A closer look
Super Smash Bros was originally prototyped in secret as a completely generic fighting game called Dragon King, featuring untextured humanoid fighters that looked absolutely terrible in motion. The creator, Masahiro Sakurai, realized that no one would actually care about a low-budget fighting game with unknown characters, so he aggressively pitched the idea of replacing them with beloved Nintendo mascots beating the absolute pulp out of each other. Nintendo management initially hated the idea of their incredibly family-friendly characters engaging in violent brawls, but the prototype was just too fun to ignore. We now have a massive global competitive scene entirely because a developer desperately needed a cheap marketing gimmick to save his boring polygon fighting game from obscurity!
