Post
The director of Kirby and Smash Bros. who runs a YouTube channel that's effectively an open-source game design course.
Joined HAL Laboratory in 1990 at age 19, Sakurai created Kirby in 1992 and went on to create Super Smash Bros. (1999) and direct every entry in the series since — Melee, Brawl, for Wii U/3DS, and Ultimate (2018). Notorious for personally micromanaging Smash Bros. development to extreme degrees, including months-long playable demos polished single-handedly. In 2022 he launched 'Sakurai on Creating Games' — a Japanese-and-English YouTube channel where he explains game design fundamentals from his decades of experience.
Example
Smash Bros. Ultimate ships with 89 playable characters, every one previously playable in any prior Smash game, plus dozens of newcomers. Sakurai personally drove the 'Everyone Is Here' character roster as a multi-year licensing and design effort across every major publisher.
Why it matters
Sakurai is one of the very few top-tier directors openly teaching design publicly. His YouTube series is now widely used in game design programs worldwide, and his Smash work remains the reference for crossover competitive game design.
Related concepts