Photo Illustration by Rob Howard for House of Nintendo

It seems fitting now that we are so close to tasting Smash Brothers glory that we take a look at the series history. We already know about Masahiro Sakurai's role. What about the series in general?

We know the series started in 1999 on the Nintendo64. Yet it did not start out as a Nintendo game. It was originally designed as a prototype called "Dragon King: The Fighting Game." Hmm, yeah, good thing they went with the whole Nintendo character idea.

This prototype was done by Satoru Iwata and Masahiro Sakurai in their spare time (game developers have spare time? When did that happen?), and when given the green light by Nintendo, it wasn't given a large budget. It clearly wasn't expected to be a top tier title, but sales said otherwise!

Some people (read: internet message board folks) have talked about the Capcom series "Power Stone" as being an influence. I think you'll see what they mean when you see this screen shot:


Image from www.megamanlegacy.com

Pretty similar, eh? Though the game was also released in 1999, perhaps there was some cross-pollination going on.

Read about Power Stone.