Sora in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate happened because of a chance meeting
The Super Smash Bros. Ultimate roster is complete, with Sora from Kingdom Hearts closing out years of hard work by Masahiro Sakurai and the whole team behind the game.
A lot of fans have expressed joy over the announcement and it was even revealed during Sakurai’s presentation that Sora was indeed a fan favorite back in a 2015 poll on who would players want to see most make the lineup.
There’s a lot more to it than just a poll though, and Sakurai has revealed on his Famitsu column a short story on how it all happened because of a chance meeting.
Over a series of Tweets by @PushDustIn and @KodyNOKOLO (via Nintendo Life), the pair translated Sakurai’s column, which says that Sakurai himself didn’t think it would happen, even saying that “the team involved with negotiations for Smash Bros also thought it was impossible as well.”
It wasn’t until one day where Sakurai actually had a chance to meet with a Disney representative during a certain award venue and pitched the idea, which turned out well because the representative “said it would be great if Sora could get in!”
Of course, negotiations after the fact needed to take place between the companies involved, and the implementation of Sora was supervised by both Disney and Square Enix, which involved a lot of guidelines to follow.
Sakurai even said that “The first Sora model that the Smash team sent to Disney / SE was very quality and there weren’t a lot of issues…just kidding. It was quite difficult.”
One fun fact that was also revealed in this column was that Fighter Pass 2 was originally meant to have just 5 characters, which should have ended with Kazuya. With the eventual approval of Sora, the addition was then made to cover 6 fighters instead of the original plan of 5.
Some fans may shrug off the addition of Sora in the game, but making it happen was certainly a lot of work for those involved, and seeing the overwhelming reception, Sakurai and his whole team must be feeling really happy about how it all turned out.