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The Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs has granted Kirby and Super Smash Bros creator Masahiro Sakurai an Art Encouragement Prize award in the Media Arts category for his work on the “Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games” YouTube channel.

Sakurai shared the news on his personal social media showing a picture with the Japanese listing of the recipients for the 75th edition of the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Awards. In the post, the developer jokingly added that he wondered if this new award means he can now call himself a “cultured person.”

Furthermore, Masahiro Sakurai added that he was recently nominated for a Life Achievement Award by the Japanese Association of Media in Digital (or AMD) for his aforementioned YouTube channel in addition to his work in the video game industry.

As a reminder the “Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games” YouTube channel started on August 2022 with the final episode airing on October 22, 2024. Sakurai commented on his decision to not monetize the channel in an interview back in early November 2024. Additionally, the developer confirmed on the finale episode that he is currently working on a new game, although he couldn’t give any details about it yet.

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The "Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games" channel has wrapped up, and the channel's owner sat down for an interview with DenFamiNicoGamer to look back at the channel that he had run for around two years. One of the highlights of this interview covered Sakurai's decision not to have the channel monetized. [Thanks, DenFamiNicoGamer!]

In the special finale episode, Sakurai revealed that despite spending around 90 million yen (~$630,000) to produce the whole channel, he received no income at all since he did not monetize the channel. In the new interview, Sakurai noted his intention to share the know-how of game development and contribute to the gaming industry as a volunteer.

Sakurai made this decision because he noticed a stigma where people would see information-sharing channels with monetization in a different light. In addition, many game companies and illustrators would also apply more regulations when their game footage or illustrations were to be used in monetized videos.

The "Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games" channel is still available on YouTube in Japanese and English versions, although there are no more new episodes for the foreseeable future. The Japanese game creator is busy working on a new confidential game project, as he had announced in the special finale episode.

The post Masahiro Sakurai Commented on Not Monetizing His Channel appeared first on Siliconera.

During the final episode of the “Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games” YouTube channel, the game director revealed that he’s working on a new game. Sakurai couldn't offer any details about the project yet. However, he did also mention he spent 90 million yen making this video series for YouTube.

Masahiro Sakurai said that, if him and the team behind it are able to get the new game made, it will be announced at some point in the future. He said that he received the request to make a new proposal at the same time he was finishing up work on the Super Smash Bros Ultimate DLC. Specifically, it came up right before Kazuya from Tekken came out in June 2021 and at the same time Sora from Kingdom Hearts was in development.

The “Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games” YouTube channel launched in August 24, 2022, and it ended with the recent finale special video on October 22, 2024. While the main episodes for the channel were filmed in advance 2 years ago, the final video was filmed recently. Sakurai also revealed that the content for the channel had been planned from the start.

The decision to prepare and film the channel in advance was due to the incompatibilities of creating the aforementioned new game at the same time he produced content for the YouTube channel full-time. Sakurai also offered some insight into the production costs for the channel, revealing that it costed 90 million yen total, or approximately $630,000 at the time of producing the finale special video.

Most of the costs went into editing from company HIKE, with a large portion going to the English translation made by 8-4, Ltd, and a small portion going into other costs, such as licensing video or crossover episodes.

The post Masahiro Sakurai Announced New Game in Last YouTube Video appeared first on Siliconera.

Masahiro Sakurai announced the exact schedule for his YouTube channel's special finale episode. People will be able to watch the premiere of the very last episode for Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games on October 22, 2024, at 8pm JST/12pm BST/11am UTC/7am ET/4am PT.

Sakurai also noted in his latest announcement that the finale will run for over 40 minutes. It appears that the owner of Sora Ltd. and the game creator best known for the Kirby and Super Smash Bros series will have quite a number of topics to talk about in this episode.

Sakurai had announced earlier in January 2024 that the Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games video series would end within the year. He had also recorded the final episode in mid-June 2024. But while a final episode had already aired on October 15, 2024, that was for the regular scheduled episode. This special finale episode will mark the true ending to the channel.

Masahiro Sakurai made the announcement tweets in both Japanese and English on his own X :

The Special Finale Episode of Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games will premiere on YouTube in Japanese and English on Tuesday, October 22, 2024, at 8 PM JST / 11 AM UTC / 7 AM ET.

The post Masahiro Sakurai YouTube Finale Episode Will Last 40 Minutes appeared first on Siliconera.

The last episode of the Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games series of YouTube segments going over game development will air on October 15, 2024, however it won’t be the end of the series. On social media, the developer announced there will still be one finale installment to act as a finale after that. 

In January 2024, Sakurai announced that he would end the Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games YouTube series in 2024. At the time, he didn’t say when that would happen. We had a better idea that it would be coming soon in June 2024, however. That’s when the developer confirmed he’d already recorded the last episode in the series. 

