In this GDC 2004 bonus‑stage Q&A, Masahiro Sakurai discusses the design philosophy and development process behind Super Smash Bros. Melee. He explains how high‑risk, high‑return moves were conceived using a marble‑shooting analogy, and how risk and reward are balanced in move design. Sakurai describes the testing regime for new mechanics, noting that while some techniques like wave‑dashing emerged from player experimentation, the team performed extensive but finite testing before locking the game. He details the technical and design challenges of implementing the Ice Climbers as a two‑character unit, emphasizing early decisions to manage polygon budgets and gameplay balance. Sakurai reveals regional balance differences, citing that the international version makes Kirby slightly stronger than the Japanese version. He outlines the organization of the design team: each character has a sub‑designer, but Sakurai, as lead designer, reviews and directs all aspects, ensuring a consistent visual worldview across characters while respecting the original IP creators’ constraints. Finally, he notes the role of programmers in flagging technical limitations that necessitate design revisions, illustrating the collaborative, iterative nature of Melee’s development.
Chapters
Bonus stage. Hi.
I want to ask, in Super Smash Bros. Melee, what are some of the high-risk, high-return moves that are available? And also, do you start with a lower risk or higher risk when designing?
Hi.
OK. The marble? You know the marble? You have a marble game in here? You know, like shooting marbles? Oh, OK. Then probably it's easy to understand. Actually, the Smash Brothers is kind of like a marble shooting game. So based on those marble shooting, I got an idea. There is a marble, and there is some kind of arm, and then— And they can shoot away like a marble, marble shooting away, shooting off the other marbles. So the enemies are risky. So distance is very risky. However, if you shoot away, you feel very, very good. And that's a big return. That's what I thought. And of course, the characters of a marble is not very interesting. So that's how I created. Human being, like soft software image. And I designed some— actually, the Mr. Iwatani of Nintendo Japan asked me, like, if you can put some human element in here. So when you shoot away, it's like a fighting game. That's how Smash Mario is created. And sometimes there's a damage, it's getting higher and higher, and the body is getting tired. So if you got the same attack But there is a different risk, a different return. For example, because of it, before that I was thinking about if some enemy attack this way, you will get this result. But I changed it so the health of the characters, so return, the risk changes. So if you are tired, I mean the characters are tired, you get a higher return, a higher risk. So that's how they are. I, uh, change the things because your situation changed, health of the characters changed. And I think that's a differentiation— differentiating factor for the other Smash Brothers with a different game.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi. My question is, when creating a game like Super Smash Brothers Melee where you updated Super Smash Brothers and you added in all of these extra moves for all players to use, how thoroughly did you test these new moves that every player could test? For example, with air dodging, we learned that it's possible to do a technique called wave dashing where you continually air dodge and skim along the surface. Was that something that was tested or was that something that players after playing multiple times eventually discovered?
[SPEAKING JAPANESE] [Speaker:KAWAHI] Well, for example, there's a character called Ice Climber. The Ice Climber has two characters who are next to each other. First I made one, and then— we're not going to make one character and then decide to make two characters. So we have to make it from the beginning that we'll have two characters. Otherwise you'll have too many polygons and then it'll become too much. You'll have problems with the program. So from the beginning, this was— we envisioned that two people will be moving together, and that's when you put out the commands. That means with two people you have more advantages. So you have to think about, okay, this means they're in an advantageous position, so you have to perhaps do some kind of attack. They're going to be weak to this and that. Of course, you can adjust the attack, but motions and graphics, once you create them, it's very difficult to change. Motions you can change, perhaps. But— so we have to ask the designer to change these later on. Which is a real pain in the butt. So from the beginning, to a certain extent, we have already decided on a lot of these things. Otherwise, it's very difficult to differentiate between all of these amounts of stuff. Does that make sense? Do you understand?
Yes. So it's just a lot of thorough testing.
Can you hear? As far as testing is concerned, that's true. Yes, we do a certain amount of testing. However, if we continue to do a lot of tests, we can't actually do the game. So at one point we have to just decide, this is it, we're finished. And there are of course a lot of points that I regret now myself. For example, when I made the Japanese version I thought this character was too strong or too weak. And so I will look back and regret what I had chosen. So when we come up with a new version, I might change that on the sly. So the Japanese Smash Brothers and the international version actually have different character strength. And in fact, Kirby, the international version is a little bit stronger than the Japanese version.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Last question. This will be the last question.
Okay, I had a question about, um, design process. And so clearly there's a lot of characters in Smash Brothers, and if you're the lead designer, you control all of that. Do you have sub-designers who design each of the characters and then get reviewed by the main designer? And also, how much input do programmers have to the design process if they find smaller details that for technical reasons, you have to revise. So I'm just asking about how you organize the design process so that all of this, all these characters are managed.
The characters, of course, have a designer. Each character has a designer, but I'm in charge of all of it. In other words, I look at the model and I will say, oh, we should do this, I prefer this. And I'm very detailed about this, how it's highlighted and how this movement is done. I've done actually quite a bit of comments on that. In Smash Brothers, there are a lot of characters with different worldviews. Little perspectives. And especially when you're making it for GameCube, I thought we have to have the same worldview for all the characters. For example, the overall has to be included in there, and that's a somewhat serious perspective. And there might be Zelda and other characters which are very realistic, but it's not necessary to make it extremely realistic. You can make it a little bit, you know, more like a cartoon character. And so you have to try to get the graphics to be similar to each other. So basically, that's something that, according to my value, I decided was important, or my perspective. But design will always have a design leader. And the leader can perhaps be very involved with the design processes of all the other characters. But I think a lot of people have different ways of giving requests. And involving with that. And then I have asked each of the original creators to be involved with that. I thought that even if they say that we can't change this particular character's worldview because Mario's going to be hitting Zelda, we can't really talk about, you know, the worldview of this and that and the other. For example, the designer and the people who made the original game cannot be put in a position where they're unhappy. So for Smash Bros., we had to try to come up with a way that we can make the characters so that these original designers will be able to accept what we did.
Well, thank you. I thought what's really best was in Smash Bros., all the characters could, from different games, could fight each other and be balanced still, like Game Watch against Zelda, or all the other characters who were never meant to be in the same game. So it was really cool.
