Random: Sakurai Used To Invite Devs’ Children To Play Test Upcoming Games

Here’s your wholesome story of the day, folks. According to Masahiro Sakurai’s latest YouTube video, the creator used to invite fellow developers’ children to the office to play test upcoming games.

Describing children as “the purest of the pure”, Sakurai states that allowing them to play a game that’s still in development would yield honest feedback that can help drive the team forward. Rather than asking the children directly on what they thought of the game, Sakurai would merely observe their bahaviour from a distance, making note of anything they happened to struggle with, along with moments that provided joy.

One instance in particular involved a child executing Captain Falcon’s ‘Falcon Punch’ in the original Super Smash Bros. Sakurai reflected on the moment in which the child yelled with excitement and said “Whoa! Look how far he flew!”. He goes on to speculate that the child may have been one of the first in the world to land the punch.

Unfortunately, with the rise of social media, Sakurai no longer practices this sort of thing. He states that the reasons behind this include the desire from the team to maintain confidentiality during development, along with growing concern around the well-being of children. He concludes, however, that if burgeoning developers are able to utilise feedback from children, it’s absolutely worth doing so.

Perhaps this is the origin of the “my uncle works at Nintendo” phrase!