Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of both Kirby and Super Smash Bros., has revealed that all 87 characters win around 50 per cent of the time, with just 4.25 per cent separating the top from the bottom.
Sakurai recently “semi-retired” and shifted his focus to YouTube, where he makes videos on game design. His latest is titled ‘Average and Mediocre Are the Same Thing’, and in it he talks about his design philosophy for the Smash Bros. fighters.
Sakurai said the way he and his team keep fighters unique is by “amplifying shortcomings to offset advantages” rather than simply buffing out weaknesses and sanding down strengths. This way, all fighters have unique identities due to their clear strengths and weaknesses, but the idea is to make one offset the other, not just flatten everything to a dull average.
He answers the question of how successful a method of game design this has been by providing some win data. He says this is taken from global online Smash Bros. matches and is “impartial global data, without any bias.”
The top performing fighter in Smash wins 51.43 per cent of online matches, while the worst wins 47.18 per cent of the time, a difference of just 4.25 per cent. He adds that all the other fighters fit within that range in a “smooth gradation”.
He finishes by saying win rate isn’t everything, and the most important thing is how a fighter feels to play. So, if you’re playing Cloud just because you think he’s good but you don’t actually enjoy him, switch to Kirby if that’s what your heart wants, as they all have such a similar chance of winning anyway.
In other news, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has begun its marketing campaign, and it’s a mysterious one.