Should Sakurai still be involved or retire for future Smash sequels?

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With the fourth installment of Super Smash Bros., there has been some uproar about Sakurai's controversial choices (bias towards his own franchises, making some hypocritical jokes [refer to Palutena, Pit and Viridi's conversation while fighting Robin in the Wii U version] having three clone characters, inclusion of characters such as Wii Fit Trainer and Duck Hunt Dog, exclusion of some highly demanded characters like Ridley, King K. Rool and Waluigi, and cutting some fan favorites from Brawl) while the flip side of the coin has Sakurai going all out with good (sometimes unexpected) decisions (inclusion of Mega Man, bringing Sonic back, inclusion of Pac Man, several new supporting characters, a Final Destination option for all stages, and Smash Run).

If more Super Smash Bros. games are created in the future, what do you think Sakurai should do? Continue being the head honcho or stepping down and letting someone else take over?
 
IMO Sakuri is doing fantastic and anyone complaining are just whiners. If Sakuri should retire, it should be from his own free will and not from forced/pressured to step down.
 
He should continue doing his job, even if he did muck up during the transition from Meele to Barlw.

His decisions get way too much flack. Besides, Sakurai has always made unexpected inclusions since 1st Smash: Ness, Captain Falcon, Mr. Game & Watch, Ice Climbers, R.O.B., all were in the last few games.
 
I don't know if Sakurai should direct the next game, but certainly keep him on board as a creative consultant. A new director could allow for a faster paced game more suitable for tournament play while Sakurai can still help work on characters.
 
You know, screw whoever. Just as long as Smash Bros. keeps its quality content, but is open to modding. So Nintendo can acknowledge the popular mods, and the developers for the popular mods balance the characters and bam, most balanced Smash Bros. game ever.
 
Of course, I like Sakurai as a developer. I don't want to give him up because a small minority overreacts to some decisions he made. Sm4sh is still an extremely solid game, and it's still among the best the Wii U has to offer. I'm not going to judge his entire product based on a few things here and there. Sm4sh is still a worthwhile experience to have and it would be sad to see Sakurai go.
 
Should he be involved? As long as he's not dead, yes. He's made an excellent series and has led to the formation of a large fanbase that admires his work. I know that there have been cracks about him adding Dark Pit and keeping Ridley as a boss, but the truth is that he made some great decisions for the franchise. Besides, nobody's perfect.

Should he direct the next game? That's a different question.
 
Lumastar said:
keeping Ridley as a boss
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I'm pretty sure he has a strong reason to keep Ridley as a boss, like how I'm opposed to Ridley being a playable character now.
 
Screw Ridley's being playable. Just imagine how he acts in Pyrosphere and then how he looks like when he's playable. Yeesh.

I'm not bothered as much by the roster as I am by the stupid mechanics left over from Barlw. I like how tripping is gone, but why was it even there in the first place?
 
I don't mind Ridley being a boss at this point but will probably still support his promotion in later games regardless.

Also pretty much per DF, I think Sakurai is a good director and should continue if he wants to.
 
HELL NO. Of course they have to have him around to ask for some guidance, but he really needs to get away from the director's spot.
 
Anser said:
HELL NO. Of course they have to have him around to ask for some guidance, but he really needs to get away from the director's spot.
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Shit. I forgot to post my "inb4".
 
Nah. Smash has gone stale since HAL stopped developing the games. It went into a great direction going from 64 to Melee. The series evolved for the better. Then Sakurai left HAL and Smash Bros. has gone in a new direction. Instead of evolving Melee's mechanics, it went and lowered the skill ceiling because apparently, high skill ceiling = lower entry bar, which it doesn't. Smash went from a fast paced balanced game into a slower more frantic unbalanced mess. Smash 4 is still the same, with defensive options being even more powerful and just as much stages that would have killed you more than the actual players. Sure it made some improvements, but it's just like the New Super Mario Bros. series. No Smash game has been as similar to the previous like Smash 4. We need someone who can evolve Smash Brothers into a new fresh direction. I don't think Sakurai can do that with his whole "high skill ceiling = bad" or "overly crazy and random = good" mentality.
 
I'd rather Sakurai stay than someone like Miyamoto take over. *shudders at the thought of no Mario RPG trophies and fifteen billion trophies of various powerups*
 
Stanley the Troll said:
I'd rather Sakurai stay than someone like Miyamoto take over. *shudders at the thought of no Mario RPG trophies and fifteen billion trophies of various powerups*
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At least Miyamoto knows that they wouldn't have to appeal to Wii Sports casuals anymore! Ahahaha....


