Masahiro Sakurai says Super Smash Bros "might have died out" if not for late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata: "There's no doubt that he influenced me in many ways"

Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS key art.

Super Smash Bros creator Masahiro Sakurai has praised late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata's role in not only bringing the iconic fighting series to life, but keeping it going, too.

In a new interview with Japanese site Hoshino (translated via Google), Sakurai is asked how meeting Iwata for a job interview at HAL Laboratory affected his work. In short, quite a bit. Sakurai says he might not have joined HAL if not for Iwata, and had the Nintendo icon not made the prototype for Smash Bros. to begin with, it may not have been released to the world at all. Sakurai also says the series "might have died out" had Iwata not asked him to make Super Smash Bros. Brawl after he left HAL Laboratory.