Here’s his official social media statement confirming the episode airing on October 15, 2024 will be the “official” last one. It also confirmed that a finale will show up sometime in the future after that, though there’s no air date for it.

The most recent episode in this series is called “Give Yourself a Handicap When Balancing Your Game.” As the title suggested, it went over game balancing. He noted that because the developers are so familiar with the game, they need to take that into when deg game difficulty and make things more manageable for players who will be coming into it completely fresh. You can see his insights into that here:

The last episode of Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games will air on YouTube on October 15, 2024, and we’ll see one episode to truly end the series sometime after that.

The post Last Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games YouTube Episode Airing Soon appeared first on Siliconera.

Masahiro Sakurai has revealed on his X that he has finished recording the final episode for his YouTube channel "Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games." However, it will still take quite some time until this episode comes out, as Sakurai still has other regular episodes coming beforehand.

Sakurai's plan to end the video series has been known for quite a while. He first announced it in early January 2024. 2024 will thus be the final year for him to publish new episodes on the channel.

The original Japanese tweet is available to view right below:

And our translation of this tweet is as follows:

I have finished recording the final episode for the channel.
I think it will still take a while until it's published, so until then, please enjoy the regular episodes...

Masahiro Sakurai

Masahiro Sakurai established the YouTube channel in late August 2022. He has since published new episodes simultaneously in Japanese and English. As of June 2024, the channel has a combined total of almost 1.18 million subscribers, with around 580,000 from the English channel and almost 600,000 from the Japanese channel.

The channel has also received acclaim from the gaming industry. In August 2023, Sakurai received two awards at the CEDEC Awards 2023 for running the YouTube channel. The awards in question were the Game Design award and the Visual Arts award.

The "Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games" YouTube channel is available in Japanese and English languages, and its final episode will appear sometime in 2024.

The post Masahiro Sakurai Recorded His Final YouTube Channel Episode appeared first on Siliconera.

In a social media post about the Sora amiibo, Masahiro Sakurai announced that he has finished all of the work he needs to do for Super Smash Bros Ultimate (SSBU). This is because all of the fighters are now available as an amiibo.

This is a translation of Sakurai’s tweet about the Sora amiibo and game:

Sora’s amiibo comes out today! Thank you to everyone who worked on it (this was an amazing accomplishment). The design was always perfect, and the details and the colors look exactly as intended. The pose and sculpting look good as well. Now that all of the fighters have an amiibo, my work on Super Smash Bros Ultimate is basically done. Thank you for everything.

Sora of Kingdom Hearts debuted in Fighter Pas Vol 2 and is the final DLC character for Super Smash Bros Ultimate. Since SSBU is no longer getting regular updates in the form of season es or DLC, creating the amiibos for it was likely the last bit of work for Sakurai and the team.

Masahiro Sakurai is a video game director and designer, well known for his work on Kirby, Super Smash Bros, and Kid Icarus: Uprising. He is still the director for Super Smash Bros Ultimate, which first came out in December 2018. He also has a YouTube channel where he talks about his career, as well as game design and development.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate is readily available on the Nintendo Switch.

The post Sakurai Says His Work on SSBU Ends With Sora amiibo appeared first on Siliconera.

Masahiro Sakurai announced that his YouTube series “Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games” will end in 2024. This comes alongside a new video going over the UI feature that allows people to pause or skip in-game cutscenes.

Here is the official message from Masahiro Sakurai about his “Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games” series ending. It appeared on the Community section of his YouTube channel. It didn’t offer any actual expected end date for the show. It only noted it will stop sometime this year.

As for the new installment, it is called “Let Them Skip, Let Them Pause.” It goes the pause and skip functions for story segments in games. It also starts with him saying his opinion on the feature is that it should be available. He specifically noted, “Absolutely whenever possible. All at once if you can.” It also showed Ghostwire Tokyo, Odin Sphere Leifthrasir, Final Fantasy XVI, and Cyberpunk 2077 as examples that do offer that UI feature. He also explained why it is important to allow people to skip and pause, noting the importance of consideration and player control.

Sakurai’s series often offers insight into game development and his thoughts on the topic. He’ll often discuss games he’s made, like Super Smash Bros Ultimate or Kid Icarus: Uprising. However, he’s also released some more lighthearted installments, like the fan-requested video about his cat Fukurashi.

The post Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games YouTube Show to End appeared first on Siliconera.

In Masahiro Sakurai's latest Youtube video, he detailed how story leaks for the Super Smash Bros Brawl Subspace Emissary mode led his team to stop making mid-gameplay story cutscenes for later games. He then detailed how this led to the creation of the fighter reveal trailers for games like SSBU and what went into making them.

Sakurai began by explaining how the character-focused story cutscenes in the Super Smash Bros Brawl Subspace Emissary mode were intended to showcase individual fighters, as well as serve as a reward for story progress. However, due to them being shared online before the game launched, Sakurai's team decided to stop making them, leading to less of a focus on story in later games.

