Random: Smash Bros. Director Masahiro Sakurai Played 242 PlayStation Games Last Year

Sora confirmed

That seems normal, you have to know the competition if you want to actually compete with them.

This man is not human

Wow... good for him!

Positive I did at least 1 a month on my PS4 (we share Death Standing). Maybe bought 1 extra once or twice. But 242 is not possible for me.

So uh, did he finish them or just play them ?
Cause if you just play them without intent to finish, you can tackle a lot of games in a year.

Having said that, I wonder where he finds the time.

I'm really hoping Sony doubles down on the AA titles next generation; last year I didn't feel like there was much for me on the PS4.

Seems like that's just popping in playing the tutorial/first level and moving on. To play that many, and I'm sure he plays a ton of switch games, work, eat, sleep etc how many of those did he get passed the title screen is what I wanna know lol

Who read the quote in his US voiceover?

@personauser93

This current gen is weird its closing in on 7 years. But for me it doesn't really feel like it started, let alone closing in on its end.

It just feels like it was just an incremental improvement over the last, instead of the huge leaps we had before.

@T7Hokage017

I also play games to finish them.
And then I rarely go back, because i got so many games to try and play. Let alone finish.

( 133 on the NX 980 on steam 60 on the saturn 129 on the ps3 etc)

Maybe if he hadn’t spent all that time on PlayStation games, Smash Fighters Pass 2 DLC could have been released 6 months ago

@KitsuneNight I can agree with that. It also feels weird that there were so many remakes and remasters this gen too, and even though I enjoyed a good many of them I still felt kind of weird when I would pay for an upscaled version of a game that had either been out for a long time or one that I had played before. I’m really hoping we see a lot of new experiences or brand new installments to franchises next gen.

It doesn't mention which Playstations. I'm sure it a mix of 1-4 though. Now since this is Smash related, I really hope the next Square-Enix rep is Geno or I would also love to see Ashley Riot from Vagrant Story (which is a PS1 classic). Sora is a long-shot IMO.

I respect Sakurai. But i cannot agree with his statement that Death Stranding is remarkable. That game is isht!

@LavaTwilight is not owned by naughty dog. Is owned by activision thats why the crash games are multi platform now.

@personauser93

Maybe that's the reason this generation feels so off.
Because we are replaying old games a lot.

Though it's quite ironic that i am playing the Ghostbusters Remaster on the NX right now.
It doesn't feel like an 11 year old game.

But I also hope the next gen will bring something new to the table, instead of more gouging with micro transactions and DLC.

@LavaTwilight

Nah Crash traded owners pretty early on
Vivendi from 2001 to 2007
and Activision ever since 2008.

And Naughty Dog bowed out in 99.

Beenox and Vicarious Visions are the current developers.

@T7Hokage017

Yeah, same
I only replay a game if it's been years since I last played it,
If I really like it,
Or if it's really short.

Was he trying to find a good one?

Bet most of them were just for 5 mins and then gave up.

@dew12333 i laughed

(On the inside, but I consider that laughing)

I wonder what games Sakurai played... I would of loved to know what my PS4 year was in review but unfortunately, it does not want to work for me. =(

I can summarize last year on Switch as mostly Hyrule Warriors, Fire Emblem Three Houses and Stardew Valley, with The Messenger, Luigi's Mansion 3, Astral Chain and Link's Awakening thrown in for good measure.

Oh my God! He played PlayStation! The PlayStation is the next DLC Fighter!

Are people really surprised that Sakurai is a gamer?

Sakurai, convince Nintendo to buy Sly, Jak, and Ratchet.

See its not hard at all to find time to play games on multiple platforms if even sakurai, who apparently works so hard he puts himself in the hospital and still continues to work, has the time lmao.
Although there just seems to be no way he can finish most of them when it includes massive jrpgs like P5. Either way, good on him for being able to enjoy some time playing games.

Like others have said, that's a lot of games but I doubt he finished most of them. Especially with his notorious work ethic and schedule. I mean that's about 20 games per month. Who knows, maybe he did.. good for him to step and away and get some gaming in though.

Dang, where does he find the time? 🤣

pretty confident one of the PS4 games Sakurai played last year was Persona 5 Royal

@LavaTwilight

It's been a very bumpy ride.
Spyro had a similar trajectory and is also owned by Activision these days.

Impressive. I don't know how he could juggle all of that. I had 107 games played, and I try practically any demo, F2P or free PS+ game I find. I am also guilty of buying games from the many flash sales.

He loves games, so I'm not surprised he enjoys them in different platforms. What surprises me is that he played at least one 242 games in a single year, and that without counting Switch and PC games. That's almost a day and a half for each one (again, only PS4!). Sakurai is not human.

@KitsuneNight You didn't know? Japanese have evolved and don't need to sleep anymore. :/

I wonder how many Switch games were played... one, super smash brothers.

I would not be shocked if Sakurai has a room in the back of Sora with all kinds of Game Systems hooked up, and he spends most of his day in this room playing various games for "research" for Smash Bros.

