The best thing about the Smash reveal stream: Sakurai called Mother Brain ‘Mom’

Another day, another Fire Emblem character added to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. By my count, there are around 100 of them at this point. On Thursday, Smash Ultimate game director Masahiro Sakurai announced that Byleth is joining the series, with both male and female forms.

Over in the YouTube chat, fans were ... underwhelmed. Sakurai appeared to be delighted — perhaps he revels in this sort of response. The rest of the recorded presentation was similarly cheeky, with Sakurai seemingly trolling Smash players with a whole long section on the history of the Fire Emblem franchise. Here are the things I learned:

• There are 17 Fire Emblem games
• How to count with binary on my hands
• Sakurai recorded this video in November
• Seemingly the entire story of Fire Emblem: Three Houses — including plenty of spoilers!
• Sakurai calls Metroid’s Mother Brain “Mom”
• The next six Super Smash Bros. Ultimate characters have already been chosen, and Sakurai is not taking suggestions on Twitter (please don’t yell at him)
• Sakurai wonders if Smash is a fighting game

Yes, the announcement gave us another Fire Emblem character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but what we’ve really received is so much more. Over on Twitter, Sakurai is the talk of the internet, and I love it.

Thank you, Sakurai. You are my hero.