How a Smash Bros. Fighter is Designed
A New Foe Has Appeared!
Hey, real question - is there any game with a more crazy crossover character list than Super Smash Bros?
I mean, this is the only place where you can watch a fist fight between Pikachu, Mega Man, the Wii Fit Trainer, and the dude from Minecraft. The roster is just ridiculous.
Across five games, six consoles, two-and-a-half decades, and loads of DLC, Smash Bros. has somehow featured 89 different characters, from around 40 different franchises, and dozens of different developers.
And, okay, sure, maybe there's a game with an even bigger cast of multiversal mates - but remember, these aren't just costumes, or cameos.
These are distinct fighting game characters with unique animations and movesets. And they're all somewhat balanced for tournament play.
But, at the same time, they are also ultra faithful renditions of classic video game characters, packed with loving details and ultra niche references.
So I wanted to find out how each one of these Smash Bros. characters is designed. How does a new fighter go from an idea to implementation?
Now, normally... this would be pretty hard to find out. Japanese game developers are notoriously quite secretive about their process. But Smash creator Masahiro Sakurai is anything but tightlipped. This dude has divulged game development secrets across hundreds of YouTube videos, magazine columns, GDC talks, interviews, tweets, and emails.
So I've used all of that stuff, and more, to find out everything there is to know about designing a new Smash character - from picking the roster, to creating the animations, to balancing each fighter's pros and cons, to making those show-stopping reveal trailers.
Let's get in the ring. I'm Mark Brown, and this is Game Maker's Toolkit.
Okay, so a Smash Bros. character generally goes through about 8 different steps in order to become a fully realised fighter. But the first step of the process is to decide which characters are even going to make their way into the next game.
Roster
But with thousands of potential heroes to pick from, how does Sakurai and his team choose the roster? Well, it generally comes down to a few key factors.
One of which is the character's popularity among fans. I mean, as early as May of 1999 - just a few months after the release of the first Smash Bros. game on N64 - Sakurai was already asking Nintendo nerds online to suggest fighters for an as-yet unannounced sequel.
And of the top 10 most requested characters from that poll, well... Bowser, Peach, Ganondorf, and Mewtwo would all show up in Smash Bros. Melee. And Sakurai has continued to use polls and ballots of help pick fighters - including Wolf, Bayonetta, and Sora.
But there's also global popularity to consider. Some characters - like the protagonist of The Mysterious Murasame Castle - were passed over because their games are completely unknown outside of Japan.
Sakurai also wants Smash Bros to represent many different franchises, systems, and moments from the history of gaming.
So when Sakurai realised that the original Smash Bros. game didn't include a single character who originated on the Famicom - he picked the Ice Climbers to represent that system in Melee. And he's included oddball characters to show off important moments from Nintendo history, like the dude from the Game and Watch devices, and the crappy plastic robot that shipped with the original NES.
He has also tried to make sure that characters are evenly distributed across the different franchises. Like, back in Melee, he cut Wario from the roster as the entry already included a lot of characters from the Mario universe.
But, that being said... franchise fairness has, let's just say, waned over the years. And Sakurai himself has copped to the fact that Smash Bros. now features an ungodly number of Fire Emblem reps. But that's sometimes out of his hands: characters may be picked by Nintendo in order to promote an upcoming game.
A character's fate can also be subject to logistical reasons, like technical issues or the game's budget.
For example, Sakurai says it was much easier to model Wolf - who is basically a doppelgänger for existing fighter Fox McCloud - than the all-new character Krystal, from Star Fox Adventures. And Zelda villain Ganondorf made it into Melee largely because the team could reuse the animations from Captain Falcon, and borrow the model from that infamous GameCube tech demo.
In fact, that's the whole point behind clones, alternatives, and echo fighters. Sakurai can increase the character count with much less work by simply pairing a new character model with an existing animation rig and moveset.
