This week’s Famitsu highlighted some details about the creation of Super Smash Bros Ultimate main theme, titled Lifelight.
Instead of featuring Masahiro Sakurai in the interview, Famitsu spoke with the two main people involved in the theme’s creation: Hideki Sakamoto and Erina Koga. Sakamoto was the song composer, and Koga was the singer for the song’s Japanese version.
According to the interview, Sakamoto first met Koga in 2016 as a judge at a voice actors’ audition event. Koga sang as part of her audition and subsequently won the event. Sakamoto considered Koga’s voice as “the kind of voice that Sakurai was looking for,” and eventually invited her to work on a project with him.
During their preliminary talks for the project, Koga revealed to Sakamoto that she liked playing Smash Bros. and considered Kirby as one of her favorites. Koga eventually met Sakurai to talk about World of Light and ended up sharing how much she loved Kirby without knowing who Sakurai was.
The interview also went in detail about the Smash Bros Ultimate main theme requirements. Sakamoto described how Sakurai ended up working on the song’s lyrics. And because Sakurai asked Koga to sing the last note at a half-step higher key than the rest of the song, the recording did not start until six months later.
You can find the English translation of the entire interview at Nintendo Everything.
