Coming from Sakurai's reoccurring Smash Bros. features in Famitsu...
How enemies were decided for Smash Run
serves well as a general enemy
light processing of movement on 3DS (comes down to the systems hardware)
it is possible to create uniqueness for that enemy
maintaining balance between big or small, weak or strong enemies
reduction of the relative workload that is required
comes from a series that is possible to choose
- some humanoids/skeletons made the cut, even though they are hard to process
- large portion of enemies from Kid Icarus: Uprising
- this is because the team had original models that were specifically made for 3DS
Why certain characters don't have human-sounding voices
- Bowser, Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong and Dedede have had human-sounding voices in cartoons
- Sakurai says animal sounds make more sense
Characters with dialog
- lines for attacks are generally shortened
- long lines of dialog would have been lost with all the audio in 4 player battles
Last but not least, we have a somewhat strange tidbit that comes from the section of
Why some older characters haven't returned
- it's hard to bring over data from Melee, due to the game being quite old
http://www.gonintendo.com/s/237943-sakurai-talks-enemies-in-smash-run-character-voices-returning-characters
I think this pretty much confirms what I thought. For the 3DS version character models were possibly ripped from Brawl except for newcomers. But I do think the 3DS version is running on a modified Brawl engine. The Wii U version must of been what he meant when he said characters were made from scratch. New engine and all.
I have no doubt in my mind that Sakurai ripped assets from games on the Wii U and 3DS maybe even Wii to make stages.
That doesn't make him lazy but actually smart, it helps keep the general aesthetic and art style of the series and game it came from. This actually gives me hope for a Nintendo Land Stage, new WW stage, DKCTF stage, 3DW stage, MK8 stage on Wii U.
