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Masahiro Sakurai

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“It was tough for me to see that every time I made a new game, people automatically assumed that a sequel was coming, even if it's a sequel, lots of people have to give their all to make a game, but some people think the sequel process happens naturally.”
— Masahiro Sakurai
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Masahiro Sakurai   [Edit]   [Talk]

Masahiro Sakurai (JP) (born August 3, 1970) is a video game developer, best known as the creator of Kirby and the main creative force behind the Super Smash Bros. series. Outside gaming, Sakurai has been creating videos for his YouTube channel, Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games, where he discusses game design and his career.

Biography[]

In 1989, Sakurai started working at HAL Laboratory. While there, he created the game Kirby's Dream Land and the character Kirby. He worked on more Kirby titles until he conceived and directed the original Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64.

After his further work on titles like Super Smash Bros. Melee and Kirby Air Ride, he resigned from HAL Laboratory on August 5, 2003, since he was seeking more freedom and was not happy with the structure of HAL, or the sequelization of the industry. After leaving HAL, Sakurai began working with Q Entertainment with Tetsuya Muzuguchi, which resulted in the creation of Meteos, a game for the Nintendo DS.

On September 30, 2005, he founded Sora, Ltd., a freelance video game company. Despite his departure from HAL, he still kept directing the following entries in the Smash Bros. series, as well as Kid Icarus: Uprising; a revival of the Kid Icarus series. His wife, Michiko Sakurai, has designed the menus and UI of several of his games. He also writes a weekly column in the Famitsu magazine.

Sakurai has also provided the voice of King Dedede in Kirby 64 and the Super Smash Bros. series. In the main Kirby series, he was replaced by Shinya Kumazaki.

Sakurai also supervised the lyrics for Ultimate's theme song, Lifelight.

On September 13th, 2019, Sakurai won 4 Tokyo Game Show awards and confirmed that Ultimate will only have content from video games. Starting from December 27th, 2019, Sakurai began posting screenshots from the development version of Ultimate daily to his Twitter account, in similar vein to Smash 4's "Pic of the Day". This concluded on August 23rd, 2022.

On August 23, 2022, Sakurai launched his own YouTube channel in both English and Japanese, titled Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games. According to Sakurai, the channel's videos will be focused on "topics like game development and what makes games fun", as well as discussing his history as a game designer and director. The final episode was uploaded on October 15, 2024, along with a "special final video" on October 22. Additionally, he revealed that he had written and prerecorded all its videos months before the launch of the channel beginning immediately after the release of Sora in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and as a result, he had begun work on a new game beginning in April 2022.

Games[]

Special Thanks[]

Other[]

Interviews[]

Gallery[]

  Main article: Masahiro Sakurai/gallery

Videos[]

Main article: Masahiro Sakurai/videos

External links[]

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