Instead, the team decided to focus on creating introductory movies intended to be shared, rather than ones tied to story progress. This led to the creation of the fighter reveal trailers for games like SSBU. Sakurai detailed the development process for these videos. He also linked to two Nintendo articles showcasing the fighter reveal trailers themselves, along with his own brief comments.

You can watch the full video below:

Some of Sakurai's other videos have shown off some of the rare memorabilia he has collected over his career, as well as detailing the development of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and how it was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Super Smash Bros Brawl is available on the Nintendo Wii.

The post Super Smash Bros Brawl Subspace Emissary Leaks Influenced SSBU appeared first on Siliconera.

Masahiro Sakurai shared behind the scenes details about Super Smash Bros Ultimate in his latest YouTube video. He revealed how soon the game was developed after the previous installment, how new fighters were decided, and how the pandemic impacted development of DLC.

In the latest episode of Game Concepts on his Creating Games YouTube channel, Sakurai looked at the development of Super Smash Bros Ultimate. He described it as his final mission from Satoru Iwata, long before the Switch had been revealed. Development started early, with Sakurai submitting his proposal on the same day as Bayonetta's reveal for Super Smash Bros for 3DS and Wii U (SSB4).

Sakurai also gave insights into how Super Smash Bros Ultimate was put together. The team was mostly the same as the one for the fourth entry, which allowed the team to include every returning character, which Sakurai was ionate about. Despite the easier transition, returning fighters still saw an average of 70-100 changes during development. However, even with the huge amount of new content, the team managed to compress the game onto a Switch cartridge. This includes the music library, which the team compressed to a quarter of its size.

Sakurai also touched on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected development of the game’s DLC. The biggest challenges he faced included maintaining secrecy and playtesting. Online playtesting was especially problematic.

With Super Smash Bros Ultimate being his most recent game, this video marked the final episode in Sakurai's Game Concepts series. Each episode had focused on a different game from his career. Previous episodes have looked at Kirby Air Ride and Kid Icarus Uprising, for example. Other videos on his Creating Games channel have looked at general development topics such as motion sickness.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate is available on the Nintendo Switch.

The post Masahiro Sakurai Reveals Super Smash Bros Ultimate Development Details appeared first on Siliconera.

The latest video in Masahiro Sakurai’s video series is a show-and-tell episode showing rare items he’s acquired over the years. One of the more notable items was a Kid Icarus figure of Pit and Palutena based on their Uprising appearances. He noted “only about three of these exist.”

The Kid Icarus: Uprising Pit and Palutena figure comes up at the 1:12 mark of the Masahiro Sakurai video below. He noted it is based on the 3D printed model of the two characters used for a Goshogawara Tachineputa parade held in Aomori, Japan in 2011. That float was 10 meters tall. Sakurai and the float designer are two of the only people to own one.

Masahiro Sakurai has spoken about Kid Icarus: Uprising in his videos before. For example, back in July 2023 he noted he’d love to play the 3DS game on a bigger screen.

As for other items in the video, Sakurai also showed a Wii Remote with a Mii of him engraved into the back, some autographs he’d collected, a Sega Associate Planner Certificate No. 004 he won, and an Xbox 360 Elite with his name engraved on it. 

Kid Icarus: Uprising is available on the Nintendo 3DS.

The post Masahiro Sakurai Shared Rare Kid Icarus Pit and Palutena Figure appeared first on Siliconera.

The Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association (CESA) announced the winners of the CEDEC Awards 2023. Nintendo-d entities won four of the five awards available. Masahiro Sakurai, the Kirby and the Forgotten Land development team, and Eiji Aonuma's Zelda team received awards in this presentation.

Masahiro Sakurai received the most honors, winning two awards thanks to his YouTube channel "Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games." The association gave him the Game Design and Visual Arts awards for thoroughly sharing his knowledge of game designs and visuals that can be easily understood by not only aspiring game creators but also artists and other people. Sakurai was already aware when his channel made the nomination lists for both categories in late June 2023. The judges ultimately decided that Sakurai's channel deserved to win both awards.

The development team for Kirby and the Forgotten Land, from Nintendo and HAL Laboratory, won the Engineering Award. The judges noted that the team had published its technology for procedurally generating terrains at a low cost and a tool that changes together with the project. They appreciated the team for sharing their secret techniques to help other developers improve as well.
[caption id="attachment_980196" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image via Nintendo[/caption]

While CESA usually awarded the Special Award to individuals, it gave the 2023 award to not only Eiji Aonuma but also the whole development team for The Legend of Zelda series. The association noted how the series continued to have strong impacts on many s worldwide with its ingenuity. The judges added that the latest entry, Tears of the Kingdom, brought a new stimulant of creativity with a new feature to craft rideable vehicles and other things from in-game objects.
[caption id="attachment_980195" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image via Tango Gameworks[/caption]

Bethesda's Tango Gameworks was the only non-Nintendo team that won an award in CEDEC Awards 2023. The Hi-Fi Rush sound team received the Sound Award for creating a new rhythm game genre by fusing music with action. The judges noted that every sound in the game, from map objects to character steps, synced well with the music beats. Hi-Fi Rush is the only game available on PC and Xbox Series X|S in this award list. It was also the last title Shinji Mikami worked on at Tango Gameworks before Bethesda announced his eventual departure from the studio in February 2023.

