Nintendo Accidentally Leaks Stage Builder for Smash Ultimate

Look at this ad.



Seems pretty normal, doesn’t it? The story of a kid who unlocks Inkling through hard work, and uses them (really well for their first time) to demolish his friends, who presumably don’t have them yet. It strikes me as an unlikely situation, sure, but it’s an ad and it communicates a fantasy pretty clearly. Nothing really to complain about.

So why are so many people talking about it right now?

Well, watch it again. But this time, pause it exactly at the 0:01 mark when the kid is grabbing the controller off the table. Take a look at the TV, and you might notice that the screen looks a little bit different from the normal Super Smash Brothers Ultimate menu. If you look to the right corner, you’ll see why: a brand-new button labeled with “Stage Builder.”

Yep. This inconspicuous commercial accidentally leaked an upcoming feature for the game.

Granted, it’s not exactly a surprising leak. Stage Builder has been a part of the series for a long time now, introduced in Brawl and again in Super Smash Bros for the Wii U and 3DS, and at this point, a couple of data miners had found evidence that this currently-absent feature would be reintroduced to the game before long, likely for the 3.0 release. But while it’s not surprising, it is encouraging: Nintendo had been stone-cold silent on the fact this feature would be coming, and if this major addition to the game is going to drop soon, who knows what other features and modes Nintendo might add later in the game's life?

…Maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but I, for one, would love to see the return of other absent features, like a Home-Run mode, or the Target Practice minigames from the first few games.

That’s not too much to ask, is it Nintendo?