The designer of the original Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64 shows us the prototype that started it all.
Among multiplayer fighting games, Super Smash Bros. is positioned as one of the flagship titles of the genre. But diehard fans of the game and of retro games have always wondered how this masterpiece was developed.
Surprisingly, 26 years later, Masahiro Sakurai shared the prototype he made with Satoru Iwata for the creation of Super Smash Bros. It started as a project at HAL Laboratory called Dragon King: The Fighting Game. They created a prototype, unaware of how successful the final game would become.
This is how it all began
Masahiro Sakurai has always been very open with fans regarding the changes that the Super Smash Bros. saga is going through. Therefore, surprisingly, the designer of the saga has created a YouTube channel where he plans to share fun facts and prototypes of games he has released to the public.
One of the games that were expected to share fun facts was the classic Super Smash Bros. Nintendo’s masterpiece. Therefore, Sakurai shared a prototype, which was already known to exist but had never seen the light of day. This prototype, Dragon King: The Fighting Game, was the root of the resounding success that Super Smash Bros. has had since its release.
As we can see in the video shared on Sakurai’s YouTube channel, this prototype already showed many elements that accompany the saga to this day. The four characters lunching on platforms, the exaggerated punches, and the frenetic action of each battle.
As an element of video game history, this video is not to be missed. It’s fun to see how an idea with such basic polygon graphics became what we know today.
