In an interview with Nintendo Dream, Sakurai talked about Smash 4’s release date was put in jeopardy because of trouble with Pokémon voice actors. Luckily, Source Gaming has provided a translation of the interview. Sakurai explained that because Smash Bros uses voice actors from the Pokémon anime, he wanted each language’s dub to provide their version of the voices. As you can imagine, this was an incredibly long process as each of the Pokémon needed all of their lines rerecorded multiple times. However, Pikachu’s voice actress is the exception as she voices him worldwide. This is yet another example of Sakurai’s intense attention to detail when crafting the Smash Bros series.

Sakurai: I thought it’d be good if we could release Smash in North America and Europe at the same time, but it turned out to be very difficult because of the voices for individual Pokémon.

Masuda: The voices for Pokémon?

Sakurai: That’s right. Unlike the mainline games, Smash uses the voices from the anime, and in Europe the same Pokémon will have a different voice actor in each country.

Horii: Is that so?

Sakurai: Since there were so many, I couldn’t fit them all in…

Masuda: And you needed to have all the voice actors record their lines…

Sakurai: So I had to wait for all the recordings to come back…

Source