I could kinda picture him sitting in this room playing Three Houses so he can properly "research" Byleth. Or playing Dragon Quest XI on the PS4(along with the other DQ games) to ensure he gets the hero right.

Its kinda easy to play games and even beat them, given he can simply combine playing other games with his work for Smash Bros.

To be honest, I would not be shocked if part of his job is playing a lot of Nintendo and other games to see if a new character would work as a fighter in Smash, and then to ensure he gets as much right about the character as he can, such as their animations, moves, abilites, that kinda thing. Or ensure the stages match up to the worlds found in the games themselves.

Given the nature of Smash, you kinda need to do some research on the source material like the games, to ensure you get everything right.

Wonderful i love the way he is a gamer i could tell by the way he did moves in the demo of smash bros and the way holds the controller.
It's good Nintendo devs own other systems as well so they can see what the other stores and games selections are like.
I can tell with the switch Nintendo are more than ever on the ball it's like the Snes era all over again it's a wonderful time for gaming.

Is he a cyborg!? Does this man even blink?

Masahiro Sakurai is secretly a huge EBM and Front242 Fan. Kudos to those that even understood what I said. I would expect no one here is old enough for such music and taste.

A man who is allegedly the "hardest working man in gaming" and "is working himself into an early grave for gamers" had enough time to around and play through 242 Playstation games this year?

That's not even counting how many hours he sunk into his Fire Emblem obsession and the many hours I'm sure he spends drawing fanart of Fire Emblem swordfighters.

Sephiroth would be cool. Chrono or frog.

@MysteryCupofJoe ?!?!?!

242 games? What does he just play them for 20 minutes each?

Work hard, play hard.

Crash, Spyro, Lara Croft, Nathan Drake, Joel & Ellie, PaRappa the Rapper - ALL CONFIRMED

And now we know why it takes a year to make 6 fighters......

I wonder how many were played under 15 minutes. I assume it's to take inspiration and mechanics.

I wonder if he's played kingdom hearts🤔.

Not surprising tbh. Although I don't have a PS4 I see it as an excellent console to use in tandem with the Switch.

Like others have pointed out, this really doesn't mean much of anything.
If it was 242 games completed, then it'd be crazy. But just '242 games played' is a meaningless number without context. For all we know they were less than 30 minutes each just to try them.

@Kalmaro thats not the competition. He just loves gaming. Sakurai isn't a Nintendo employee. He left and created his own company so that Nintendo uses him as a contractor.

@drewber2635 that website is only for PS4 games AFAIK. And it stopped measuring at December 10th.

It also provided satistics on hours played and all that. I would be curious to see that.

Mine said 29 games. Just got a PS4 not even a year ago. Love it.

While not related to the article itself, I must say, the shade of blue the site uses for Smash Bros. articles is just so lovely.

Where does he find the time?! I can't imagine he actually means he beat 242, if it's just a couple hours here and there I could believe it. But even if they were all little 8 hour FPS campaigns that would still be almost 2000 hours of PS4 gaming in a single year! On top of anything he plays on Switch and the crazy hours he works! Does this man sleep?!

Truthfully, I probably played this many games as well. Now, completing that many games ... is another story. My lack of ability to focus makes me play a lot of diffrerent games for very short amounts of time.

What a traitor. I’m kinda joking, but I’m still so angry about the whole Joker/Persona5 fiasco. I’ll never forget it and never forgive them unless they put the game on Switch.

@gloom what fiasco, that a new character got into another game? Like that never happend before...

@gloom Joker is in two games on Nintendo systems not counting Smash, Persona Q2 and Persona 5 Scramble.

@Trajan The website not only works for ps4, I don't own one but I do have a ps vita and obtained my statistics as well

Would be more interesting if he shared his cumulative playtime and most played titles as well to have an idea how many of those he completed, although the mere fact he played 242 ps games and even more than that is very impressive

Does he sleep?!

Well he beat my number by almost 100 games. Not bad Sakurai. I need to step up my game!

When he isn't developing and testing games, he's playing them.

What a life.

While the odds of him beating that many are low, it's still possible. I managed to finish 31 games in January last year (I think it was more but we'll stick with 31). That's with a full time job.

As a game developer you probably play games a bit differently. He probably gets a ton of stuff to try and latches on to whatever catches his interest.

I’ll usually try to play stuff to completion, even if I don’t enjoy it. The curse of the completionist.

Oh cool! I played only 38 games on my PS4 and PS Vita in last year. But I completed almost all of them. In my opinion, Death Stranding is the best game of 2019.

@NINtendo242 ha, you gotta be the second person in 20+ years of my life to mention EBM other than my father 😄

On topic, I find it cool that he isn't burnt out on games by making them, but instead plays a ton of them.
I kinda expected the former to be true.

Just give me a Super Smash Bros. X PlayStation All-Stars game for the PS4 & Switch already!