Super Smash Bros Ultimate

n April 2014, Bandai Namco Entertainment posted a recruitment advertisement on a Japanese career job opportunity website. The recruitment page consisted of a listing for programmers for "Smash Bros. 6", which was expected to be released in 2015 for both the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. The page noted there were 120 game developers working on the project at the time, and that Bandai Namco expected that number to increase to 200. However, shortly after its publication, the page was taken down.In a January 2015 column in Weekly Famitsu, Sakurai alluded to the possibility of retirement, expressing doubt that he would be able to continue making games if his career continued to be as stressful as it was. In December 2015, Sakurai once again stated that he was not sure if there would be another game in the Smash Bros. series.

On March 8, 2018, a Super Smash Bros. game for the Nintendo Switch was announced during a Nintendo Direct, in which Inkling characters from Splatoon appeared, suggesting that they would be new characters in the game. Sakurai later confirmed that he had worked on the game "in silence, day after day. On March 22, 2018, Nintendo announced that they would host another Super Smash Bros. Invitational tournament, in which a selected group of players would get to play the game for the first time and compete in a series of matches before a winner is chosen. The tournament took place alongside the Splatoon 2 World Championship at E3 2018 and was held on June 11–12. Both events were live streamed on Nintendo's official YouTube and Twitch channels. The title was later confirmed as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate at E3 2018, containing all playable characters from previous games in addition to Princess Daisy from the Mario series, the Inklings from the Splatoon series, and Ridley from the Metroid series.The game is scheduled to be released on December 7, 2018.

The biggest changes we saw seem geared to competitive players. Arguably the largest change is to character and level select. In Ultimate, you now choose your stage before your character, allowing you consider a level’s eccentricities when picking your fighter. To a lot of people, this will be a minor swap, but for competitive play, adjusting your character choice for specific levels could push players to mix up their choices more.

Once you’re in a match, though, most players will not be able to distinguish Smash Bros Ultimate from Smash 4. The game looks and feels identical to the untrained eye. Every tactic you used should still work, assuming it isn’t contingent on minute balancing details.

We’ve been told by players with specific character preferences that some characters do feel a little different. One rep from Nintendo, for example, lamented that Solid Snake felt a little slower than the original Smash Bros Brawl character. (He was also quick to point out that the game is still being balanced).

In our time with Ultimate, we focused on two of the game’s completely new characters, the Splatoon Inkling, and Ridley from Metroid. Inkling is a quick character, with a focus on horizontal movement. She (or he) has a paint-roller special attack that can clear a path across wide platforms, and create a path for her to later quickly swim across. She seems like a good introductory character, though we could see how creative painting could lead to some interesting maneuvers.