Masahiro Sakurai shows off a prototype of the game that would become Smash Bros.

Masahiro Sakurai is a YouTuber now, and in his latest video, he showed a never-before-seen clip of the prototype that would eventually become Super Smash Bros. You can feast your eyes Dragon King: The Fighting Game starting at 1:25 a.m. Video at the top of this post or jump directly to that next moment Clicking on this link.

God the dragon king The footage is obviously from an early stage of development, but you can already see elements that are now the core of smash franchise, such as percentages representing health, the iconic three-platform “Battlefield” stage layout, and characters flying off the edges of the screen to their deaths. Fighters were just polygonal humans – not Nintendo characters – and they could use moves like explosive attacks, mid-air jumps, shields, dashes and aerial attacks. “There were still no special moves, dodges, or even items, but the rules of the game were basically the same as Smash Bros.Sakrai said.

the dragon king was actually one of two games that Sakurai prototyped at the time. The other was “an RC robot adventure game where you hack into security cameras to progress,” he said. For both, Sakurai did the design, graphics, modeling and animation, while the late Satoru Iwata, who was also known as a star programmer before becoming Nintendo’s president, took care of the programming. In the end, Sakurai progressed with the fighting game because it could be completed faster.

Sakurai talked about some of the philosophy behind it Smash Bros., which to this day remains quite different from most other fighting titles. He felt that complicated, combo-focused games could be alienating. Instead, smash Relies on simpler controls and the cumulative damage system to be more welcoming to players and encourage improvisation. The addition of Nintendo characters came later in development. While the characters obviously made it into the final game, Nintendo’s wholesalers and sales teams “vehemently rejected the idea of ​​Nintendo characters beating each other” before release, Sakurai said. (the first one Smash Bros. There was also the game that decided Kirby’s now distinct voice.)