Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai has released footage from the game’s original N64 prototype – and it shows a stunningly fully-formed version of the game.
New video features footage from the original game on which it is based, Dragon King: The Fighting Game Super Smash Bros.
“There were no special moves, dodges, or even items yet,” Sakurai explained. “But the rules of the game were basically the same as Smash Bros.”
“He had punch attacks, mid-air leaps, shields, dashes, and five-way air attacks,” he said. “Battlefield stage plan too, though you can change that.”
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Sakurai has just previously released Super Smash Bros. will release a never-before-seen gameplay of Dragon King: Fighting Game Prototype for the N64!
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“At the time, we were very limited in how we could configure the models,” he said. “But they’re still doing pretty well, I’d say.”
The Dragon King prototype was met with high praise by Nintendo and was eventually adapted into Super Smash Bros. we know and love today.
“When you think of Smash Bros. now, you can’t help but think of its great Nintendo characters,” he explained. “But that wasn’t in the original proposal — it’s something we discussed later.”
As you can see from the footage, the prototype included generic fighting game style characters, but Sakurai didn’t want to flood the market with a bunch of new fighters that nobody cared about.
“I didn’t want to throw the players into a roster full of characters that no one had seen and knew we needed to find an objective solution to this problem,” he said. “In the end, we convinced Nintendo to let us take their most popular characters.” The result was an instant classic that allowed players to battle some of Nintendo’s most popular heroes.
Sakurai also shed some light on the design process behind the game’s relatively simple controls:
“I came up with the idea for this game in 1996, when team entries for fighting games were getting extremely complicated,” he said. “Some of it was extremely intense. So I opted for simple controls with a stick direction and a button that players can pick up intuitively.
Often considered the antithesis of fighting games, Smash Bros’ controls allow almost anyone to pick up a controller and start playing without having to learn long and difficult combos.
“There’s also Smash input, which is performed by ‘flicking’ the analog stick,” he said. “You can jump or jump to a more powerful attack with just a quick kick. I came up with this idea after thinking about how best to use the N64’s new analog stick.
Want to read more about Smash Bros? Check it out Nintendo has finally released Smash Bros. scene as well as ours The 25 best Nintendo Switch games.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can watch it Twitter.