:(
 
Smash 4 is the best yet (I don't own Melee) and I think all the newcomers with the exceptions of Lucina and Dark Pit are great. Each of the games has mistakes, be it clones, floaty mechanics or the bad stage selection. I think Sakurai is still doing a great job, even if some of the decisions are awful in this game.
 
MeltdownKP1 said:
Nah. Smash has gone stale since HAL stopped developing the games. It went into a great direction going from 64 to Melee. The series evolved for the better. Then Sakurai left HAL and Smash Bros. has gone in a new direction. Instead of evolving Melee's mechanics, it went and lowered the skill ceiling because apparently, high skill ceiling = lower entry bar, which it doesn't. Smash went from a fast paced balanced game into a slower more frantic unbalanced mess. Smash 4 is still the same, with defensive options being even more powerful and just as much stages that would have killed you more than the actual players. Sure it made some improvements, but it's just like the New Super Mario Bros. series. No Smash game has been as similar to the previous like Smash 4. We need someone who can evolve Smash Brothers into a new fresh direction. I don't think Sakurai can do that with his whole "high skill ceiling = bad" or "overly crazy and random = good" mentality.
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I believe that Sakurai was involved in what ever the *bleep* happened from Meele to Barlw. I hate sounding like a Meele zealot, but we really need to go back to Meele, or at least increase hitstun, reduce landing lag, revert to Meele's air dodging, decrease invincibility frames from rolling and sidestepping; all of this content the newer games provide ultimately don't matter if the mechanics fail. While Smush has improvements from Barlw (Mario and Ness are way more competent now instead of wretched low tier fools), it won't match Meele.

I didn't even have THAT high expectations for S4msh/Smush/Sm4sh whatever, but I guess I wasn't hugely disappointed.

But again, as I said, I'd like Sakurai to remain where he is because he did try making improvements, even after they are major blunders. It's just his direction sometimes... ugh. Mario's so lifeless in this game, it hurts.
 
He's been a great director for much of the franchise's history.

However it might be good to have someone new take the mantle with Sakurai at least being an adviser. Partly because Sakurai works hard on Smash Bros. to the point of injury. Sakurai should stop having to hurt himself to work on these games and just find a successor that can both bring some fresh ideas as well as stick to Sakurai's ideals character-wise which would be what Sakurai's advice comes in.

(So that a majority of the most deserving and beloved characters return, by the next generation Nintendo may even take full advantage of DLC by saving characters they couldn't finish in time for a DLC pack so that most people are happy. Technially they're already doing that with Mewtwo but I'm not really sure they're going to use it to bring back any others cut. There maybe one or two more but I don't expect too much additional characters. I think multiple Stage DLC will definitely be a thing though)
 
Sakurai should still be a producer and superviser but a new directer could bring the series into areas that sakurai could never. I would like to see someone who's more knowledgeable on competitive smash because sakurai isn't really too interested in it.
 
GalacticPetey said:
I don't know if Sakurai should direct the next game, but certainly keep him on board as a creative consultant. A new director could allow for a faster paced game more suitable for tournament play while Sakurai can still help work on characters.
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No offense, but I'm pretty sure that if Sakurai was still involved with the game, even not as director, he would keep his ideals in place about competitive vs. casual nature and stuff, so I wouldn't hold high hopes for Melee 2.0, since it's been directly stated that Smash isn't made in mind of the "competitive scene". (Which I think is Sakurai's way of saying that he rather have uniqueness of the characters and stages and the game overall than just competitive play when you can do that in other games)

And I don't mind if he is still involved or if he retires; as long as he is happy and Smash is still being made, then everyone should be happy. He has done great things to the series and really made it such an enjoyable series, even though (due to the nature of combining series) there is a lot of whiners about his decisions of the game.
 
He should definitely still be involved. It always seems to me there's this small portion of the Smash Bros. community who always get upset whenever the smallest thing in the game isn't how they want it to be, and yell at Sakurai for it. I think he's done a great job with the series.

GalacticPetey said:
a faster paced game more suitable for tournament play
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What about those who don't want to play in tournaments?
 
Hilary Briss said:
He should definitely still be involved. It always seems to me there's this small portion of the Smash Bros. community who always get upset whenever the smallest thing in the game isn't how they want it to be, and yell at Sakurai for it. I think he's done a great job with the series.

GalacticPetey said:
a faster paced game more suitable for tournament play
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What about those who don't want to play in tournaments?
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Melee-esque gameplay will in no way effect people who play casually.
 
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