Masahiro Sakurai 桜井 政博 Born

August 3, 1970 (age 48) Tokyo, Japan Occupation Video game director, game designer

Masahiro Sakurai is the creator of the Super Smash Bros. series, and has directed every game in the series. He is also the director of the Kid Icarus series and the former director of the Kirby series.

During the development of Super Smash Bros. Melee, Sakurai maintained a site called "Smabura-Ken" for Japanese visitors. After the announcement of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, a new site similar to Smabura-Ken was announced, titled Smash Bros. Dojo. Unlike Smabura-Ken, Smash Bros. Dojo was made available in both English and Japanese, although the Japanese version of the site has featured certain elements not present in the English version. Later added to the site were American English and British English versions, as well as Spanish, French, German, and Italian once the site was revamped.

He is also the author for the weekly columns of Famitsu Weekly.

He provides the voice acting for King Dedede [1] in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS/Wii U, and Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards.

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Smash Bros. DOJO!!

Sakurai created a site in the form of a blog for information regarding Super Smash Bros. Brawl called Smash Bros. DOJO!!. Every weekday, he updated the site with updates about characters, stages, modes, and much more.

As of April 14th, 2008, the Smash Bros. DOJO!! is no longer updated daily.

Sakurai began work on the newest iteration of the Smash Bros. series after finishing Kid Icarus: Uprising in 2012. No other news was released for the game until E3 2013, where a trailer was shown. Afterwards, the new site for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U was launched. There, as well as on Miiverse, Sakurai released new photos from the game 5 days a week.

Sakurai also hosted three Smash Bros. Directs. The first, held on April 8th of 2014, divulged lots of information about stages and a few returning characters, namely Yoshi, Zero Suit Samus, Zelda, and Sheik. He also explained that there would be no character transformations in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS/Wii U, and so moves like Phantom and Bouncing Fish were created to replace the character transformation command. At the end of the Direct, veteran Charizard and newcomer Greninja were revealed.

He hosted a second Direct in the summer of 2015, in which he talked about new DLC that was arriving to Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS/Wii U. He revealed Roy, Ryu, lots of Mii Costumes, the Suzaku Castle stage, and then announced that more downloadable content was on the way, such as Hyrule Castle 64 and Mushroom Kingdom 64. After the Direct, all of the DLC announced during the Direct was released on the eShop.

Sakurai hosted one final Direct on December 15th of 2015, in which he announced the final DLC content that was coming to Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS/Wii U. Corrin from Fire Emblem Fates and Bayonetta from the Bayonetta series, who also got a stage. More Mii costumes were announced as well, and Sakurai even touched on the new characters' moves, including Cloud and his stage, Midgar. Cloud was released after the Direct and Corrin and Bayonetta were projected for a February 2016 release.

Trivia

In the Pokémon Stadium 2 stage in Brawl, if the player looks inside the house that appears during the ice transformation, they will see a cat that is rumored to be Sakurai's.

References