The “brothers” part of Super Smash Bros. has always been a bit mysterious, but series creator Masahiro Sakurai has clarified its meaning.
For the most part, the name “Super Smash Bros.” makes sense—Super, because, Super Mario, the Super Smash Bros. Entertainment System, Nintendo uses it a lot. Shattered as they hit each other. And then you get to bro. But thankfully, in Masuhiro Sakurai’s latest video on his Creating Games YouTube channel, the series creator touched on some of his memories of the late former Nintendo of Japan president Satoru Iwata. In the film, he stated that Iwata actually helped come up with the name.
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“Mr. Iwata was also involved in the design of the name for Super Smash Bros. We asked team members to suggest some names and words we might use, and then held a meeting with Mr. Shigeri Itoi to determine the title we wanted. Let’s go together, Iwata-san was the one who picked the ‘brother’ part,” explained Sakurai, the creator of the Earthbound/Mother series. “His reasoning was that even though the characters weren’t brothers at all, using the word added a nuance that they weren’t just fighting — they were friends working out a little disagreement.”
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It’s no surprise that Satoru Iwata helped come up with the name, as there are plenty of stories from Nintendo developers over the years about all the big and small things Iwata did to help the game become a success. The full film is well worth watching to see more tidbits about Iwata, but be prepared to get emotional as the topic of his illness does come up briefly.
This also appears to be the penultimate video Sakurai will upload to his YouTube channel, as he stated back in June that he had already recorded his last video. According to the machine translation of this tweet, the creator should have one more video left, so if you haven’t checked out any of them yet and you’re interested in game development in any capacity, you’d better check it out.
