How Nintendo created its wild new cast of fighters for Switch game Arms
When the developers at Nintendo began concept work on Arms, a new fighting game coming to the Switch later this month, they weren’t sure what kinds of characters it should include. Early on, they toyed with the idea of featuring familiar Nintendo faces like Mario, Link, and even the Wii Fit trainer. But the key to Arms is right there in the title: it’s a game where characters possess extendable arms that they can use to hit faraway opponents. Twelve-foot-long arms didn’t mesh with a short, squat character like Mario. “We thought the best fit for it was to make it all new,” says producer Kosuke Yabuki.
Like 2015’s Splatoon, Arms isn’t just a brand-new Nintendo series, but a first foray by the company into a genre. Whereas Splatoon was a…