Masahiro Sakurai

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Masahiro Sakurai ( Japanese 桜 井 政 博 Sakurai Masahiro ; born August 3, 1970 ) is a Japanese developer of video games . He created the Nintendo series Kirby and Super Smash Bros. Initially an employee of HAL Laboratory, Inc , he later founded his own company Sora Ltd. and acted as an independent game developer. Together with Nintendo, he and Sora founded the development team Project Sora. Sakurai also contributed to the Japanese video game magazine Famitsu .

Act

Masahiro Sakurai got a job with HAL Laboratory, a first-party developer for Nintendo. At that time, the President of HAL Laboratory was Satoru Iwata , who became President of Nintendo in 2002. Sakurai created the character Kirby at the age of 19 and directed the development of the Game Boy game Kirby's Dream Land .

In the next few years, Sakurai was responsible for other games for the Kirby franchise. In 1999 the fighting game Super Smash Bros. , developed under his direction, was released for the Nintendo 64 . Since the game was a great success, the successor, Super Smash Bros. Melee , appeared for the GameCube two years later . In 2010, Sakurai commented on the making of Melee: “I worked on the game for 13 months without a break, after all without a single Sunday or public holiday all the time. Sometimes I lived a really harmful lifestyle - I worked over 40 hours continuously, then I went home to sleep four hours. "(" I worked on that game for 13 months straight, after all, without a single Sunday or holiday off that whole time. During parts of it, I was living a really destructive lifestyle - I'd work for over 40 hours in a row, then go back home to sleep for four. ")

However, Sakurai left HAL Laboratory on August 5th, 2003. Two weeks later, in an interview with Nintendo Dream, he justified this with criticism of the company's structure, saying that he was being asked to replace each of his games. After leaving, Sakurai worked for Q Entertainment , among others , where he designed the puzzle game Meteos for the Nintendo DS together with Tetsuya Mizuguchi .

Logo of Sora Ltd.

In September 2005, Sakurai started his own company, Sora Ltd. With him, the company consisted of two employees. He saw himself as a freelance consultant and director of video game productions, but did not want to turn Sora into a video game studio. He wanted to remain flexible and not focus on a single genre in future projects.

When Sakurai left HAL Laboratory, Satoru Iwata was already president of Nintendo. Iwata, Sakurai said, told him at the time that he might later work for another Super Smash Bros. - Consult offshoots. At E3 2005, Satoru Iwata finally announced a third installment in the series to be produced for the Wii console, then codenamed Revolution. Sakurai, who had attended the game fair, had been surprised by this. Shortly after the announcement, Iwata asked Sakurai to take part in the development of the new Super Smash Bros., if possible as director.

Sora Ltd. began work on the new offshoot of the series in October 2005. Nintendo opened a new office especially for this game, was looking for new employees and collaborated with other development studios. Development was completed in late 2007, and the game was released for Wii in 2008 under the title Super Smash Bros. Brawl .

At E3 2010, Nintendo presented the Nintendo 3DS , a 3D-capable handheld console. Kid Icarus: Uprising has been announced for the console, along with other games . The origins of this project go back to July 2008, according to Sakurai, when Iwata had a conversation with him and revealed that Nintendo was working on a new portable console. At the time it was not known whether the console would allow 3D or not. Sakurai was the first person outside of Nintendo to hear about the new handheld. Iwata asked Sakurai to develop a title for this console.

Project Sora logo

Sakurai could not develop a new game with his company Sora, because he did not have a development team. In January 2009, Nintendo and Sora therefore founded the development team Project Sora, of which Sakurai was appointed. In March of that year, the studio looked for new employees through an advertisement in Famitsu magazine. Part of a conversation between Iwata and Sakurai was shown. It was planned to design a new big game, but it was not a new Super Smash Bros. offshoot. Kid Icarus: Uprising was developed by Project Sora under Sakurai's direction and was launched on March 23, 2012 in the European market.

A fourth Super Smash Bros. - Nintendo announced the offshoot during E3 2011. This should appear both for the 3DS and for the new Nintendo home console Wii U , which should come out in 2012. Shortly thereafter, however, Sakurai stated in his Famitsu column that the development of the next Super Smash Bros. had not yet begun because they were still completely busy with Kid Icarus: Uprising . Only when this project was completed could Sakurai form a team for a new Super Smash Bros.

After Kid Icarus: Uprising was released, it was announced in early July 2012 that Project Sora had been disbanded. The next Super Smash Bros. will be created by Namco Bandai under Sakurai's direction.

Ludography

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  8. ^ Foreword by Masahiro Sakurai. ( Memento from June 15, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) from the official website for Super Smash Bros. Brawl ( English )
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