Super Smash Bros. Creator Reveals What The Logo Represents

For years, the popular game series from Nintendo, Super Smash Bros., has used an odd looking circular, glowing logo with a symbol over by the lower left hand corner. Most people don't think much of it, but when they see it they absolutely know that it represents Super Smash Bros. However, the brilliant mind behind the series finally revealed what that symbol actually represents.

Twitter user Kyle McLain posted an English translation on his Twitter account from a recent interview on Nintendo of Japan's YouTube featuring Masahiro Sakurai. In the interview, McLain explains that Sakurai stated that the intersecting lines are designed to show that the series represents crossing over, and that the four sections of the circle represent the game's constant focus on four-player multiplayer bouts, both locally and online.

I don't know how well that explanation holds up, given that it's the kind of explanation that could also be used for any circular design with two intersecting lines... like say, a crosshair. I mean, a typical targeting reticule in Call of Duty or Battlefield looks quite similar. And there's obviously an intersection of lines both horizontally and vertically that represents the crossover nature of a game like Super Smash Bros., and the obvious dissection of the four sides that would represent four people. Wouldn't the explanation be the same? And why exactly is the intersection uneven?

I suppose they wanted to avoid the crosshair comparison because some people may have misconstrued the meaning of the game. Heck, some people have already made that comparison recently when they interpreted the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate logo as an actual crosshair when a kid wrote it on the whiteboard, which sent the school into panic mode and they shut down the class for the day. Eventually they managed to get the situation all straightened out and everybody went back to school as normal, as detailed in an article over on GameRant.

Others came up with completely different theories about the logo, though. Popular FGC and EVO world champion, Hungry Box, speculated that he always thought the logo was based on the blast zone animations when players die vertically or horizontally. He included a gif showing the blast zones, and it's true, it does look like the Super Smash Bros. logo.

Someone else suggested that it looked like the shadow from the window in the N64 stage during the opening cinematic. A few others latched onto this explanation as well, stating that they, too, felt it was a representation of the sun shining through the window.

There were a few other people who posed the idea that Sakurai was a fan of a certain music band, and they thought the logo was based on that, but a lot of others were just thankful that there was an explanation. Of course, a few people joked that the uneven split between the four sides was a representation of port priority for input latency when playing in four-player mode.

Regardless of what you think about the logo, it has persisted for decades now and has become one of the most recognized logos in all of gaming. Whenever people see it they now know that a new Super Smash Bros., game is on the way. In fact, the latest game is available right now for the Nintendo Switch.