Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games

The Smash Bros. series features an incredible array of arrangements from other games' soundtracks. Today, I'll explain some of the things we had to keep in mind while arranging tracks. Each song needs to be identifiable, yet have its own appeal as well.

Games that greatly penalize the player each time they're defeated are on the rise. Roguelikes are a prime example. This is fine for games players are meant to play over and over again, but whether they'll actually want to play is another question.

Game-induced motion sickness affects different people in different ways, and some much worse than others. Today, I'll discuss why it happens in the first place, and what we can do to counteract its effects.

When making a game, how do you keep graphics consistent even though they're created by multiple artists? It's all about unifying the visual style.

Providing feedback when a character attacks or gets hit is important, especially in games like Smash Bros. where the camera is pulled back. That's where hit marks come in! Today, I'll be explaining how they work.

The reason the Smash Bros. series has continued into the modern era has everything to do with the events discussed in this episode! What exactly did Mr. Iwata request??

The tone and manner of a game's menus vary depending on the game—there's no one catch-all solution. Today, I'll share an example of this so you can see what I mean!

I think the game essence in old-school 2D shoot 'em ups should be pretty easy to understand...but let's take a look at their push and pull to find out!

Not only was this the first-ever handheld Smash Bros. title, it was also the first time I ever developed a game for two consoles simultaneously! It may sound like a reckless decision, but I had good reason for doing so.

When the number of elements in a game increases, it's not addition, it's multiplication! Today, I'll discuss a type of bug testing that's become physically impossible to complete.

Have you ever had trouble organizing ideas, proposals, spec docs, stories, or reports? Today, I'll introduce a basic, sensible method I use to keep everything in order. It really comes in handy when writing proposals, and even when planning videos for this channel!

Some characters are realistic! Some characters are cartoony! Just throwing them all into a game as-is might not result in a cohesive visual style.

All sorts of rules govern the products we see. Before a product can see the light of day, it has to meet those standards! Game ratings like ESRB are but one example of these types of guidelines.

It's nice to release a game and be wholly satisfied in how it came out! But when you're making games, there are some problems you just can't do anything about. Today, I'll be discussing some experiences I've had that I'll never forget...

Damage animations are a type of feedback from the game to the player, so they're actually very important! With how many unique body types there are in Smash Bros., it tends to be a lot of work to make animations for them all...

Social media may be more popular these days, but it's hard to top a website as the central hub for info about a game. Today I'll lean on my Smash website experiences to share why I'm so particular about how information is presented.

There's a concept I utilize that lets me pour myself into my work and push onward with proposals!! Today, I'd like to introduce that concept!!

Super Smash Bros. is all about knockback, so the knockback systems are very detailed. It's been like this since the first game. In today's Programming & Tech video, I'd like to take the opportunity to introduce some of those systems.

Arranging music is trickier than you might think—a point I'll explain today using a true story from Smash Bros. By the way, be ready for the Psycho Soldier theme song to get stuck in your head after watching this!

In this UI video, I'd like to introduce an alternative to the simple list format commonly used for menu layouts. In practice, your UI's design will differ depending on the aims of your game, but I personally prefer a menu you can navigate without even reading the words, once you get used to it.

This is the 17th Game Essence video, but today, we'll dive into a topic I mentioned back in the very first: how deepening game essence can reduce broad appeal. What exactly does that mean?

Given my history, I've accumuled a fair amount of game-related items over the years. Today, I'd like to share a few of the rare pieces from my collection. (Just between us: I tried to share some even rarer ones, but that got shot down.)

The poses look great, and the timing is perfect! And yet, the animations look slow... That's one of the perils of interpolation. You have to be careful to keep this useful feature from undermining your work.

Super Smash Bros. is a game where typical rewards don't entirely make sense, since fighters can't level up or earn new equipment. However, not having rewards at all wouldn't feel very satisfying, so we did our best to compensate players in a few different ways.

Do graphics affect how much fun a game is? I probably give the impression of a game-essence advocate, so you might expect me to answer "no" to that... But far from it! Graphics are very important to how fun games are!

"Billboards" are flat objects that always face the camera. It might be hard to picture what they are if you haven't worked in game development before, so I'll be breaking them down in today's Effects video.

The Nintendo 64 gave me my first chance to develop games using an analog control stick. Not only could you move the stick in any direction and tilt it to varying degrees, you could detect the speed of said tilting!

It's easy to think an idea is a good one if the majority of people agree with it. But when it comes to creative projects, that's not always the case. In fact, it may just lead to mediocrity.

Do you know the command to perform a Shoryuken? In today's Game Essence video, I'll be breaking down this input method to show the inherent risk and reward within.

Thank you all so much for tuning in as I've explained the ideas behind the games I've worked on in the Game Concepts category. Today's video marks the final installment! Now all that's left is to see how far this channel can go.

When making creative works, it's important to make something unique—or at least something fresh! But what about content people have truly never seen before? It may be that humans simply can't picture something without a reference for comparison...

I don't belong to a company myself anymore, but in this video I'd like to talk about making games in-house. Consider this advice for those of you who work at game companies—or those who are hoping to.

I'd like to think that Smash Bros. fighter reveals have made for some momentous occasions in the game industry—and today I'll show how we made them!

The game industry sees plenty of sequels and extensions to existing series, especially with large-scale games made by big companies. Of course, there's a reason for this. When making an original title, you have to build everything from the ground up—while making a sequel lets you make use of existing systems.

What does it mean for a director to "supervise"? In this video, I'll give you a glimpse of some of the supervision work I do! Each of the "pre-feedback" images you'll see is from game content submitted as "done," before I called for these additional adjustments.

Facial animations are how we give characters their expressions. While the ones in Smash Ultimate aren't as realistic as those made with more cutting-edge techniques, I'd like to use them to explain how these animations work.

Today, I'll discuss things to look out for when creating sound effects. Especially with impact sounds and explosions, I always try to explain my vision to the team. Of course, the best approach will differ from game to game.

When making Smash Bros., Nintendo lent me a precious document detailing LCD patterns used in the old Game & Watch handhelds. With their permission, I'd like to share this important and fascinating piece of video game history!

When Smash Bros. Melee was in development, Nintendo asked me if I had any ideas for their new controller—leading me to propose one particular feature. It's important to always rethink the things you take for granted.

Leaderboards are an indispensable part of the online play experience. But have you ever wondered what percentage of players actually appreciate them?

Self-suggestion can be a powerful motivator. Today, I'd like to share an anecdote of a time I found it extremely effective. It's all about your frame of mind!

Given how large dev teams tend to be, what do you do when multiple members make changes to a file at the same time? I used to wonder about that myself, so allow me to explain.

Games have grown more and more complex in recent years, and they rarely come with instruction manuals, making it vital that the game itself presents the player with the rules and controls. Today, I'll be showing some ways of teaching players how to play.

In a prior episode, I spoke about the importance of achieving the proper sense of scale. Today, I'd like to take a different approach to that issue and discuss how to make things appear smaller.

It'd be a real inconvenience if cars drove differently every time you tried a new one. The same is true with games. It's great to be able to make use of de facto standards, but you should also make sure players can adjust to their liking.

Sometimes I wonder what my past industry mentors are up to nowadays. Just because they've vanished from the public eye, that doesn't mean they're actually gone.

Although there are exceptions, I generally never put off emails to the next day. Responding to things the same day not only feels better for you, but it improves the lives of everyone involved.