Sakurai suggests ‘low budget’ release reveal for Banjo-Kazooie in Smash
Director says video budget is spent
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate director Masahiro Sakurai has suggested he will continue with his ‘low budget’ character release videos first seen with Dragon Quest’s Hero.
Sakurai announced the release details for the Hero character DLC in July, via an unscripted, ad-hoc video which appeared in deep contrast to Nintendo’s usual slick video presentations.
UPDATE: Nintendo has officially announced Banjo-Kazooie Nintendo Switch for its Switch Online subscription service.
In his latest Famitsu column (translated by PushDustIn) Sakurai explained that he no longer has the budget for high production video presentations, something he first joked about in the Hero presentation itself.
The Smash team likely won’t be able to produce the sort of videos they did for Smash Bros. Ultimate’s first DLC character, Persona’s Joker, for future DLC characters such as Banjo-Kazooie, he wrote.
This would requite a script, a video editor and take the director away from his other work, he explained.
Sakurai said that’s why he decided to ad lib the Hero presentation and control the game by himself. The entire video was edited in less than 2 hours and later translated.
While he doesn’t think he spoke well, Sakurai said he does think that he was able to convey his thoughts in an easy to understand manner.
“Even if you are able to come up with an innovative idea, if you can’t convey your thoughts to people then it has no value,” he wrote.
Banjo-Kazooie is set to be released as Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC sometime this autumn/fall.
Sakurai has previously spoken of his satisfaction with the result of Grant Kirkhope’s Smash Bros. music.
In an earlier column, he claimed that securing Banjo-Kazooie for Smash Bros. was “quite easy”.