Ever since taking a break from gaming development, Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai has started his own YouTube channel where he details some of the behind-the-scenes elements of game development. In his most recent video, Sakurai talks about how Super Smash Bros. came to be, including showcasing the first-ever footage of Smash's prototype, Dragon King: The Fighting Game.
For those who don't know, Dragon King is the prototype for Super Smash Bros., which was initially supposed to be its own series with no ties to Nintendo characters. That originality was eventually changed after Sakurai realised his characters were all too similar to one another, leading to the Smash we all know and love today.
Although Dragon King has been shown off before in development screenshots, before today we'd never actually seen any gameplay footage of it, only having a few screenshots to go off of. The footage, around a minute long, shows four characters that all look remarkably similar to one another and most closely resemble how Captain Falcon moves and attacks in the final games.
As Sakurai notes, there aren't any dodges, special moves, or items in the build of the game that's being shown off, although the core rules of Smash Bros. still remain, with a percentage metre at the top of the screen and the fighters trying to kick one another off of the platform. Although there are a few moves missing, the fighters are still able to dash, attack in five different ways, and shield from one another, with Sakurai remarking that they still move pretty well. We can also see a Battlefield-esque stage, albeit with a photorealistic background.
Sakurai notes that the demo was positively received by Nintendo but that his team was busy on other projects so he had to wait for an opportunity to pitch it. After all of the initial games the team was working on fell through, Sakurai pitched Smash Bros. thanks to its relatively short development time and the rest, as they say, is history.
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