Funny thing about the upcoming Smash Bros. title for Wii U and 3DS is that the game most likely hasn’t evolved much past the design stages seeing as how it was just recently announced that the game would be a collaboration between Nintendo and Bandai Namco, but early details about the game are starting to slowly trickle in. According to a recent interview with Nintendo Power, director Masahiro Sakurai says that instead of focusing on adding more characters to the already robust Smash Bros. roster, Sakurai states, “I think a change of direction may be what’s needed.”
“In terms of quantity, we’ve probably already reached the limit of what’s feasible,” Sakurai tells Nintendo Power. “It isn’t a matter of if the next game has 50 characters, that’ll be enough. There is a certain charm to games that have huge casts of playable characters, but they tend to have issues with game balance and it becomes very difficult to fine-tune each character and have them all feel distinctive.”
I think Sakurai has a point. While each character in Brawl had their unique attributes, some fighters such as Link and Toon Link were similar enough that they could be considered clone characters. I’ll all for having new and unique characters in the game, but what really matters is the gameplay. If Bandai Namco and Nintendo can accomplish creating a game that is familiar enough to stay true to the series, while still attempting something new and fresh, that will go a long way to appeasing long time fans of the series.
What new features, ideas would you like to see in the new game that weren’t previously implemented in a previous Smash Bros. title? I for one would like to see an online multiplayer mode, because what we got in Brawl defiantly doesn’t count as that.
