 At the Video Game Awards in December 2018, audiences were surprised and delighted when the lights dimmed for a special reveal. Joker, the protagonist of Persona 5, appeared on screen for the unexpected reveal that he'd be appearing as a downloadable bonus character for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The game had only just been released that day, so the announcement was perfectly timed. But this wasn't the result of a shrewd business partnership between Nintendo and Persona developer Atlas. Instead, this was all the work of Super Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai. Masahiro had made the decision to include Joker because he absolutely loves the Persona series and, eager to play around with the characters in this world, he came up with the idea of bringing it to his seminal fighting game series. This is the story of Masahiro Sakurai's love affair with Persona and how the phantom thieves stole their way into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Masahiro Sakurai loves video games of all kinds. He makes it a habit to play as many different games in as many different genres as possible. Masahiro is very familiar with the Megami Tensei series of games. These were initially based on the digital devil story science fiction novels before future entries in the series began to veer off in their own direction. In 1996, a new spin-off game in the series, Revelations Persona, was released in Japan and North America. This title, unlike the main series of games, is set in a Japanese high school. The player controls a character who lives a dual life, dealing with school worries while also fighting monsters with the aid of their supernatural Persona other self. Masahiro played this game and thought that it was pretty good, but it was nothing compared to where the series would go in the future. Persona 3, which confusingly is actually the fourth game in the series, introduces a new mechanic. The player has control of their activities in a social simulation, deciding what to do after school every day. Making friends with non-player characters leads to perks in battle, and other activities, like studying or working part-time jobs, helps the player gain additional social skills. Masahiro loved this mechanic right from the start. This made Persona stand out from other turn-based role-playing games and did a wonderful job of building gameplay that fit the dual-identity story these games were telling. He continued to be a fan of the series when Persona 4 was released. This game was more colourful and bright than the previous game, and Masahiro enjoyed its pop-inspired soundtrack. This wasn't the kind of music that normally appeared in this type of game, and he thought it was a wonderful way to make Persona 4 stand out. He bought the game's soundtrack, and listened to it over and over. Persona 5 built on everything that had come before it, including a bold new art style made up of reds and shades of grey. Masahiro didn't love this at first. He thought it looked a little flat, but upon spending time with the game's user interface, he fell in love with the stylish visuals that the game offers. In fact, Masahiro loved the game's UI so much that he wrote about it at length in his weekly column in Famitsu magazine. He had high praise indeed, stating, In Persona 5, the character illustrations are great. The game's systems are great. The music is great. The monster designs are great. The environment is great. The story and dialogue are great. Lots of things are great. It's a very strong game, so I'm sure many people are enjoying it. But personally, it takes an awful lot of time to play. For a working adult, the toughest part of any game is actually finding the time to play it. This was the biggest challenge Masahiro faced. Persona 5 had released halfway through development on Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and Masahiro was exceptionally busy. Nevertheless, he loved the Persona game so much that he couldn't very well miss out on an opportunity to play the game while it was fresh. There are a few things Masahiro hates more than spoilers. So, he set himself some very specific rules while playing. He only had time for a single playthrough, and he made it a goal to complete all side missions with the main cast of characters. He wouldn't look at strategy guides, as this would be cheating, but he would do his best in this one playthrough to complete the game. If there's one thing that Masahiro would change about Persona games, it's their length. He feels that there's just too much of a good thing in these games, and in an ideal world, they'd only be half as long. To his surprise, he got his wish with Persona 5. The game wrapped up sooner than he'd expected, but this caused a problem. Thinking that the game still had many hours to go, he'd neglected developing a social bond with one character, Yusuke. Panicked, Masahiro tried reloading old saves. Suddenly, he didn't mind spending longer to complete the game so long as he could see how Yusuke's story ended. But it was no use. He didn't have a game save left that was early enough in the story to allow him to go back and finish spending time with this character. He had failed in his goal. It was around this time that Masahiro decided that he wanted to include Joker, the game's protagonist, in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The Smash Bros. games are designed as a celebration of gaming history, so Masahiro felt Joker fit quite nicely. Except, of course, that he had a rule about throwing in characters. Only games that appear on Nintendo platforms are allowed to appear in Smash. Persona 5 was a PlayStation 4 exclusive. So how could Masahiro get Joker into the game? Luckily, just in time to be useful, Atlas released Persona Q2, new cinema labyrinth for the 3DS. It was a good enough link to allow Masahiro to think seriously about including Joker and Smash Bros. and he had Nintendo reach out to Atlas with the invitation. Nintendo thought it would be a good idea to reveal Joker's inclusion at the video game awards, and after seeing the venue, Masahiro thought that it looked very similar to the kinds of fancy parties that the Phantom Thieves steal from in Persona 5. He came up with the idea of Joker breaking in to steal an invitation to Smash Bros. right in front of everyone watching the awards. But work on Smash Bros. DLC was in such early stages at this point that there wasn't anything to show off. So Masahiro penned an animated story trailer instead, writing all the dialogue himself. He felt very comfortable with this, considering how carefully he'd studied all the text in Persona games in the past. He'd noticed that Atlas often gave characters grammatically incorrect dialogue as a clever way of making them feel like real, believable teenagers. Masahiro was able to emulate this perfectly in his writing. And so, Joker came to Smash, and it was all thanks to a Persona fanboy who also happened to be the director of a major Nintendo franchise. The moral of the story is that you never know who is watching you and silently cheering you on from the sidelines. As you work to achieve your goals, people around you will take notice. It can sometimes feel lonely to keep striving for personal growth, but you likely have more support than you realise. Take pride in your work. Wake up. Get up. Get out there.