Masahiro Sakurai Details How Sora Finally Made It Into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

We were informed earlier in the month that Sora, from Kingdom Hearts Series would be the. Last DLC fighter to join the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate rosterThis was quite a sight. 

Masahiro Saurai, Ultimate director, said that the first survey asking users to name the Smash Bros. characters they wanted to see six years back revealed that Sora was also the top-ranked character. That’s part of why Sora as the final fighter is a perfect idea 

During his unveiling, Sakurai spoke out about the difficulties in getting Sora to Smash. Still, the director’s latest bi-weekly column, Sakurai’s Column 639: The Final One, sheds new light on just how complicated the process was for Nintendo. It is a translation of the column. PixelJunk’sCommunity manager who is available PushDustIn on TwitterTranslate KodyNOKOLO on Twitter 

“Even though he was highly requested, Sakurai thought it’d be highly unlikely to get Sora into Smash,” PushDustIn says in a Twitter threadThe translated column is described. “There’s no doubt that the team involved with negotiations for Smash Bros also thought it was impossible as well. However, one day a chance presented itself. Sakurai met a Disney representative at a particular award venue. They said it would be great if Sora could get in.” 

Sora’s inclusion seemingly started with this chance encounter, which is reminiscent of the literal elevator pitch that led to the creation of Kingdom Hearts (reportedly, a Square Enix executive and a Disney executive were in an elevator together, and the pitch happened during that ride). 

“But that meeting alone wouldn’t be able to get Sora into Smash Bros.,” PushDustIn said on Twitter. “The higher-ups could feel differently and talks could fall apart. After long and careful discussions with Square, Nintendo, and Disney, the ok was finally given.”

Sakurai mentioned in the column that Fighter Pass 2 had originally been going to only have five fighters. It was just like the first fighter pass. Sakurai added the sixth fighter to Fighter Pass 2 after Sora received the go-ahead. PushDustIn gives the translation. KodyNOKOLO, who continues and says that Sora’s Ultimate development was supervised by both Disney and Square Enix, which meant there were “a lot of high hurdles to his inclusion and many guidelines to follow.” 

“The first Sora model that the Smash team sent to Disney/SE was very quality and there weren’t a lot of issues…just kidding,” Sakurai writes in the column, according to KodyNOKOLO. “It was quite difficult.” 

The Ultimate development team shrunk over the years – the entirety of Ultimate’s DLC took roughly three years of time – and then there was the impact COVID-19 had on the DLC’s development. Sakurai stated that developing DLC is equivalent to creating a complete game. Sakurai also stated that he only plans to work on one or two more games. 

“With Smash Ultimate, Sakurai felt that he was able to offer a celebration of gaming, and he’s glad he worked on it,” KodyNOKOLO writes on Twitter. “Smash Ultimate isn’t an ordinary game, and he’s happy he was able to collaborate with many developers.” 

There you have it – getting Sora into Ultimate was just as challenging as most thought. It makes the game even more enjoyable. 

Read my article about Why I Think Sora is Ultimate for more information Sora’s inclusion in the game is a perfect series sendoff for the game’s creatorCheck out the rest. Game Informer’s original coverage of Sora’s announcementYou can watch the video here. You should also check out the Game Informer team play as Sora in Ultimate live today at 2 p.m. Central for today’s Game Informer LiveStream