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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – Mr. Sakurai Presents “Hero”

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Sakurai just spent 21 minutes explaining how a Dragon Quest slime hat fits into competitive Smash.

Nintendo dropped a full presentation video on July 30, 2019, titled “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – Mr. Sakurai Presents ‘Hero,'” and true to form, director Masahiro Sakurai didn’t just tease the character — he broke down every mechanic in exhaustive detail. Fighter #72 is officially the Hero from Square Enix’s Dragon Quest series, and unlike most DLC reveals, this one shipped the same day it was announced.

• Hero launches July 30 in North America and July 31 in Europe and Japan as part of Challenger Pack 2, with four selectable protagonist skins: the Luminary, Erdrick, Solo, and Eight.
• His down-special, Command Selection, pulls up a randomized RPG-style menu drawing four spells from a large pool that includes buffs, sleep effects, teleports, and explosions.
• Challenger Pack 2 also adds the Yggdrasil’s Altar stage, Dragon Quest music tracks, new Spirit Board challenges, and a second round of Dragon Quest-themed Mii Fighter costumes.

A Fighter Built Around Randomness

Hero fights with a sword and shield like plenty of Smash veterans, but the character carries something no one else in the roster has: an MP gauge sitting right above the damage counter, fueling every magical option in his kit. Sakurai walked through Command Selection move by move, showing how the menu can hand a player a devastating Kaboom explosion in one match and a harmless buff in the next — a deliberate swing toward chaos that mirrors how spells work in the actual Dragon Quest games.

That randomness is the whole point. Sakurai has leaned into unconventional fighter designs before, and Hero’s kit essentially imports turn-based RPG logic into a real-time fighting game, forcing opponents to respect a menu screen mid-fight the same way they’d respect a smash attack.

Hero’s down-special turns every neutral exchange into a coin flip, because nobody — including the player using it — knows which of four spells they’re about to get.

Four Heroes, One Slot

Rather than pick a single face for the Dragon Quest series, Sakurai gave players four: the Luminary from Dragon Quest XI, Erdrick from Dragon Quest III, Solo from Dragon Quest IV, and Eight from Dragon Quest VIII. Each comes with original voice acting and its own palette, meaning the “Hero” slot functions almost like a costume-swap roster within a roster. The Final Smash, Gigaslash, ties the whole cast together by having multiple protagonists strike in unison — a nod to the crossover-heavy way Square Enix has marketed the franchise for years.

Additional Contents of Challenger Pack 2

Beyond the fighter himself, Sakurai used the presentation to run through the rest of the drop. Yggdrasil’s Altar joins as a new floating stage, backed by a set of classic Dragon Quest tracks and fresh Spirit Board challenges. He also previewed Round 2 of Mii Fighter DLC costumes tied to the series, including Veronica as a Swordfighter, Erdrick as a Swordfighter, a Martial Artist Brawler outfit, and a Slime Hat for anyone who just wants their Mii to wear a slime.

Version 4.0 Brings Free Updates Alongside the Paid Content

Sakurai also detailed the free Version 4.0 software update landing the same day. It adds Online Tourney mode for organized bracket play, a “Very Easy” difficulty setting for Adventure Mode, spectator betting using in-game gold for predicting match outcomes, and a decaying timer on the Final Smash meter so stocked-up comeback attempts don’t linger indefinitely. None of that requires owning Challenger Pack 2 — it’s baked into the base game for everyone.

Hero’s kit is dense enough that competitive players are going to spend weeks just mapping out which of the Command Selection spells are worth respecting and which ones are safe to ignore — Sakurai basically handed the community a puzzle instead of a straightforward character, and that’s exactly the kind of detail that keeps Smash’s DLC drops feeling like events rather than patch notes.