Sakurai Talks About Troubles With Smash Bros’ Release Because Of Its Pokémon

Masahiro Sakurai always has his hands full dealing with various franchises for the Super Smash Bros., but he shared how Pokémon gave him some release date troubles for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U/3DS during in a Nintendo Dream interview. [Thanks, Source Gaming.]

During the interview, which featured Game Freak’s Junichi Masuda and Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii, Sakurai explained how Smash Bros. actually features the voice talent of each Pokémon from the anime. That said, things got a little tricky when he wanted to get the voice actors for the dubs of each language.

Here’s a bit from their discussion:

Sakurai: I thought it’d be good if we could release Smash in North America and Europe at the same time, but it turned out to be very difficult because of the voices for individual Pokémon.
Masuda: The voices for Pokémon?
Sakurai: That’s right. Unlike the mainline games, Smash uses the voices from the anime, and in Europe the same Pokémon will have a different voice actor in each country.
Horii: Is that so?
Sakurai: Since there were so many, I couldn’t fit them all in…
Masuda: And you needed to have all the voice actors record their lines…
Sakurai: So I had to wait for all the recordings to come back…
Masuda: That’s pretty difficult. But Pikachu, at least, shares the same voice actor across the world.
Sakurai: Even in all versions of the anime, it’s Ikue Ōtani, right?
Masuda: That’s right. Pikachu is the only Pokémon that’s like that. We did that so the name “Pikachu” would be universal in every region of the world.

We all know how much value Sakurai puts into all the little details for the Super Smash Bros. series, and this is just another great example.