Sakurai details the process of making snappy attack animations

Masahiro Sakurai is back with another video in his game development series. This time around, the topic centers on snappy attack animations, ant this puts the spotlight squarely on Smash Bros. Ultimate.

According to Sakurai, the first part of an attack animation is called the lead-in. While these might look like nothing more than the simple drawing back of a weapon, there’s a lot of thought and craftsmanship that goes into them.

In an interesting tidbit about this video, Sakurai notes that Square Enix gave their consent for the feature’s thumbnail. The thumbnail, as seen above, focuses on Cloud and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII. That said, the duo doesn’t appear anywhere in the actual video.