And, of course, a character can only be added with the permission of the original creator, or IP owner. But that has certainly gotten easier over time. Sakurai had to fight hard to convince the Pokemon company to lend out Pikachu and Jigglypuff for Smash 64. But as the franchise has gotten bigger, developers are now coming to him, begging to have their heroes in Smash.
Yuji Naka and Hideo Kojima personally asked Sakurai to put Sonic and Snake into Brawl, for instance.
Theme
But beyond all of these other considerations, there's one factor that's more important than any other. A factor that can lead to popular characters being snubbed, and surprising fighters making the cut. So let's talk about theme.
You see, Sakurai places the greatest importance on the character's uniqueness. A character must have some characteristic or ability or attack that makes them different from the other fighters.
Each hero - not including the clones - must offer something meaningfully different from the rest of the roster. Something that only that character can do.
Now that could be something really dramatic - a fighter who is two characters being controlled simultaneously. A fighter who can transform mid match. Or a character who can change the layout of the stage.
Or it could be a special move that no other character has, like being able to store a projectile for later use, or use different-coloured Pikmin to attack.
Or perhaps it's a moveset that makes the character feel completely different to the rest of the roster. Like a pro-wrestling character based entirely around grabs and counters.
To help with this, this desire to make each character feel unique, Sakurai tries to boil a character down to a single sentence. A pithy description that sums up what this character will bring to Smash Bros. Basically, that character's "theme".
And you can see these themes in each game's design document. So perhaps "Puppet Fighter", for Rosalina and Luma. "Pointed Sword Dancer" for Meta Knight. "Heavy Weapons Specialist" for Snake. And "Third-party Cover Fire" for the Duck Hunt Duo.
But if the single sentence is, I dunno, "Dude With Sword", Sakurai either needs to go back to the drawing board, or cut the character entirely.
So that's exactly what happened when he picked a hero from Fire Emblem: Awakening. Sakurai passed on Chrom because he offered nothing new over existing sword-wielders like Marth and Ike. Sakurai says "If I cannot meaningfully distinguish them from other characters, that's the end for them".
Instead, Sakurai invited the tactician character Robin because they can introduce entirely new gameplay, such as having magic tomes and a sword that break from overuse. "Sword and Magic, Limited-Use Attacks" is a much more interesting theme.
Stats
Okay, so with that theme in mind, Sakurai can start to design how that character will fit into Smash Bros. So let's start with the character's stats.
The designers can tweak a huge number of parameters to define how that character feels to move around the environment - including run speed... and traction. Jump height.... and gravity. Air control. How far they fly back when hit, and so on.
These parameters can dramatically change how a character feels in your hands, from a slow and lumbering baddy, to a lighting fast ninja.
And these stats can be used to capture how that character feels in their original game. Take Mario and Sonic, whose jump height and run speed closely match the original games. Though, to be fair, liberties must be taken. Bowser, for instance, would be too slow and heavy if he truthfully matched his appearance as a Mario boss.
And so with these stats alone, characters can already feel quite different from one another. Compare the run speed of Incineroar - the game's slowest character - to Sonic - the game's fastest. Or put Jigglypuff's jump height next to Falco's.
But the characters will become much more specialised when Sakurai gives them attacks.
Moveset
Now, in some ways, every Smash Bros. character is exactly the same. That's because in an effort to make Smash more approachable, it was decided that all characters would use the exact same control scheme, rather than having unique combos and move-sets for every fighter.
But within this standardised formula, there's still plenty of room to make each character feel unique. Even the basic smash attack can vary in the amount of damage and knockback it deals, as well as its range, area of effect, and any status damage it might cause.
And when it comes to specials... well, a character can unleash projectiles. Counters. Traps. Whatever this is. And, well, as discussed in the chapter on theme - there's basically no limits on how crazy a Smash character can get in the pursuit of uniqueness. They can mimic other characters. Unleash a random RPG move. Change their basic stats. Pull a motorbike out of their butt. Who cares?
