Masahiro Sakurai on the challenges of balancing CPU players

Masahiro Sakurai is back with another installment in his game development video series, and today brings us a feature that falls into the “Planning & Game Design” category.

If you’ve been gaming for a while, there’s a good chance you’ve experienced computer controlled characters being unfairly tough to beat. On the other hand, you might have also experienced a situation where they felt too easy to overcome. These observations and complaints come up frequently in the Smash Bros. series, as computer controlled characters are such an essential ingredient of the franchise.

In his latest video, Sakurai briefly explains what goes into making sure that fighting against these characters feels challenging, fair, and most importantly, fun. The amount of choices that a computer has in any given match makes this a pretty tall order, but somehow Sakurai and his team has managed to pull it off. Watch the full video now to get some more insight into exactly what makes computer controlled Smash fighters tick.