Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of Kirby and Super Smash Bros., has laid out the conditions under which he would consider retiring. He spoke in November at a stage event for his new book, part of a celebration of the 40th anniversary of Famitsu, a Japanese game magazine.

There are two conditions. Is there demand for his work? And can he meet that demand? If either one falls apart, he says, it’s time to think about retiring. The view hasn’t changed much since he wrote about it in a column roughly five years ago. Requests still come in. Much to his regret, Sakurai says, he can still work at full tilt. The question from here, he says, is when his spirit finally breaks.

So should he just keep doing the same things? Not at all, Sakurai says. People have to keep moving on to new stages, he explains. He feels he still takes in other people’s opinions and changes his mind, so he doesn’t think he has become set in his ways. The most noticeable sign of aging, he says, is that his eyes tire more easily. He is always thinking about what he should do for the game industry, just as he was when he started his YouTube channel, Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games.

The talk grew out of a column on retirement in the book that came out in Japan in November, the final volume in a series collecting the columns Sakurai wrote for Weekly Famitsu. It has two special features. One is an excerpt from the proposal for Kirby Air Riders, the game released in November 2025. The proposal runs 200 pages, and the excerpt is taken from the planning stage in July 2021. The other is a set of story documents for the game’s Road Trip mode, published for the first time. Four new columns written for the book are also included.

Cover of the final volume in the book series collecting Masahiro Sakurai's Weekly Famitsu columns

The July 2021 proposal should show Kirby Air Riders before it took shape, and the Road Trip documents the groundwork for its story.