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GameCube (Games) Entertainment Games

Kirby Creator Leaves Company 32

Posted by simoniker from the morphs-into-new-position dept.
Thanks to Gamers.com for their news that Masahiro Sakurai, creator of Super Smash Brothers and the Kirby series, announced his departure from developer HAL Labs in his latest column for the Japanese magazine Famitsu Weekly. Although an independent developer, HAL Laboratory is tied very closely to Nintendo, but Sakurai said that "...his departure was entirely amicable, and he is leaving with the approval of Nintendo president Satoru Iwata." Going forward, it's confirmed that "HAL will continue to develop games starring Kirby, although the fate of the Smash Brothers franchise remains uncertain", according to Sakurai's column.
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Kirby Creator Leaves Company

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  • Since Smash Bros is one of the bigger titles that N has had the past few years. Loss or significant degeneration could mean less sales of their next console, or something like that. Then again, I never bought SSB:M, so maybe it wouldn't be that bad after all.

    • Since Smash Bros is one of the bigger titles that N has had the past few years. Loss or significant degeneration could mean less sales of their next console, or something like that. Then again, I never bought SSB:M, so maybe it wouldn't be that bad after all.

      You guess correctly. SSB:M isn't half of what the original is. All the characters are nothing but doubles of eachother and you spend more time trying to keep yourself alive while the levels try ceaselessly to kill you than you do smashing your oppone

      • Re:Could be bad news... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Daetrin ( 576516 ) on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @02:39PM (#6627887)
        You guess correctly. SSB:M isn't half of what the original is. All the characters are nothing but doubles of eachother and you spend more time trying to keep yourself alive while the levels try ceaselessly to kill you than you do smashing your opponents. The N64 SSB is a true classic. The sequel is a joke and is one of the reasons I haven't bought my own GC yet. (Although, Metroid Prime is quite tempting.)

        Are you sure you learned how to play the game? You clearly didn't spend more than five minutes trying it out.

        I spend pleanty of time smashing people. A few of the levels are kind of annoying, but the majority of them aren't actively hostile. Personally i think it's a nice break to spend a round once in awhile trying to franticaly keep myself onscreen while also trying to do incidental damage to the other players and screw with their efforts to do the same. However if that totally puts you off, you can turn off the levels that do that move, spin, or whatever.

        As for character doubling, all the original characters are there, so you certainly haven't lost anything. They've approximatly doubled the number of characters, and although about half the new ones are doubles of pre-existing characters, the other half aren't. If you are somehow offended that by the existance of doubles, just don't play with Bowser, Gannondorf, Marth(or Roy, pick one) Pichu, Falco, or Dr. Mario.

        However just because some of the characters are doubles is no justification not to use the original characters, as well as Zelda, Peach, Roy (or Marth, pick one =) the Ice Climbers, Mewtwo, or Game & Watch. (I may have missed a few on either side, but the general rule holds true)

        Melee is just as good as the original if not better. I like a lot of the quirky new characters, and a lot of the new mini games are cool and colleting trophies is an amusing diversion.

      • Dude, you haven't played the game. Melee is stronger than the original. I bought Melee the day it came out - and I still play it. Collecting trophies, which is almost Soul Callibur-like, alone is fun enough to keep me going. The N64 version just wasn't as engaging...
      • I get a Score:0, Flamebait for posting an opinion based on experience? Try underrated. Got some pretty bias mods floating around here. Maybe I should have opened the post with a tell tale "This will probably get modded down but..." because it seems like that's all it takes to get a +5 insightful these days.
      • There are 3 rows of characters on the character select screen, with a total of 25 characters to pick from. The first and last character on each row is a clone of the character next to it. That makes 6 clones out of 25 characters. But the clones are different enough that if you try to use the same strategy with both the clone and the original character, you'll get destroyed.

        I don't remember the exact count of the stages, but it's somewhere around 30. Maybe 5 of the levels you have to put some effort into ma

  • Kirby but no SSB? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by quandrum ( 652868 ) on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @12:55PM (#6627120)
    Okay, Nintendo would be making a grave mistake to end development on the Super Smash Brothers line. This is THE fighting game for the Nintendo platform. From my personal anecdotes, SSB:M gets more play on the Gamecube then any other game. Period. It's just one of those games that anyone can sit down in front of and have fun. Kirby is fun, but it's no SSB...
    • Okay, Nintendo would be making a grave mistake to end development on the Super Smash Brothers line.

