Masahiro Sakurai talked about his time working on Meteos, providing background information on its development. Released on his YouTube channel, Sakurai’s video sees him cover the origins of the game, early concepts and his thoughts on the final product.
The video is the latest in Sakurai’s Game Concepts series, where he looks back on the development of his previous titles including the Kirby and Smash Bros franchises. This latest episode represents the first time the series has strayed from his more famous works.
Meteos was a puzzle game released in 2005 for the Nintendo DS, produced by Tetsuya Mizuguchi of Q Entertainment, who personally approached Sakurai to design a falling block game. In his video, Sakurai described how he viewed this request as a challenge due to his poor skills at the genre, and shared a rough concept made in PowerPoint showing his desire to have blocks take off like rockets when matched correctly.
Sakurai’s video also went into further depth regarding his regrets on balancing the final product, but also how pleased he was with how the different planets offered up unique challenges for the player. His next video in the series will talk about an obscure LCD game he worked on, Sodatete: Kouchuu Ouja Mushiking.
The full video can be seen here:
Meteos is available for the Nintendo DS.