Super Smash Bros: The Story of Masahiro Sakurai
Channel: Video Game Story Time
Date: 2018-12-07

Masahiro Sakurai is an absolute darling. The effort and attention to detail he puts into everything he does is just lovely.

Sometimes, too lovely. Masahiro is a gave developer who will injure himself rather than take a break, poor thing.

We're back after some time away, and we're still pretty raw. Things have not been going well, but nevertheless, we're moving forward and trying to pick up the pieces following a close series of particularly painful bereavements.

At least we have you here to keep us company; you stalwart few who are pausing Super Smash Bros Ultimate so that you can watch a video about Super Smash Bros Ultimate.

We appreciate your dedication. You're the real MVP.

This is the story of Masahiro Sakurai, of his start at HAL Laboratory, the creation of Kirby, and his secret prototype that became Super Smash Bros.

It's also the story of Satoru Iwata, because of course it is, that wonderful man had a hand in basically everything you love. And, it's the story of the King of Beetles and the Dragon King.

Lots of animal kings making brief appearances in this video. What a weird coincidence.

We played things a bit fast and loose with the timeline in this video, bouncing around a bit rather than staying in a straight line. Masahiro Sakurai's tendonitis hit while he was working on a previous Smash game, not Ultimate. Hopefully that won't seem too confusing. Just bear in mind that our hearts are in the right place.

Anyway, we don't have much more to say this week. Just keeping calm and carrying on here, for better or worse.

Hope you're doing better than us x

BretonStripes (http://twitter.com/bretonstriped) and Kotor (http://twitter.com/kotorcomics)

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Title music by Tee Lopes (http://twitter.com/teelopesmusic)

Incidental music: "Dewdrop Fantasy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Sources for this video:
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/news060803kirbycreator
https://kotaku.com/the-accidental-origins-of-kirby-1794773483
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/aug/08/super-smash-bros-ultimate-masahiro-sakurai-35-years-gaming-history-nintendo
https://web.archive.org/web/20080409211613/http://us.wii.com/iwata_asks/ssbb/vol7_page1.jsp