For the first time, Super Smash Bros. will be heading to a portable Nintendo system since the first entry in the franchise’s library on the Nintendo 64. Smashers have dreamed for a portable Smash game for over a decade; now, we\’ve learned that the wait for a portable Smash game may not have been as long as it has if Masahiro Sakurai had his way.

In a GamesTM interview, Sakurai points out that Smash Bros. on a handheld system was on his mind, but due to portable system limitations, it never came to fruition. “It’s not that I haven’t wanted to – I thought about it, I did. To be honest, we purely didn’t have the opportunity, it just never came up. And also, to speak freely, if you look at a handheld device preceding anything before the GBA, I don’t know that it would have the capabilities to fully realize Smash Bros,\” says Sakurai.

This implies, at the very least, that Sakurai thinks Smash could have indeed showed up on the GameBoy Advance or Nintendo DS. However, the 3DS will be the first home of portable Smash Bros.

Super Smash Bros. Wii U and 3DS are expected to release sometime next year.