Sakurai's Interview on How Characters Are Chosen

[LancerStaff]

For a man who supposedly hates cutting characters, he's done a lot of cuts for SSB4.

Only two of which he had any choice in, and they were clones. One from a seemingly dead franchise and another from a very divisive game in a finished franchise, I might add.

 

[Naoshi]

For a man who supposedly hates cutting characters, he's done a lot of cuts for SSB4.

Time restraints can do that. I mean, we have a 49 character roster, with 51 movesets and 12 customizable moves each. It would be a miracle to have no cuts.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

Time restraints can do that. I mean, we have a 49 character roster, with 51 movesets and 12 customizable moves each. It would be a miracle to have no cuts.

The only ones that felt like he couldn't have saved is Snake(due to other factors than his preferences) and Ice Climbers(technical issues) at best.

And welp, Dr. Mario was a costume. But turned into a character because fans think he's more interesting as being played separately. Makes sense. He has something closer to Mario's old moveset and a different projectile. I'm just glad he mentioned this so we can get official word.

Also, did somebody seriously say he worked hard on these clones? They're pretty clearly last minute and had less work done than any new characters. Also, lol at Mewtwo being a newcomer. He's 100% a veteran. He just needs to be worked on with as much effort as a newcomer due to being unable to be ported ever. Seriously, stop with this newcomer idea for past playable characters.

 

[Frostwraith]

The amount of ignorance in the last pages is just astounding.

Anyway, it's what was suspected all along. Just like Lucina, Dark Pit and Dr. Mario were originally intended as alts rather than separate characters, but minute changes made them their own slots, due to technicalities.

Since their functionality had differences, forms were separated from each other. However, it was vital that this didn’t increase the required man-hours. Some relative tuning was sufficient as it wasn’t necessary to create balancing from scratch.

While separating the characters, they wanted to be sure that not much time was dedicated to them, hence why they're so similar. As for Dr. Mario, it seems they went the extra mile to recreate him from Melee by adding the Tornado and Megavitamins, as to not alienate Dr. Mario fans.

Could you please leave it to me to select [characters] with man-hours and costs in mind?

With man-hours and costs in mind. This is a very important factor in development.

They have limited budget and time. Things have to be prioritized and scheduled carefully. This is why cuts happen and ideas are scrapped, not because "SAKURAI IS A DICTATOR THAT HATES THE FANS!!! D=<" as some people here were implying not so subtly.

 

[Verde Coeden Scalesworth]

BTW, is Nintendoeverything a reliable website like Kotaku is? I'm not saying this is fake, but it's not the best source. For that matter, has it shown up on a single reliable website?

Also, his attitude against the fans sounds a bit less believable. He only did something like that once with "Have you ever made a game?" at best. His silly trolling in PotD's are different. Like how he decided to mention that the SSB4 game was out in Japan without giving the other regions an actual unique PotD.

I don't see any reason why the clones being last minute is hard to believe. It's kind of obvious anyway. If this is true, this also explains why somebody played as Dr. Mario in an old leak, but didn't see him as different from Mario. He was just a costume. This got changed for good reasons. And even proves that Sakurai considers their movesets being unique very important(again, if this is real).

 

[FalKoopa]

Looking at the amount of vitriol in the last couple of pages, the thread will be closed for now.