Nintendo on Smash Bros. Ultimate not being a port, Sakurai's health, Bandai Namco developing

As many suspected, Bandai Namco is involved with the development of Smash Bros. Ultimate. This info is confirmed by a listing on Nintendo's official E3 site.

Along with that info, Game Informer sat down with Bill Trinen to discuss a few different Smash Bros. Ultimate topics. You can see some tidbits of that interview below.

On Sakurai's health...

Trinen: He’s totally fine. I think he had wrist issues during the development of the Wii U game. He’s fine now. My understanding is he got over it, did some rehabilitation on it, and is in good shape.

On Smash Bros. Ultimate not being a port...

Trinen: Yeah. Every Smash Bros. game is a new game. I think for me personally what really defines it as a new game is just the core change to the core mechanics. When you change the speed like that, that cascades through character motion, through the speed at which the various moves are coming out, the animations and whatnot, and you have to rebalance every character in the game, so then as a player, when you come in to start playing the game, you’re having to re-learn every character in the game. Essentially when those core mechanics are new, then the game becomes new. Then, as you saw, in addition to changing the core mechanics you’ve got characters that have new models, characters that have new moves or dramatically changed moves. Changes to even the final smashes and the speed in which those happen to match the tempo of the game and things like that. To me, overall, once you’ve changed that core mechanic, you really are looking at a new game.