Masahiro Sakurai Talks About Smash Ultimate's Reveal Trailers

Nintendo just posted more of Super Smash Bros. series creator Masahiro Sakurai’s thoughts on the character reveal trailers. Last time he went over all of the trailers for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Super Smash Bros. for Wii-U. So, as you’d expect, this week he talked about Super Smash Bros. Ultimate!

Here’s what Mr. Sakurai said:

Mr. Sakurai’s Commentary on the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate reveal trailer

This is the start of the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate videos!
This video was created with the intention to announce the game in a Nintendo Direct. Because of that there’s no reveal video for Inkling, but the Smash symbol with the cross in the circle appearing in Inkling’s eye was met with a tremendous reaction. And then to find out that it’s coming in less than a year!

Mr. Sakurai’s Commentary on Ridley’s reveal trailer

This is the first fighter reveal video for the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate game.
We might have made this first one the most serious of them all. I wanted to make the part where Ridley takes down Mega Man and Mario a bit more intense... However, we wanted to balance the scene, and so we made it very carefully, with many discussions with the international teams.

Mr. Sakurai’s Commentary on Simon and Richter’s reveal trailer

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Vampire Killer is the name of Simon and Richter’s whip. This was a rather high production video, with a detailed art style overall, lots of guest characters, and even a brief glimpse of Dracula’s Castle. Richter comes to save Simon just in the nick of time, but unfortunately Luigi wasn’t so lucky…

Mr. Sakurai’s Commentary on King K. Rool’s reveal trailer

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We knew that there was a lot of demand for King K. Rool to join Super Smash Bros., so we decided to tease the viewers, making them think he was coming, before revealing it was a fake – and then showing that he is actually coming. King Dedede appears because, as with the other reveal videos, we were trying to mix in fighters from other series, to give a feeling of it being a collaboration.

Mr. Sakurai’s Commentary on Isabelle’s reveal trailer

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The scene is straight from the Animal Crossing™ series, so there are no guest appearances from other fighters…
The team didn’t have any experience in making Animal Crossing footage, so we did some research and recreated it in CG. It was made by Digital Frontier, as usual. I feel like we got pretty close, with the movements, camera angles and also the textures. What do you think?

Mr. Sakurai’s Commentary on Ken and Incineroar‘s reveal trailer

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We mixed together two reveals: the Echo Fighter Ken, and new fighter Incineroar. It’s literally a clash of fire against fire. It’s difficult to make a CG video with an Echo Fighter alone, so I’m glad we were able to do this. It also fit perfectly for a battle in the ring. Don’t you think both the CG part and in-game part are really dynamic?

Mr. Sakurai’s Commentary on Piranha Plant’s reveal trailer

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The Piranha Plant reveal was an additional video for the early purchase bonus. So, there isn’t a CG part, only the in-game part. Piranha Plant isn’t included in the Fighter Pass, so you need to buy them separately. At the time, people were saying that they never expected Piranha Plant to join the battle.

Mr. Sakurai’s Commentary on Joker’s fighter trailer

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This was the announcement video that revealed Joker as a fully fledged fighter.
The actual announcement was made with “Take Your Heart”.
It was made with the concept of Joker sneaking into The Game Awards 2018 to steal a Super Smash Bros. invitation, so there were two sets of dialogue: one for The Game Awards, and one for the web version.
The animated parts were made by Domerica, who also worked on the cutscenes in Joker’s original game.

Mr. Sakurai’s Commentary on Hero’s reveal trailer

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Hero was announced at E3 2019, along with Banjo & Kazooie.
Some time had passed from the release of the game, so you can see Dharkon here too. The part where all the different Heroes appear is really moving! This video also ran as an advert in some cinemas before the Dragon Quest™ movie in Japan.

Mr. Sakurai’s Commentary on Banjo & Kazooie’s reveal trailer

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With the Banjo & Kazooie reveal video, we were aiming for what’s called in Japanese comedy terms a “tendon” (in English, a “call back”), where we repeat the same joke again. In this case, we followed the King K. Rool video. The ending is, of course, inspired by the defeat of Gruntilda in the original game.

Mr. Sakurai’s Commentary on Terry’s reveal trailer

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This is Terry Bogard’s reveal video, which anyone familiar with the NEO GEO™ system will surely not be able to watch without grinning.
This is an in-house production from the BANDAI NAMCO Studios’ Super Smash Bros. team.

A lot of the pixel art is new, but we tried to make the feel of the pixels and the method for zooming in and out close to that of the NEO GEO system.

