Kid Icarus Uprising director Sakurai would love a follow-up but says it ‘seems difficult’

“It’s a shame that it’s only lived on 3DS,” the Kirby and Smash Bros creator says

Kid Icarus director Masahiro Sakurai has said he would love to see a new Kid Icarus game but that it “seems difficult” without a team in place to work on it.

In the latest video on his ‘Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games‘ YouTube channel, Sakurai goes into detail on some of the design choices made during development of Kid Icarus: Uprising, which was released on the 3DS in 2012.

Sakurai, who also created the Kirby and Smash Bros series, says he was asked by Nintendo‘s Satoru Iwata to make a new game for the then-in development 3DS hardware, so he opted for a third-person rail shooter.

According to Sakurai, the game didn’t originally have an existing IP attached, but he decided to make it a Kid Icarus game because the character had recently been redesigned for his inclusion in Super Smash Bros Brawl, and fans were asking for a new game in the series.

At the end of the video, Sakurai points out that he would love to see a new Kid Icarus game released, but appreciates that it may not be possible given that Project Sora, the bespoke studio set up just to make Uprising (not to be confused with Sakurai’s main studio Sora Inc), is no longer active.

“In the end, I think the final game turned out to be a showpiece title,” Sakurai says of Kid Icarus: Uprising in the video.

“It’s a shame that it’s only lived on 3DS, as I’d love to play on a bigger screen with smoother graphics, but without a team around to work on it, crafting a follow-up seems difficult.”

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Because he specifically refers to “a follow-up”, it’s not clear if Sakurai thinks a remaster of Uprising would be more feasible.

Although Nintendo’s Switch remasters and re-releases have mainly come from Wii U and Wii titles, a couple of 3DS games have been remastered on Switch.

Nintendo released a remastered Switch version of 3DS title Miitopia in 2021, and is set to release a Switch remaster of 3DS title Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon next year.

If Kid Icarus: Uprising is ever remastered, it may have to be without Sakuri’s involvement. In an interview late last year, Sakurai said he was “semi-retired” and is now focused on running his YouTube channel, in which he shares game design tips.