Creator of a Franchise: Masahiro Sakurai

Perhaps not the most famous game designer of all time, but definitely one with incredible amounts of influence, Masahiro Sakurai is probably best known for his work on the Super Smash Bros series, the most prolific selling fighting game series of all time, and one of the flagship franchises for Nintendo. He currently works independently from Nintendo, and has made other contributions to the field of video games, such as Kid Icarus: Uprising, and an initial  developer of the Kirby series as well.

Sakurai’s career really got off the ground when he started to think about what he wanted to do with his life; initially, he wished to go into engineering after entering college, but realized that he had no real interest in engineering. A position at a company called HAL Laboratory - a Japanese company that had previously failed to make video games and eventually was rescued by Nintendo and put under its command - opened up, and Sakurai, 19 at the time, decided to join the company. Within his first year at the company, he had already made his mark; he had conceptualized a new character, named Kirby, a simple pink puffball, and managed to get a game released, Kirby’s Adventure. This game sold over 5 million units, spawned two sequels, and garnered large amounts of praise for its simplistic yet appealing art style, simple and easy to execute gameplay, and the unique idea of Kirby absorbing enemy powers. Furthermore, while at HAL, Sakurai met with Satoru Iwata. Iwata was someone who would later on become the President of Nintendo as a whole, but at the time, after Nintendo saved HAL from bankruptcy, Iwata was chosen as the employee who would lead the company under Nintendo’s orders. During Sakurai’s time at HAL, these two gentlemen would become good friends and work with one another frequently on various projects; perhaps the most important project that came about as a result of their friendship was a video game, called Super Smash Bros.

Sakurai, seeing the immense success games like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter - very popular fighting games at the time, for those who many not be familiar with them - enjoyed, decided to create his own 2D fighting game with unique mechanics; the characters would dynamically change throughout the match, accumulating percentage points; as a character gained percentage points, they would become easier to launch using various moves, and once they got launched far enough, they would be launched outside the confines of the stage and into the “blast zone”, and lose one of their many lives. Iwata, hearing this idea, agreed to help Sakurai, and helped him by coding the project; together, after enjoying their initial draft, they decided to be more ambitious, and submitted the idea to the higher ups at Nintendo, and put in characters such as Mario, Link, and Donkey Kong, all incredibly popular characters at the time. The Nintendo higher ups had loved the demo, and allowed the game to be launched; Super Smash Bros., the resulting game, sold 5.5 million units, and was the Nintendo 64’s 5th best selling game. 

After that initial success, however, Sakurai was still not satisfied, and decided he wanted to make a new game for Nintendo’s upcoming console; the Nintendo Gamecube. Working for 40 hours at a time and often sleeping for less than 4, he and the team at HAL managed to create Super Smash Bros Melee; the game was a smash hit, selling over 7 million copies, and still has prolific and thriving community up until this day; in 2018, in the prestigious fighting game tournament EVO, Melee - by then a 17 year old game - had garnered over 130,000 viewers at one point; not bad for such an old game, one might say.

Afterwards, Sakurai continued to work on the Smash Bros series as well as other games despite personal and medical issues; he developed chronic pain in his right arm, making it incredibly difficult to test his ideas, and was hit hard by the death of Satoru Iwata, his longtime friend, mentor, and partner in game development, in 2015; yet despite these setbacks, Super Smash Bros Ultimate, the latest entry in the series, was an unprecedented success, being the best selling fighting game in the history of video games, having sold over 21 million units at the time of this post being written.

Sakurai was most definitely a Big C creative, in my eyes; he broke the mold in what people considered a “fighting game”, and managed to make his idea the most popular fighting game the world has ever seen. He came up with the idea on his own, and worked tirelessly to ensure that it would be a successful, well received idea. In contemporary times, Sakurai has also become the face of Smash Bros, frequently addressing the community when new content or news comes out regarding the games. He also greatly utilized the talents of those around him whenever possible; for example, his wife, a creative designer, was the lead designer of the graphical interface of every Smash Bros game after the two of them were married, and he made excellent use of Iwata’s coding skills and experience to help make the initial game Super Smash Bros, a successful endeavour. In the end, Sakurai is someone who has made one of gaming’s biggest household names, a franchise that is popular with both casual and competitive gamers, and is a shining example of what pure creativity and a strong work ethic can result in.

Works Cited:
https://cultureofgaming.com/a-brief-history-of-masahiro-sakurai/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_Laboratory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games