{"id":116266,"date":"2020-08-03T14:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-03T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2020\/08\/today_is_masahiro_sakurais_50th_birthday"},"modified":"2020-08-03T14:30:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-03T14:30:00","slug":"today-is-masahiro-sakurais-50th-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/08\/03\/today-is-masahiro-sakurais-50th-birthday\/","title":{"rendered":"Today Is Masahiro Sakurai&#8217;s 50th Birthday"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/79e422c6ebe7f\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/79e422c6ebe7f\/small.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n<figure class=\"picture strip\">\n<div class=\"img\"><a title=\"Masahiro Sakurai\" href=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/79e422c6ebe7f\/masahiro-sakurai.original.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/79e422c6ebe7f\/masahiro-sakurai.900x.jpg\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" alt=\"Masahiro Sakurai\"><\/a><span class=\"image-credit\" title=\"Image Credit\">Nintendo<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Masahiro Sakurai, creator and director of the <strong>Kirby<\/strong> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/n64\/super_smash_bros\"><strong>Super Smash Bros.<\/strong><\/a> series, turns 50 years old today, 3rd August.<\/p>\n<p>One of Sakurai&#8217;s earliest career highlights came when he was just 19 years old, designing our favourite pink blob Kirby and directing the character&#8217;s first ever game, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/gameboy\/kirbys_dream_land\">Kirby&#8217;s Dream Land<\/a>. Since then, he&#8217;s perhaps become best-known for his work on the Super Smash Bros. franchise and now regularly hosts presentations aimed towards its biggest, most dedicated fans.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, he&#8217;s simultaneously working on new content for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/nintendo-switch\/super_smash_bros_ultimate\"><strong>Smash Ultimate<\/strong><\/a>, leading his company Sora, and writing a weekly column for Japanese magazine Famitsu. He&#8217;s reached a celebrity status that few game developers ever achieve, to a point where <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2020\/06\/random_poor_old_sakurai_cant_even_reveal_what_games_hes_playing_anymore\">he can&#8217;t even discuss which games he&#8217;s playing<\/a> anymore and where fans make an effort to figure out <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2020\/06\/random_smash_bros_fans_think_theyve_identified_masahiro_sakurais_couch\">where he bought his furniture<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Sakurai-san took to social media today to thanks fans for their birthday wishes.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"object object-tweet\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p><span lang=\"ja\" dir=\"ltr\">\u305f\u304f\u3055\u3093\u306e\u8a95\u751f\u65e5\u795d\u30b3\u30e1\u30f3\u30c8\u3092\u3042\u308a\u304c\u3068\u3046\u3054\u3056\u3044\u307e\u3059! \u4eba\u9593\u4e94\u5341\u5e74\u2026<br \/>Thanks for a lot of my birthday mention!<\/span>\u2014 \u685c\u4e95 \u653f\u535a (@Sora_Sakurai) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Sora_Sakurai\/status\/1290145379577499652?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 3, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/aside>\n<p>He&#8217;s a hugely popular figure in the Nintendo community, and indeed on this very site. Feel free to share your own well wishes for Sakurai in the comments below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nintendo Masahiro Sakurai, creator and director of the Kirby and Super Smash Bros. series, turns 50 years old today, 3rd August. One of Sakurai&#8217;s earliest career highlights came when he was just 19 years old, designing our favourite pink blob Kirby and directing the character&#8217;s first ever game, Kirby&#8217;s Dream Land. Since then, he&#8217;s perhaps [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}