Now, like the stats, the moves are often inspired by what the characters can do in their original games.
That's especially true when it comes to fighting game characters like Kazuya and Terry. But you'll also see endless references in, say, Mega Man's different robot master power-ups. Or Diddy Kong's peanut popguns, from Donkey Kong 64. Or Mario's water pistol pal from Super Mario Sunshine.
Though, again, Sakurai takes plenty of liberties in this regard, like letting Robin use dark magic, or giving Ness and Lucas the ability to use PK Starstorm.
Plus, other characters need the Smash Bros team to invent entirely new attacks that simply didn't exist in the original game. Consider that Snake never jumps in Metal Gear Solid. And that in F-Zero and Star Fox, the characters spend the entire game just sat in a cockpit, so Sakurai and co had to come up with moves like the reflector shield and Falcon Punch.
Pre-existing moves must also be tweaked to match the world of Smash Bros. - as Sakurai says "If you were to pit the default fighters from [Tekken and Smash] against one another, you'd find that the [Smash] fighter's fastest move would launch five times faster than their Tekken counterpart".
But anyway. Now that we have both the character's stats and their moveset, we can move on to making them balanced.
Balance
Now, Sakurai isn't interested in perfect balance among the entire roster. He even lets some characters be purposefully underpowered, like Pichu in Melee. Why? So that "if you can win with this character, you’ll look really cool."
But, that being said, there shouldn't be any characters who can just dominate every match. And once you start giving fighters all sorts of crazy moves and abilities, there's the possibility of making a character who is utterly unstoppable in one area or another.
Now it might be tempting to balance those characters out by limiting that advantage. But Sakurai doesn't go for that, arguing that this can lead to a flat game, where every character feels roughly the same.
Instead, he prefers to accentuate each character's strength - but couple that with a significant drawback that will stop them from wrecking shop.
An obvious example is Ganondorf - his attacks are all really powerful. In fact, his forward smash move is among the strongest in the series. But he's also one of the slowest characters and has limited range, so it's hard to land those meteoric punches on a speedy character.
Likewise, Mewtwo is strong and has rapid-fire moves, but it's light and so easy to launch. Link's powerful projectiles are balanced out by his lower walking speed and shorter jump. And Simon's whip has a huge reach, but those attacks have a long recovery time, leaving him wide open if he misses.
And there are so many ways to balance out an advantage. Characters in Smash Bros have hundreds of parameters to tweak, says Sakurai. So Banjo and Kazooie's Wonderwing is a powerful charge attack, but it can only be used five times per stock. And Charizard's Flare Blitz is super strong with high knockback, but the character also takes damage from its own move.
And a powerful attack can leave a character vulnerable because of how long it takes to charge up the move, or recover from it... which means it's time to talk about animation.
Animation
So, to start, Sakurai uses a spreadsheet to create a master list of every animation that character needs.
And a Smash hero needs a lot of animations. Not just for attacks and special moves, but also for walking, running, taking damage, and grabbing onto characters or ledges. Plus there are taunts, celebrations, and a Final Smash. No wonder Smash characters take roughly a year to produce.
Now, this spreadsheet has detailed written instructions on how the character should move and act while performing each action. But to further help explain his intention to the animators, Sakurai might also include illustrations, screenshots from the original games, and - if the character has human proportions - he'll even use one of these...
A Figuarts Body-Kun reference figure. It's pretty cool. You can adjust this dude's limbs to create any pose you want, and then snap a photo and use that as reference material when animating.
Of course, an animation consists of dozens or hundreds of frames. But the most important parts for Sakurai to figure out are the key poses the character strikes throughout the course of each animation. The rest can be filled in later.
So, for instance, an attack consists of four main poses.
There's the idle pose - the basic stance the character will assume when it's not doing anything else.
Then, the character goes into the wind-up, which depicts the character charging up before they can unleash their attack.
