Mario is having a huge showing at E3 this year. He is getting another installment in the Paper Mario series, as well as making his debut on the Wii U. Even his brother is getting some love with Luigi’s Mansion 2. But what many fans seem to forget is his involvement in one of Nintendo’s greatest and most ambitious series, the Super Smash Bros. series. In just five short days, Nintendo is ready to unleash a storm of announcements, and the fourth entry in the popular Smash Bros. series just might make an appearance.
Among the many announcements and videos shown during the E3 2011 Nintendo press conference, one game, or should I say games, snuck up and surprised the majority of the crowd, and certainly those watching online. Satura Iwata took the stage to share a few words about the next installment in the Super Smash Bros. series, one that would be both available on the Wii U and the 3DS. Few details were spared, but Iwata did mention that both versions of the game would be able to interact in some fashion.
While Iwata dropped a bomb that truly invigorated the crowd, a small detail was mentioned that many of us dreaded to hear. At the time of the announcement, Masahiro Sakurai, lead developer of the series, was working on Kid Icarus: Uprising, and development for the next Smash Bros. hadn’t even started. To make things worse, Sakurai wasn’t even aware that announcement was going to be made, making it clear that the final product was years away.
Kid Icarus: Uprising went gold late last January, meaning that development on the game was complete and Sakurai was able to move onto Super Smash Bros. 4. By next week, the game will have a little more than four months of development under its belt. Is that enough time to have something presentable at the press conference? Gameplay is almost certainly out of the question, but will we even get a teaser similar to the teaser trailer given to Brawl during its announcement? At this point, expecting a few screens and maybe a logo is our best bet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBNTqu_vOqM
So what happens next week? Will Nintendo completely skip over the game? Will they able to scrap something together to show the promise of its existence? Just five more days and we will get our answers.