Smash Bros. Brawl on Nintendo’s Wii may well be currently causing a storm following the release of the European edition last Friday, but fans will be saddened to hear that the game was actually cut down from what Masahiro Sakurai initially had planned.

In this month’s latest issue of the UK Official Nintendo Magazine, it has been revealed that Masahiro Sakurai, the lead developer of the Super Smash Bros. Brawl project, has admitted that he had to cut down on plenty of the characters he had originally envisaged for inclusion in the melee fighting game. Clearly this is quite an obvious point, since most games see lots of different cuts before finally making it to retail, but given how people were speculating about the likes of Mega Man and Lara Croft potentially being included, it will leave such fans pondering over what might have been.

As Sakurai-san himself said,

“It’s taken over three years to make Brawl but I actually stopped trying to include new ideas early on in development. What happened in the next year and a half was that we distilled the game down, worked out which ideas we had time to include and which we didn’t. Sadly, we had to trim out many great concepts just to keep within the time contraints. I had a lot more characters, for example…but sadly I can’t discuss which ones didn’t make it.”

Whilst he cannot openly discuss the characters that missed out, people have already discovered data fragments within the game of characters that were indeed left out. Examples include Dixie Kong, Dr. Mario, Toon Zelda, Toon Shiek, Plusle and Minun (the cheering Pokémon), Mewtwo, and Roy from the Fire Emblem series. Thankfully Sakurai-san has stated he would not just make a fourth outing with these other characters included and nothing else changed,

“There are thirty-nine characters in the game this time around and just adding a few more wouldn’t be enough to justify a new game in my opinion; I’d have to draw a line in the sand and have a new approach to make it worthwhile. As long as the fans enjoy it, though, that’s what matters and in the distant future, I guess that might be something I have to consider.”

That last comment probably relates to how Sakurai actually left HAL Laboratory to go solo with his company Sora, yet was clawed back into the fold by Satoru Iwata who personally requested he help with Brawl for Wii. It certainly sounds like Sakurai has such an investment in the series that he will want to have a hand in any future sequel to ensure it matches his lofty standards.

The full interview, including Sakurai’s views on how the online system has worked out, can be found by purchasing the new issue of the UK Official Nintendo Magazine, which is on sale now.