Ever since E3 2018, many people have been talking about Super Smash Bros Ultimate, and for good reason. The game was fully revealed at the Nintendo Digital Conference, and in said conference, they revealed that every character ever put into a Smash Bros game would be in Ultimate. And, they revealed that Ridley from Metroid would be joining the game as well. Since the reveal, there have been many questions about the development of the game, and co-creator Masahiro Sakurai has been doing columns to answer many of these questions.
In his latest column for Famitsu, Sakurai focused on the development of the game itself. Including how many people, and companies, it took to help make Super Smash Bros Ultimate:
Just as in the last game, Bandai Namco headed development for Ultimate; I actually had to relocate due to that, changing my daily commute. Ultimate’s development team was primarily based on those that had done work on the previous game; even so, we had a good deal of new people come in to increase the team’s capabilities. For such a large undertaking, we’d need hundreds of people working on the project!
There were many questions as to whether Bandai Namco would return to help with Ultimate, and this prove that they’re not just involved, they’re leading the charge. As for the “hundreds of people” working on the game, this falls in line with what Nintendo has been doing for several of their AAA Nintendo Switch titles. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, for example, had over 300 people working on it.
Sakurai also reaffirmed that he feels that Ultimate will be the last time that all the Smash Bros characters will be together. Citing money and legal issues as the main reason. Apparently, some the characters almost didn’t get in because of legal issues.
However, I feel like this is the last time we’ll have something akin to having all previous fighters appear in one game. I can’t exactly say what the future holds, but I don’t think that something like this could happen again. …In fact, we only barely got permission for everybody that’s appearing in Ultimate!
Super Smash Bros Ultimate arrives on December 7th for the Switch.
