Famitsu has published another installment of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate creator Masahiro Sakurai’s weekly column for the magazine.

In this latest entry, Sakurai shares more behind-the-scenes tidbits about Min Min’s development for Smash Ultimate, as well as some interesting considerations the team makes when developing fighters for the game, specifically relating to positioning and where they are facing.

Check out the highlights below, as translated by Sephazon and PushDustIn:

More About Min Min

• When controlling Min Min in Smash, players use the A button to control her left arm and the B button to control her right arm – the opposite of how fighters are controlled in ARMS
• It would be intuitive to assume that the A and B buttons would control their respective sides. In fact, when Sakurai first wrote the design plan for Min Min, it was like this. So why did the team ultimately reverse it?
• Many fighters are right-handed, and for those fighters, it’s natural to have the left foot forward. There are a lot of reasons for this. As an example, in boxing, the left punch is for quick jabs and the right is for the strong follow-ups
• For Min Min, when she’s in her idle pose, her left foot is in front, as well as her left arm. Since the initial design plan, Min Min was able to change her arm using her special attack (B button). Therefore, she would’ve swapped the ARM that was originally in front
• Like in boxing, it didn’t make sense to make the more powerful punch, from her left arm, to be in front, so Sakurai flipped the controls for the arms. Since Smash is a 2D game, it wasn’t too much of a problem to make this change from the original game

Additional Fighter Considerations

• Sakurai often has to consider the “direction”. For example, when designing plans for the Challenger Approaching trailers, the stage position, and which way the characters will stand when they first appear are major elements to be considered
• New fighters generally stand on the left side of the stage, to face the audience and towards the right. Their opponent faces the opposite direction, towards the new fighter. Therefore, it looks better when fighters stand with their left foot in front
• Like Min Min, Cloud’s stance is also flipped from his original design. In the original game, Cloud was on the right side, and faced towards the audience
• Sakurai imagined how the game would look like if it was flipped, and how Cloud would stand. After imagining it, he consulted with Tetsuya Nomura and informing him of his vision, Sakurai received his okay on changing his original stance
• Marth is equipped with a rapier, held in his front hand, which traditionally implements stabs. The different stabs don’t look that different in game. On the other hand, Ike is a fighter who emphasises raw power in his stance, and holds his sword in his dominant hand
• There is a variety of body movements when considering fighting techniques. For example, there’s no set rule for when holding two items. Sakurai says his intention is to try to explain the reason behind the positions and movements of fighters.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.