Then the character actually performs the attack - this is the moment the move does damage.
And then, finally, the character goes into the follow-through pose, which shows them recovering from the attack, before transitioning going back to idle.
Each one of these poses needs to be cool, dynamic, and convey lots of information.
The wind-up needs to clearly signal that an attack is coming - to both the player who just pressed the button, and their opponents who are about to get squashed.
The attack may linger on screen for a short while during the hit-stop hiccup that occurs upon collision, so it must convey the full power of the hit.
And the follow-through needs to show the character being vulnerable, and unable to immediately move.
Sakurai and his animating team will use lots of tricks to sell these poses - perhaps squashing and stretching the character model or twisting their rig beyond the limits of a real body. But the most important point is clarity: Smash is a fast-paced game with lots of effects and a zoomed out camera. So the focus is put on making the character's silhouette as readable as possible.
When it comes to moving between these poses, there are a few considerations to make.
For instance, the wind-up happens instantly. The character snaps to this new pose on literally the first frame after pressing the button. And while this can cause the character to awkwardly snap between distinct poses in the blink of an eye - it's more important that Smash feels instantly responsive to the player's action.
Also - instead of smoothly interpolating from one pose to another, the team can speed through the transition to make a kick feel faster. Snappier.
And the duration of the wind-up and the recovery can change dramatically from character to character and move to move. King Dedede's hammer takes a long time to swing, to convey the strength of this move. But Zero Suit Samus's neutral jab completely skips the wind-up - the game just snaps directly to the attack when you press the button.
So while Sakurai will define the animation timing when planning out the character, the exact frame data becomes yet another parameter that can be tweaked to help balance the fighter.
Visual Style
Okay, so we now know how the character will move, fight, and animate - but we still haven't talked about how the character will actually look.
Because it's not as easy as simply copy and pasting a character model from an existing game.
For one thing, outside of weirdo outliers like Mr. Game and Watch and Steve from Minecraft, every character in Super Smash Bros. should look like they exist together, in the same universe.
Sakurai says "if we simply matched their official designs, we would end up with an incohesive visual style". An ugly mish-mash of realistic humans and cartoon characters. So, a number of techniques are used to make the fighters feel consistent.
For one, the most brightly-coloured characters tend to have their colours desaturated - so that they don't clash with characters who use more subdued palettes.
Character proportions must also be tweaked to stay in line. In their respective universes, Ridley is roughly 20 feet tall, while Olimar is shorter than a flower. But in Smash Bros, all characters are squished and stretched to end up between 3 and 9 feet tall.
The team also try to make sure the characters have the same level of detail - by adding extra texture to the simple characters, while removing fussy details from the more realistic ones.
So notice how Olimar's suit gets more pockets, straps, and widgets, and how Donkey Kong gets rounded teeth and, uh, toenails. Thanks Sakurai! Just what I always wanted!
Still - these changes cannot override the design of the original character. So Ness retains his cute Funko Pop eyes, and the Pokemon generally look like plastic models rather than furry or scaly animals.
In fact, Sakurai places great importance on being faithful to the OG designs, saying "I absolutely did not want to betray the original characters’ creators". He felt this strongly after being less than pleased with certain depictions of his most famous original character, Kirby.
Another consideration is which version of the character to use. Because in many cases, a character can look completely different from game to game, and in different mediums and depictions.
For instance - how do you represent Pac-Man? As a pixel art circle? Like the picture on the arcade cabinet? Like the Pac-Man cartoon from the 80s? Or the Pac-Man cartoon from the 2010s? What about this absolute friggin' doofus?
Well - it's usually up to Sakurai to pick. And in this case, he simply preferred the old-school design from the game's original sketches.
In other cases, Sakurai chose an NES-era Mega Man design for the blue bomber, but a much more modern depiction of Sonic the Hedgehog.
