When Minecraft’s Steve, Alex, Zombie and Enderman were first revealed as challengers in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on October 1, 2020, Twitter seemingly struggled to handle the traffic. Even Masahiro Sakurai, director of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, took notice of this phenomenon. “Perhaps Twitter has fallen…?” wondered Sakurai.
While the reaction to Steve’s inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was fairly mixed, there’s certainly something to be said about the representation of the most popular video game in the world. In Sakurai’s latest Famitsu Column entry, Sakurai made additional comments about the Twitter issues that surfaced following the big reveal.
“At 11 P.M. (Japan time) on October 1, 2020, Twitter went down in Japan, North America and Europe,” wrote Sakurai. “It wasn’t possible to post or read for a while, but once that ended we received a surprisingly big response from the world.”
Whenever Twitter experiences difficulties, it’s usually because of an event that catches the attention of people at a worldwide scale. The last time this happened was back in 2009 when we learned about Michael Jackson’s death.
Leading up to Steve’s unveiling to the world, the Smash community really had no idea on which video game character would be announced. A number of fighters that preceded Steve were actually leaked for one reason or another.
While there have been bold claims about Minecraft’s representation in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in the past, most fans seemingly wrote off the possibility since these claims were unverified after the base game and the first Fighters Pass were concluded without any hints of this.
“We faced a situation we’d never had before at Nintendo where we weren’t able to Tweet it out right as it happened.” – Masahiro Sakurai
Considering that Steve is now confirmed, this does, however, does give credibility towards a certain other rumor that circulated during the era of the first Fighters Pass.
Sakurai continued to note how Twitter’s troubles caused Nintendo to face a rather unique scenario that prevented the company from Tweet about Minecraft Steve.
“‘Minecraft is in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate!’ It was announced at the time and date listed above, but we faced a situation we’d never had before at Nintendo where we weren’t able to Tweet it out right as it happened,” said Sakurai.
A special thanks goes out to Nicholas ‘MajinTenshinhan’ Taylor for his contributions and translations that were used in this article.
