but they’ve also found what are apparently several ruptures in the muscles. My upper arm hurts, and there’s this chronic dull pain in my elbow joint as well. On the lower arm, there’s this feeling of fatigue around the flexor muscles that turns into pain when I use a keyboard or game controller with my fingers.

…and:

There’s no instant cure for it, so all I can do is either block the pain with injections or put my arm in a cast to keep the ruptures from spreading. I was told that the important thing was to keep my arm as rested as possible. In order to get it fully healed, the only thing is to not use my right arm or hand. So not only am I using a trackball with my left hand; now I’m using it to eat, brush my teeth, wash my hair, and even drive as much as I’m able to.

Of course, all we can do is hope for a speedy recovery.

(via polygon.com)

Masahiro Sakurai has said in the past that Smash Bros. for the 3DS and Wii U is going to be in development for a while. When it was announced at last year’s E3, it was months before the project had even begun. Even so, some people still expect to see the game released in 2013, but here’s a fresh quote from Sakurai:

To put it succinctly, I’ll need to have you guys wait a while longer. I hardly ever write anything on Twitter any longer, and that’s because I think right now is the time to stop tweeting and start putting in a real effort here. If I could put it a really harsh way, I think it’d be better if I could be forgotten by gamers for a while.

Basically, as always, have patience. This is going to take a while. I think it’ll be announced for a 2014 release, but experience at least one delay (possibly pushing it into 2015).

(via polygon.com)

Apparently, some people weren’t expecting new characters to appear in Smash Bros. on the 3DS and the Wii U. That would have surprised me much more than the appearance of new characters, but either way, Masahiro Sakurai has said during a conference that, “It’s fun making new skills for new characters”. So yes, there’ll be plenty of newness. It could still take a while before we hear much more about it though.

It was announced that Namco Bandai would contribute to the development of Smash Bros. This made some people nervous, since most assumed the company would have dominant control over the project. Katsuhiro Harada, the director of the Tekken series, however, has confirmed that this is not the case, explaining that:

…we’ll help provide support on technology and other things involved creating the game, I’m currently very focused on the Tekken series. Some people might say online that I’m going to be involved in the development process or not but that shouldn’t really be an issue because the game design is going to be handled by Masahiro Sakurai. So I don’t understand why there would be any worries there.

And in this context, it feels like a great decision. Namco Bandai have developed fantastic fighting games over the years, so with their technical expertise and Sakurai’s design taste, I think there’s a lot to look forward to.

(via mynintendonews.com)

There were people that expected to see Smash Bros. at E3 2012. They’re what we call “silly”. And once again, Masahiro Sakurai has clarified that we should not expect Smash Bros. any time soon. It’s in development, but we will be waiting for years before it’s available. Here’s the exact quote:

We’ve just taken what you could call the first step of the process. This is the first time I’ve ever had my next project announced before it’s even entered development, and because of that, I fear that players will be forced to wait even longer than they expect to. Please be patient.

This waiting game will last a while.

Update: As pointed out by Franco, this quote is something I already wrote about. It was making the rounds on some other blogs though and I didn’t pick up on the fact that it’s not new. Even so, it’s still a useful reminder.

Masahiro Sakurai, the man who’s working on Smash Bros. for the 3DS and Wii U has said in an interview that they’ve “just taken what you could call the first step of the process” in regards to the game, and that:

This is the first time I’ve ever had my next project announced before it’s even entered development, and because of that, I fear that players will be forced to wait even longer than they expect to.

He also asks us to be patient. And it seems like there’s no option but to be exactly that.