Sakurai on how it was decided which stages to bring back for Smash Bros. Wii U/3DS

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS feature stages from previous games in the franchise. There are some stages from Brawl, Melee, and even the original release.

In his latest “Smash Bros. Diaries” entry included in this month’s issue of Game Informer, director Masahiro Sakurai addressed a question about how the team decided on which stages to bring back.

There are several factors that came in to play. Sakurai mentioned “the popularity of the stage, whether or not it’s a match for the 3DS screen, and whether or not two stages from the same setting are getting ported” were all considered.

Below are Sakurai’s full comments:

There’s the two versions of the game and each one offers different stages; it’d be impossible to create completely original world settings for each one. So one or the other might be a stage ported from the previous game, and the choices are made based on a variety of balance decisions – the popularity of the stage, whether or not it’s a match for the 3DS screen, and whether or not two stages from the same setting are getting ported (for example, if two different Mario-themed stages are ports on both the 3DS and Wii U version).