Sakurai worked with IV drip during Smash Bros. development

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate released last December to critical acclaim, reintroducing fans to the Super Smash Bros. franchise, and director Masahiro Sakurai has recently revealed that it was a tough road to make the game at times. He spoke in an interview with Nintendo Dream (as brought to us in English by Nintendo Everything) about the process of making Ultimate, including his unwillingness to take time off work.

"When you've got symptoms like food poisoning, you definitely have to go to the hospital, right? I've had that situation once or twice before during development. It was like I got food poisoning from some oysters that I didn't eat," he said regarding illness, and when asked whether he takes time off during these bouts of illness, he responded:

"No, I don't. I just get an IV drip and go to work like normal."

"I guess I'm a hard worker? (wry laughter) I'm a freelancer, so I don't have any strict rules on my time. As long as I can complete the game, I could show up to the office once per week and I think it'd be within the realm of forgiveness. But instead I make sure I come to work every day and write proper daily reports and such. I'm always working, but there's a lot of things that keep me in good spirits!"

That said, Sakurai did explain that there were other methods he used to take care of his health during development:

"I made some changes from what I used to do compared to now. For example, as a principle, I always left the office by 10 PM, no matter what. Many companies are discouraging extreme overtime these days, too."

With reports of extreme crunch in development at Rockstar ahead of the launch of Red Dead Redemption 2 emerging last year the mental and physical wellbeing and work conditions of developers has been discussed in recent months, although it seems Sakurai made the conscious decision to work when unwell. Still, several people have pointed out that this isn't a precedent to set, and that this is still something to address in development culture.

How can this overworking be addressed?