Sakurai wants to make a game for VR, but not Smash Bros.

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May 15, 2014

Super Smash Bros. designer Masahiro Sakurai is excited about the potential for virtual reality in games, but Smash Bros. fans shouldn't get their hopes up about this year's game using the headset technology.

"Sadly, such a device is ill-suited for the Smash Bros. game I'm working on right now," Sakurai said in this week's issue of Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu (via Kotaku). He went on to say that if he gets to make a first-person 3D game someday, he hopes that it could use VR in some way.

As for the games he'd like to play in VR, Sakurai said, "Personally, I'd like to play Jumping Flash! It'd probably be quite scary, though. You could probably make a crazy Love Plus game as well. A horror game like Resident Evil or Fatal Frame could be good, too."

Sakurai maintains that VR is well-suited for driving games, because "having two concepts of direction--like the movement of a tank and the rotation of its cannon--is quite complex."

VR for gaming is still very early days. Various prototypes for the Facebook-owned Oculus Rift and Sony's Project Morpheus are up and running, including dogfighting game EVE: Valkyrie, but there's no word yet on when the head-mounted displays will be available publicly or what games will be available at release.

The next Super Smash Bros. game launches this year, first on 3DS before coming later to the Wii U.