Every time Masahiro Sakurai, father of Super Smash Bros., opens his mouth, we all have to tune our ears very well and listen to what one of the great developers in the industry has to say. His decisions towards the user are exemplary and, during a Hamster Corporation event, the creative revealed a detail that demonstrates his genius.
According to Sakurai’s words, collected by Automaton
“When you’re in the arcade, you quickly jump from one machine to another, switching between various games. But why don’t you get the same boost with Arcade Archive games despite the large number of games to choose from? Instead of just popping in a coin and jumping into the game right away, you click on an icon, wait for the logo, wait for the title, look at the instructions screen, wait until everything loads and then you’re finally on the main screen, after which you can start playing. “I want you to measure the total time it takes and shorten it by even a second.”
He has translated this policy of respect for time into his own projects, as Sakurai himself confesses. “For example, I make it possible for the player to reduce the waiting time
The best example of this is Kirby Air Ride, the title released by HAL Laboratory for GameCube in 2004, since originally the work would include Dolby Surround audio. That idea was discarded because this detail would require including the logo for more than a second before starting.
“I’m really sorry to keep the user waiting. If you take a second away from each user, that means you’ll take 10,000 seconds away from 10,000 people. The more this is repeated over the years, the more time you’ll waste from players.”
An excellent demonstration of why Sakurai is kept in the Olympus of the great video game creators of all history.
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