Sakurai on the most common Smash Bros. Ultimate bugs during development

Have you ever wondered about the kinds of bugs that were most common during the development of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate? Director Masahiro Sakurai provided new insight as part of his latest YouTube video today.

First up are grabs and throws, “as actions that forcefully control another fighter can easily cause processing contradictions.” This includes grabbing a fighter in the middle of a special move. The same also tends to happen for Final Smashes. Sakurai pointed out that scene changes in particular require restraining and releasing fighters and you need to ensure that nothing else enters the scene. Also brought up is terrain, especially in Stage Builder, and V-shaped terrain can cause a lot of issues. Lastly, the Spirits system can cause problems as well.

Smash Bros. can be “grueling” to test. It might boggle your mind just how many combinations there are to consider. For Smash Bros. matches, the game has 89 fighters, movesets, items, multiplayer (with their own attacks), spirits, and specific terrain, stages, and stage hazards. Sakurai also mentioned that some bugs only appear at certain times, throwing even more chaos into the mix.

Patches are extremely common these days, but implementing fixes aren’t so easy. Towards the end of the video, Sakurai brought up how addressing one bug could introduce others. Lots of additional checks may be required.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway is Sakurai stating the following: “If people get the idea that a game has to be completely bug-free, it will end up practically impossible to release games.”

You can catch up on the full video here.