Adding Minecraft’s Steve To Smash Bros. Has Taken Five Years

Yesterday, Nintendo announced that Minecraft Steve would be the next DLC character for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, blowing the collective socks off most players. Most, anyway, as there were a few people disappointed with the news. However, it’s since been revealed that this has been discussed between Nintendo and Microsoft for five years.

 

Five Years?!

According to Daniel Kaplan, the former production director over at Mojang, talks were taking place between the two parties as early as 2015. In a reply to a thread discussing how long this announcement could have been in the works, Kaplan reveals it’s been talked about for five years, though he has no idea when the actual implementation of Steve began.

That’s when talks started at least. No idea when implementation started :)

— Kaplan (@Kappische) October 1, 2020

 

So How Long Has The Implementation of Steve Taken?

No idea, but during yesterday’s showcase, Smash Bros. Ultimate’s direct Masahiro Sakurai gave some insight into the level of work it takes to add Minecraft characters to the game: “Someone from Nintendo will come to my workplace and say… ‘Mr. Sakurai… Surely you can put Minecraft in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate?’ while peering at me over their glasses. They make it sound easy. I guess they think this all happens by magic or something. Don’t they know what kind of game Minecraft is? The wizardry required to make it work in this game… It’s impossible!”

Sakurai also mentioned that in order to bring Steve and Alex into the game, every single stage in the game had to be reworked in order to accommodate their ability to build blocks. Given that there’s well over 100 stages, with Battlefield and Omega forms to boot, plus stage creations on top of all that, that’s a lot of work. Hopefully, Steve offers enough fun and innovate mechanics to justify all that work.

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