Sakurai On How Kirby’s Spotlight In Smash Ultimate’s World Of Light Is A Total Coincidence

Super Smas Bros. Ultimate director Masahiro Sakurai wrote a column in Famitsu this week, focusing on why Kirby was picked as the first character you play as in the ‘World of Light’ Adventure mode – and no, it’s not personal bias.

Here are the highlights:

• Lyrics were added to the theme song of Smash Ultimate, ‘Lifelight’, in order to surpass the main theme of Smash for Wii U/3DS. Erina Koga, a 17-year-old amateur, was chosen to sing the song due to her voice, as well as composer Hideki Sakamoto’s recommendation.

• Why was Kirby chosen as the first character to play as for ‘World of Light’? It turns out that the reason is not personal bias but a mix of game design choices and process of elimination. Galeem’s attack spanned galaxies, and Kirby with his Warp Star made him a contender to survive the attack. Sakurai considered Bayonetta and Palutena as well, but because other characters of their caliber like Purgatorio enemies, and Viridi were turned into Spirits, it wouldn’t make sense for them to survive. Furthermore, Bayonetta and Palutena weren’t beginner-friendly like Kirby is.

• Sakurai did notice during development that ‘World of Light’s Japanese name, ‘Tomoshibi no Hoshi’ can be read backwards with different kanji readings to say ‘Hoshi no Kaabi’ (Kirby of the Stars), but says it’s pure coincidence. Kirby is just the first character usable, and you can switch out to other characters whenever you want.

• You get one Advanced Spirit at the start of ‘World of Spirits’. Which one you get is random.

• Physical version buyers should apply the Day 1 patch to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but digital version buyers don’t need to. Finally, Sakurai reminded that replays can be saved to keep them permanently, although it will eat up space on the Switch storage.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate launches for Nintendo Switch on December 7, 2018.