The director of Tekken 8 praises Sakurai, saying that he is “probably the only one who could properly” make Smash Bros.

There has been a lot of talk about the future of the Super Smash Bros. series. since the development of Ultimate ended, but if you ask Katsuhiro Harada about it, you will understand that only one guy can handle this.

Talking to IGN to Promote Bandai Namco’s Next Generation Fighter Tekken 8director Katsuhiro Harada was asked about what it was like working with Sakurai on Kazuya and concluded by saying that he is “probably” the only one who can make the series due to his deep understanding of various IPs.

Here’s what he had to say:

Katsuhiro Harada: So, while working with Sakurai-san, you mentioned collaborating on the character Kazuya, but actually Bandai Namco Studios when they developed Smash Brothers… Sakurai-san was there all the time, just usually coming to work, I guess you could say . So we knew pretty well what to expect and his personality. Even so, we were also surprised when it came time to make Kazuyu for Smash Brothers because we thought since we are experts in Tekken, maybe he would ask me what things I need to understand in order to do it. similar to Tekken, but it wasn’t really like that. He already had his own thoughts about what makes Tekken “Tekken”. So it was surprising, but also nice to see him come in and not ask questions, but say, “I played Tekken a lot and studied it, and that’s what I think is important for the game,” right? off the bat.

So it was a real shock, I mean in a positive way. But it also made us think that he has all these characters from other different franchises and games in Smash Brothers, so knowing so much and in depth about all these different IP addresses to be able to do this … he is probably the only one who could make this game right. When creating the Tekken series, we always look at different fighting games or other games outside the genre and think about what we can learn from this experience. But he just got so deep into it that we thought we could learn a lot more from different products outside of Tekken by looking at his example.

How do you think the Smash Bros. series would have turned out? without Sakurai? Any suggestions on who could step up to develop future titles? Leave a comment below.