      I suspect they know that. When has Nintendo ever given up on a franchise? It's quite possible the uncertainty of it's fate is the question of who will develop it, rather than if it will be developed.

      Nintendo's got a lot of options, as they have been co-operating with other companies to make sequels for some of their franchises (Sega doing F-Zero GX, Capcom doing Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages/Seasons).
      • Sega also did the Super Monkey Ball games on GC (as well as one for GBA I believe), which I thought were much more competive and enjoyable than the SSB series.
      • The uncertainty is probably WHEN the sequel will be made, not IF it will be made.

        It's been well known that Nintendo has been in the works with a 3D Kirby game for a while. They probably weren't intending on making a Smash Bros sequel until the next console. There isn't really a need for a 2nd GameCube Smash Bros - it would just dilute the franchise. Online Smash Bros as a launch title for the next system would be a BIG seller, provided they don't rush out another Smash Bros towards the end of the GameCube'

  • Doesn't Nintendo own HAL ? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by edwdig ( 47888 ) on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @12:59PM (#6627158)
    I was almost positive Nintendo fully owned HAL. I remember back when Nintendo sold Rare, there was a financial report floating around that had an organizational chart of Nintendo, which listed HAL as a subsidy of Nintendo.

    Anyway, as to Smash Bros, there's no way Nintendo would stop further development of it. Smash Bros Melee is by far the top selling GameCube game. The N64 version was somewhere in the top 10 of the N64.
    • I wasn't positive about this either, but according to this site [classicgaming.com], "While they are an independent company, HAL Laboratory can still be considered a Nintendo second-party developer due to their [close] relationship."
  • ... after I read the headline and thought of vacuum cleaners....

    I need more coffee.

  • No problem... (Score:5, Funny)

    by lightspawn ( 155347 ) on Wednesday August 06, 2003 @01:23PM (#6627323) Homepage
    Just as long as Nintendo remembers to suck him in and absorb his powers before he leaves.

  • Kirby creator (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by PeteyG ( 203921 )
    so... would that like make him Silver Surfer's grandpa?
  • Super Smash-Bros. Melee is one of the best console games I've ever played. It's the only game I bought for GC, actually, which I really only picked up because of the GBA adaptor. It would be a shame to end the series, and perhaps worse to pervert it with a new, worse, designer...
  • I remember seeing footage of a GBA/GCN game where you tilted your GBA to roll Kirby around in the Game Cube game. If I remember correctly, that was back before Game Cube's release. I know that Nintendo doesn't like to release anything until they're sure it's done, but that's one heck of a development cycle. Anyone know if the game was sacked?

  • Dang.. (Score:2)

    by pogle ( 71293 )
    SSBM was *the* reason I got my own Gamecube. New Zelda was lame, and I beat Metroid Prime on a friends. Only SSBM (and maybe Timesplitters 2) made my decision to get one. Hopefully HAL will make another good one.
    • Get Eternal Darkness. It's less than $15 brand new at IGN's game store. It's worth every penny of $50, IMO, so $15 is a steal.

      And I disagree with your comment about Zelda: Wind Waker, but ... meh. To each his own.

      --Jeremy
      • Completely destroyed Eternal Darkness at the beginning of June. All 3 alignments. Was interesting, but not too challenging. My point for SSBM is that its the only Gamecube game with the lasting value that makes it work me owning one personally, rather than playing a friends (as I did with Metroid Prime in a single weekend).

        As for zelda, its ok to disagree. My friends disagree too. I just like the older, darker zelda as a personal preference. Cell shading irks me :)
  • I feel so alone now, adrift in an empty Universe...

    Wait, I'm not that Kirby. Whew.

  • ... but whenever I hear about HAL Laboratory [hallab.co.jp], I immediately think of their old cartridge games for the Commodore Max Machine [google.com] (a predecessor to the C64)! Pitiful, I know.

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