In the 2022 edition, FromSoftware and Cygames shared the spoils for their achievements in Elden Ring and Uma Musume: Pretty Derby, respectively. Cygames won the Sound and Engineering awards, while From Software had the Game Design and Visual Arts awards, with Hidetaka Miyazaki personally receiving the Special Award.

The post Nintendo d Entities Dominated CEDEC Awards 2023 appeared first on Siliconera.

Masahiro Sakurai released a new video discussing the importance of motion sickness settings in video games. The video is the latest to feature on his YouTube channel, “Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games”.

In the video, Sakurai discussed the physical reasons behind motion sickness. He stated that video game motion sickness is the opposite of the kind that occurs in cars. Cars cause a body in motion to think it's static, while video games trick a stationary body into thinking it's moving. He illustrated this using racing games run in first-person modes, including Ridge Racer 7 and Forza Horizon 5.

Sakurai also showed off the difference that motion sickness settings in video games can provide for those who suffer with the condition. As an example, he featured Resident Evil 7 and Forza Horizon 5 with camera shake turned on and off. Sakurai also discussed the need for static screen elements that can help players ground themselves.

“Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games” is a YouTube channel where Sakurai shares insights into game design that he learned through his career. For example, he recently released a video talking about Family BASIC, the Famicom programming tool that he used at the start of this career.

Other videos on Masahiro Sakurai’s YouTube channel feature him sharing development secrets and stories for games he’s worked on. These include the Kirby series, Super Smash Bros and Kid Icarus Uprising.

The post Masahiro Sakurai Talks About Video Game Motion Sickness in New Video appeared first on Siliconera.

Masahiro Sakurai brought up Kid Icarus: Uprising on his YouTube channel. A new episode appeared dedicated to the 3DS game. Much of it is dedicated to how he ended up working on a title for the new (at the time) handheld, design choices, and hardships faced during development. However, he also mentioned how he'd "love to play [it] on a bigger screen with smoother graphics." But he also mentioned the difficulty that would come from possibly making that happen.

Here’s Sakurai’s full quote about his thoughts on the title and a possible sequel.

It’s a shame that it’s only lived on 3DS, as I’d love to play on a bigger screen with smoother graphics, but without a team around to work on it, crafting a follow-up seems difficult.

This is the full "Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games" episode discussing the title. He talked about it how he'd "love" to see it on a "bigger screen" at the 12:17 mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-uwRfckTs4&ab_channel=MasahiroSakuraionCreatingGames

This isn't the first time Kid Icarus: Uprising came up during "Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games." He discussed it during a November 2022 episode too. In that one, he also mentioned how “it sure would be nice to play [the game] on a home console.” He also wondered if it would ever get a port.

Kid Icarus: Uprising is available on the Nintendo 3DS.

The post Sakurai Said He’d ‘Love’ to Play Kid Icarus: Uprising ‘on a Bigger Screen’ appeared first on Siliconera.

The latest episode of Masahiro Sakurai's YouTube channel about making games actually involves him showing how Family BASIC worked. This was a Famicom peripheral and tool for creation, and Sakurai explained how critical it was to his own career and decisions to get into gaming. For the presentation, he actually offers an overview of the software and shows how it works in practice.

Here's the new "Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games" video about Family BASIC. It begins by him saying how he got into developing because of experience with it and shows his copy. He noted that he repainted the keyboard personally. After explaining how it works, he shows how it would work. He also showed how there was a “Hello” function that allowed it to “tell your fortune.” The primary function is Game Basic, which is used for creating games by going into BASIC or BG Graphic. He also noted it is Hu-BASIC, referencing Hudson developed for Sharp and that was used here. He then actually writes some code and shows how the background creation worked. He ended up showing how the cartridge actually had a AA battery backup. He brought up the data recorder peripheral as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89_FhHQ5n-g&ab_channel=MasahiroSakuraionCreatingGames

In the meantime, similar sorts of game creation software still exist. For example, SmileBASIC appeared on the 3DS and Wii U.

In the past, Masahiro Sakurai used his channel to talk about creating other games, such as Kirby titles and Meteos.

The post Masahiro Sakurai Shows How to Make Games in Family BASIC appeared first on Siliconera.