Masahiro Sakurai, creator of Kirby and Super Smash Bros., has ended today his youtube channel, Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games, with a special 40-minute video streamed live, in which he explained how this unusual channel came to be.
The channel started in August 2022 and has just ended in October 2024, but actually all of the videos, except for this one, were written and recorded in a six-month period at the end of 2021 and early 2022, in which Sakurai enjoyed a rare moment of rest between projects.
Many people asumed this channel was a way for Sakurai to take a break for game development, after his burnout making the painstakingly detailed Smash Bros. games, a process that caused him some health issues.
But nothing further from the truth: as Sakurai told in the video, he was asked to write a proposal for a game in mid-2021, but due to the time it took to assemble a team, development wouldn't start until April 2022, giving Sakurai some free time he decided to used to launch the YouTube channel.
<social>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qPqBilhEtI</social>
Masahiro Sakurai has been stressful these past two years
Around July 2021, "I received a request to write a video game proposal, which I finished at lightning speed. I'm sorry I can't share more about this project, but assuming we're able to get it made, it should be announced sooner or later", he said.
After writing and recording every video of the channel (256 in total), in April 2022 Sakurai started full development of the new game, which he is directing and should be revealed "sooner or later", Sakurai said.
He didn't give any hint about what game would it be, nor if it's a new IP or a follow up to Kid Icarus or Smash Bros. (which would be unlikely, as the project started before he finished working on Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC). He did described it as being a "large scale project" later in the video.
While Sakurai recorded the videos before full production of the new game started and commissioned the editing and English translation to other companies, he still had to supervise every video, all of that while working full time in this mysterious new game. If we were to bet, it would be a game for the "Super Nintendo Switch", o "Switch 2".