Kirby Creator Leaves Company

Thanks to Gamers.com for their news that Masahiro Sakurai, creator of Super Smash Brothers and the Kirby series, announced his departure from developer HAL Labs in his latest column for the Japanese magazine Famitsu Weekly. Although an independent developer, HAL Laboratory is tied very closely to Nintendo, but Sakurai said that "...his departure was entirely amicable, and he is leaving with the approval of Nintendo president Satoru Iwata." Going forward, it's confirmed that "HAL will continue to develop games starring Kirby, although the fate of the Smash Brothers franchise remains uncertain", according to Sakurai's column.

Comments

Re:Could be bad news...

[Kethinov]

Since Smash Bros is one of the bigger titles that N has had the past few years. Loss or significant degeneration could mean less sales of their next console, or something like that. Then again, I never bought SSB:M, so maybe it wouldn't be that bad after all.

You guess correctly. SSB:M isn't half of what the original is. All the characters are nothing but doubles of eachother and you spend more time trying to keep yourself alive while the levels try ceaselessly to kill you than you do smashing your opponents. The N64 SSB is a true classic. The sequel is a joke and is one of the reasons I haven't bought my own GC yet. (Although, Metroid Prime is quite tempting.)