Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai has teased a new project, despite claiming to be “semi-retired”.
The first instalment of Super Smash Bros. was released in 1999 and saw a number of Nintendo legends fight against each other. The series has spawned four sequels, including 2018’s Smash Bros. Ultimate. All five of those games were directed by Sakurai.
At the start of 2023, Sakurai announced he had “semi-retired” from the games industry. Between 2014’s Super Smash Bros. 4 and Ultimate, he’d spent nine years actively developing games. “Sakurai felt that if he is just continuously making games full time, his life will be over before he realises it,” explained an interview.
Over the past two years, Sakurai has been running his ‘Creating Games’ YouTube channel. Yesterday (October 22) he published his last video in the series and teased a new game.
According to Sakurai, the mysterious project first began in 2021 while he was working on DLC for Ultimate. “I received a request to write a game proposal, which I finished at lightning speed. I’m sorry I can’t share more about this project, but assuming we’re able to get it made, it should be announced sooner or later,” he said (via VGC).
Between the proposal and the project getting greenlit, Sakurai planned out all 260 episodes of his ‘Creating Games’ channel, “a lasting archive of information for people to access whenever they like.” When it launched in 2022, “the game project I’ve mentioned had already started production,” he continued.
