Smash Bros. series creator Masahiro Sakurai is suffering from calcific tendonitis and ruptured muscle tissues, resulting in such pain that his work on the next brawler has been significantly slowed.
Sakurai’s injuries were reported on Famitsu, and translated by Polygon.
“There’s no instant cure for it, so all I can do is either block the pain with injections or put my arm in a cast to keep the ruptures from spreading. I was told that the important thing was to keep my arm as rested as possible,” Sakurai wrote.
“In order to get it fully healed, the only thing is to not use my right arm or hand. So not only am I using a trackball with my left hand; now I’m using it to eat, brush my teeth, wash my hair, and even drive as much as I’m able to.”
The painful condition eats into Sakurai’s already full schedule, and he said that “there’s no telling what impact that would have on the project” – especially as he has to use just his left hand to playtest.
“I’ve had to control two characters at once in a lot of game projects up to now, so as long as I keep it to simple moves, this works well enough,” he said.
“It doesn’t go that easy with the Nintendo 3DS version, though, and the debug camera is pretty hard to control.”
Super Smash Bros. Wii U has been expected to appear at E3 2013, but lets hope Sakurai turns his attention to properly resting his arm instead. The fighter is being developed in conjunction with Namco Bandai, and will involve some sort of back and forth between the 3DS and Wii U versions.
The roster is not expected to grow, but will likely cut a few non-Nintendo faces and add more first-party characters.
Poor Masahiro Sakurai. 
Hope he concentrates on his health more than the game. GET WELL SOON!
