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It's been highlighted in the past that not only is Masahiro Sakurai keen to implement his own vision and high standards, but that he's a particularly hard working individual. In fact early this year he highlighted how an arm injury was impacting his work, but that he was nevertheless persevering.

One message that is consistently shared by Sakurai-san when discussing work on the new Super Smash Bros. titles on Wii U and 3DS is his determination to oversee key elements himself, in particular the physics, balancing and move-sets of characters. That's been emphasized again in the director's Weekly Famitsu article, as translated by Kotaku.

With the previous Smash Bros. games, I would input all the fighter specs and attack hitboxes, and with the new games I'm doing something very similar. If I were to hand over the work to someone else, it would be a full-time, multi-person designated workload.

It's faster and more accurate to do it myself than to tell someone else over and over again what to do.

Dealing with such specific details in the famous fighting series is no doubt demanding, though praise is reserved for development partner Namco Bandai and the tools it's made available, making the process relatively quicker and easier. Despite this it's detailed that Sakurai-san can often only get down to editing work at around 10pm on a typical work day — 12 hours after starting — so he's known to go into work on a Saturday to focus on smaller details with less distractions. Despite this challenging workload, Sakurai-san remains positive.

I'm thankful to be able to work a job where I can offer enjoyment to more and more people. More than anything, it's fun to see things come together!

With that level of commitment, we can't help but be confident that the final games will be worth the wait. As we're often reminded, making games isn't easy.

[source kotaku.com]