Mr. Sakurai’s Commentary on Byleth’s reveal trailer

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This isn’t a character who smiles a lot in the original game, so we gave Byleth a really happy scene here…

This video was made by the staff from the original game, Fire Emblem: Three Houses™. The animated part was created by Sanzigen, and the in-game part with dialogue was made by Koei Tecmo. The two companies are connected by basically just one highway, but there would always be traffic jams whenever we needed to have a meeting.

Mr. Sakurai’s Commentary on Min Min’s reveal trailer

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The reason Captain Falcon and Kirby are there is just because we thought it would work well.
It’s in a drawn style, close to Little Mac’s reveal video, but actually it’s mainly CG. I think it brings more variation, including the screen effects.

We were careful to refer to the ramen restaurant where Min Min works while we were making it.

Mr. Sakurai’s Commentary on Steve and Alex’s reveal trailer

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It was memorable how Twitter reacted at the time we released this video.
Compared to other fighters, it doesn’t fit to make Steve do things, so we went with a surreal, funny approach, with an emphasis on space.

The publisher’s stance was that both Steve and Alex are important, so for the in-game part we used both of them equally.

Mr. Sakurai’s Commentary on Sephiroth’s reveal trailer

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The FINAL FANTASY movie released in 2005 had a huge impact.
For the reveal of Sephiroth joining Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, we created a high production video with the aim of achieving something close to that impact.

As a result, there was an extremely large reaction, and the video is something you can really enjoy.

It’s also the debut of Cloud’s additional Final Smash, Omnislash Ver. 5.

Mr. Sakurai’s Commentary on Pyra and Mythra’s reveal trailer

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The CG part of the Pyra/Mythra reveal video is the only one where I didn’t write the plot. The cutscenes in the original game, Xenoblade Chronicles 2™, were really good, so we asked the developers, Monolith Soft, to take care of this video, including the planning. It was longer than I expected, but it fuses really well with the original game, and I think it worked out.

Mr. Sakurai’s Commentary on Kazuya’s reveal trailer

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Dropping his parents off a cliff would be right at the top of the list of things Kazuya would do! There’s a lot for the in-game part, so we aimed for the CG part to be simple and straightforward. It’s pretty close to the art style of the original game, including things like the textures. For the in-game part, we worked to make it feel like the original games at the beginning.

Mr. Sakurai’s Commentary on Sora’s reveal trailer

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This is the last fighter to be revealed, so we went back to the beginning and made it a finale. Creating that many fighters in CG would have been a lot of work! Instead, we made the background black and plain, but I think this is the best way. The in-game part also came out really well. I think it’s a fitting end.
I’ve mentioned in an interview elsewhere about how I actually wrote two plots, but this is the way we chose to go.

Credits:
Writing: Zerp
Thumbnail Graphic: Zerp
Social: Zerp
Source: Nintendo

 

There's a few cool comments (I especially thought the one about the Hero trailer airing in cinemas was really intersting), but most of what Sakurai says is just stating the obvious and that's kind of boring I think.

 

There's a few coolcomments (I especially thought the one about the Hero trailer airing in cinemas was really intersting), but most of what Sakurai says is just stating the obvious and that's kind of boring I think.

Bobby McBobby Reveal Trailer - Super Smash Bros Ultimate
"This is the reveal trailer for Bobby McBobby. He's from the McBobby series of games. I like this trailer."

But seriously, I don't know if he just doesn't have much to say about this or if it's some sort of NDA thing. But I'm really interested in hearing him go deep into aspects of development, but this ain't it chief.

 

Sakurai wanting to make the scenes where Ridley kills Mega Man and Mario "more intense". Wow Sakurai, calm down. Dang. Though it would be interesting to see lol.

"This isn’t a character who smiles a lot in the original game [Byleth]" just like the Smash community when they got announced.

 

Banjo & Kazooie recycling King K. Rool's reveal trailer was a neat approach, seeing as all three characters were created by Rare Ltd.. But even to this day, it's Piranha Plant who pretty much stands out for being our first generic enemy fighter.

 

There's a few cool comments (I especially thought the one about the Hero trailer airing in cinemas was really intersting), but most of what Sakurai says is just stating the obvious and that's kind of boring I think.

Bobby McBobby Reveal Trailer - Super Smash Bros Ultimate
"This is the reveal trailer for Bobby McBobby. He's from the McBobby series of games. I like this trailer."

But seriously, I don't know if he just doesn't have much to say about this or if it's some sort of NDA thing. But I'm really interested in hearing him go deep into aspects of development, but this ain't it chief.

Exactly. I'm disappointed by this comments. All he says about Banjo & Kazooie's is:

- it's a call-back to K.Rool's;

- the end is a call-back to the end of Banjo-Kazooie.

Who would have guessed?!

 

I love the attention to detail and the amount of research to make the trailers as impactful as they are, in this kind of project is easy to make a lot of people angry!