Smash Ultimate Director Sakurai On Recently Played Games, Regrets, And More

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate director Masahiro Sakurai gave thanks to the fans in his latest Famitsu column, and also touched upon what he’s been up to recently, as well as his thoughts on playing games he made as the creator.

Here are the highlights:

• Sakurai completed Judgment recently, and praised it for being an engaging drama with each character standing out in their own way. He also spent a long weekend over Christmas playing Dragon Quest Builders 2, which he has been looking forward to. Sakurai has also been playing Smash Ultimate on-and-off with staff during lunch, and is playing World of Light and Spirits Mode at home.

• Sakurai then went on to talk about how creators don’t want their games to be viewed as just products. Of course, there are some cases where Sakurai ends up not enjoying his own games, thanks to regrets and memories of things going off the plan. However, he believes there’s no reason to fret over things that are already set in stone.

• With Smash Ultimate selling over 5 million copies in its first week, the most of any Nintendo games for home consoles, Sakurai thanked the development staff and players deeply for helping the game reach this milestone.

• Finally, Sakurai touched upon the Japanese game industry, and how everyone is pushing themselves to the limit in order to compete with the rest of the world in making fun games. This is why he wants to do as much as possible with Smash Ultimate. He talked about how kids that love these products end up on the development side, and thus begin to enjoy them even more for the work put into them. That said, he joked that he might be enjoying other people’s games too much, in this regard.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is available for the Nintendo Switch.