The Smash Bros. Team Put Serious Work in for Minecraft’s Steve
In my latest Fighting Games Friday post, I wondered why Nintendo and Masahiro Sakurai handled the reveal of Steve from Minecraft (with a number of other skins for other characters — the Alex skin being featured most prominently) for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate differently compared to those previously announced. When prior characters were revealed in their own streams and not Nintendo Directs, they were followed by Sakurai demonstrating how the character works. Not so here, where there was a two-day gap between the reveal and demonstration — the latter being saved for a Saturday at that, a good day really.
As it turns out, there was a good reason: This character is more complicated than expected. The video displayed how the animations and move set were, let’s say, crafted with a lot of love. It is, however, just the amount of work you’d expect this team to put into a character that took them around five years to get into the series.
It clearly took a lot of time for them to get the animations just right. This was somewhat evident in the reveal trailer, but was on full display here. The animations are limited in a way to be expected of a Minecraft custom character, but the team didn’t add anything that would be jarring to anyone adjusted to how they move while giving them all the usual Smash Bros. features. I was ready to think this alone had to be the biggest strain on the team early on, but that was before Sakurai got around to the sheer amount of techniques Steve (or whatever skin is chosen) has — it’s a lot.
Like in Minecraft, a series of swipes with a sword, axe, or pickaxe can be performed by holding down the attack button, but they have so many other features that I had to make a little guide to make sure I didn’t forget anything here. The characters can mine the ground or walls for additional materials, with the types of materials found depending on the surfaces within specific stages. They can use those materials to craft tools, the power and durability of which will depend on the quality of materials mined. Tools will eventually degrade, so continuing to craft during matches is necessary. Some stages, and parts of those stages, can also provide more valuable materials than others. This is already getting complicated, and we’re not done here.
The characters can also create blocks, which can either be used for attacks (the flaming one works well with juggles), used to build a small defensive fort, or as an extra way to temporarily traverse to higher planes within the stages. The blocks don’t last long, especially when placed of the sides of stages. There are several others, like how minecarts can be used to travel on stages or send other characters off them, and a gliding technique. The team, according to Sakurai, had to reprogram all the stages to work with the Minecraft characters, which undoubtedly required an insane number of hours.
This is a surprisingly complicated character for someone from a game played by a lot of kids, even though it originally released in 2009. But it’s clear this character was, sorry again, crafted with love from the team, despite this not being solely Sakurai’s idea.
Coming with the characters will be the Minecraft World stage, which will consist of six different areas from the game, some with destructible parts that can change with each match. It will also have a day and night cycle, in another nod towards the game, with zombies and skeletons appearing at night. Seven Minecraft songs will be included, though not all of them will be from the original. The franchise’s most popular tracks are soothing and relaxing, so fast-paced tracks suitable for an action fighting game have been pulled from spinoffs like the recent Minecraft Earth and Minecraft Dungeons titles.
Steve, Alex, and the accompanying skins will arrive on October 13th, a week from Tuesday. They’ll come alongside new Mii Fighter costumes from the Minecraft series, along with outfits for Bomberman from the titular series, Gil from The Tower of Druaga, and — uh oh — Travis Touchdown from No More Heroes. Travis fans were hoping he would make an official debut, but this just killed that dream. Additionally, Amiibo figures for Banjo and Kazooie, Male Byleth (with bizarre justification that they could only make one, leaving the Female variant out), and Terry Bogard will come in 2021, with those for Min Min and a Minecraft character (whoever they go with) coming afterward.
Fighting game developers tend to put a lot of care into the characters they implement in their games, but no one goes as above and beyond as the Smash Bros. team. (Don’t even try arguing with me about whether Smash Bros. is a real fighting game.) Four more characters remain for this second Fighters Pass, and all of which will at least receive close to the same amount of care. I won’t even try guessing when the next character will be revealed, though, let alone who they’ll be.
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Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