You've also got characters who don't have a modern depiction at all. Perhaps the most obvious is Pit, from the NES game Kid Icarus. Before Smash Bros. Brawl, Pit was a 24 pixel high sprite, a cartoon illustration in a manual, or an ugly cartoon from Captain N.
So to bring him to life, Sakurai and his team took inspiration from Link - another NES-born character, but one who has changed and evolved from game to game. What might Pit look like if he had followed that same trajectory? And so the team imagined an updated character with suitable details and flourishes.
Reveal Trailer
And so, finally, with the character complete - it's time to reveal them to the world in a fighter reveal trailer.
This is probably my favourite bit, to be honest. You don't even have to make new characters for Smash, Sakurai. Just make more of these trailers!
The idea came out of Smash Bros. Brawl, where the team commissioned expensive CGI cutscenes for the Subspace Emissary mode... only to watch as people published them online, before the game even came out. Well that was a waste of money.
So Sakurai stopped adding cutscenes to the Smash Bros. games, and instead started using them as marketing tools to introduce the new roster.
Like pretty much everything else in Smash Bros., these are initially designed by Sakurai himself. He details the events of the trailer in text, and then works with a studio to create storyboards, and then a rough previz, before the final version is made.
Sakurai says "It was a lot of work to make the videos while working on the game at the same time, but there were always big reactions from fans, so it was worth the effort."
Some of the trailers were designed to trick people - this video was supposed to look like a new version of Wii Fit, but is actually a fighter reveal trailer. Others are about hyping up the crowd, for that dramatic reveal.
But there are other factors to consider - the Ridley video was toned down, because the first version was too intense. And the Minecraft reveal had to feature Steve and Alex equally, following guidance from Microsoft.
Conclusion
So that is the eight-step process to making a Smash Bros. fighter. And with this knowledge, we can see how any character in Smash Bros came to be.
Take... Punch-Out!! protagonist Little Mac. He represents an important moment in Nintendo's arcade history. He has a unique role on the roster, as a super offensive up-close brawler with a unique Power Meter mechanic.
To close the gap with his enemies, he has outstanding speed on the ground. And his moves are all based around boxing. But to balance those powerful punches, Little Mac is useless in mid-air, with a weak jump and crappy aerial attacks.
His animations are short and snappy to convey those powerful punches. His visual style is largely based on the Wii game, but with a little more detail. And his fighter reveal trailer uses a comic book style to, well, save money, says Sakurai.
Ultimately, it's a delicate balance of trying to honour that character's legacy through their visual design, animation, feel, and moveset - but also make them a balanced addition to the Smash roster, and a cohesive part of the Smash universe.
Now, this video is probably not going to be super useful for the average game dev. I'm not sure how many of you are planning to put 89 famous characters into the same video game.
But, even still, there's so much to learn from Sakurai's creative process when it comes to animation, balancing, and more. And there's even more in-depth stuff on his YouTube channel.
Hey, thanks so much for reading. Let's finish off with one more bit of info.
So there's one other consideration that Sakurai and his team must make when designing a fighter and that's the game's age rating. You see, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was actually given an A on the Japanese CERO rating system. Which is for games that are suitable for gamers of all ages.
Which is kinda surprising when the roster features characters from games that have been rated C (like Persona 5) or D (like Tekken 8).
But, whatever the case, this does mean that some things have to be tweaked to pass the rating board. Character designs had to be changed, like giving Mythra tights and a fuller shirt. Some attacks had to be rethought - that's why Snake doesn't use knives or guns. And the King of Fighters stage features a bunch of famous brawlers - except for the busty Mai.
This has caused Sakurai no end of headaches - the Wii U version of Smash almost missed its release date as the team had to keep revising the models for female characters like Palutena.
But, hey, if you can get that all-important CERO A rating with a game that features Bayonetta, Joker's gun attack, a DOOM Slayer Mii outfit, and a trailer where Luigi literally just full-on dies... I think you should probably keep quiet.