Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai has reportedly "semi-retired"

Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai has reportedly "semi-retired" from his role at Nintendo.

That's according to an interview with Denfaminico Gamer, which Twitter user PushDustin kindly translated into English for us.

"Sakurai confirms that he is semi-retired," PushDustin revealed in their lengthy Twitter thread. "He is 52 after all. When Smash for 3DS / Wii U and Ultimate he spent nine years in active development. Sakurai felt that if he is just continuously making games full-time, his life will be over before he realizes it.

"Sakurai thinks the work on Smash is very important as it uses so many different characters/ concepts from the game industry," they added. "He is very happy to have worked on it. But, since he has more time available, he figured he would make his YouTube channel while he had the chance."

Interestingly, Sakurai also revealed that he had "recently cleared" Sonic Frontiers, Bayonetta 3, and God of War Ragnarok whilst at the same time as "riding his exercise bike".

The interview comes after Sakurai started a new YouTube series on game design that's quickly becoming one of the most fascinating channels on the platform. Apparently, it's generating "generally positive" responses, with his videos reportedly averaging "over 99 per cent like/dislike ratio".

In other Nintendo-flavored news, a team of white knight hackers have discovered a critical security issue called ENLBufferPwn that could give hackers "full console" access to your Switch, 3DS, and Wii U games and systems.

Following a lengthy investigation, Nintendo has been updating affected games by releasing patches, which may explain why some older games - such as Mario Kart 7 - were recently, and mysteriously, updated after many years of inactivity.

Now details of the exploit have been publicized, it's probably a good idea to take what's left of the festive downtime and use it to ensure all of your Nintendo-flavored systems and games are fully updated to ensure you don't fall victim to this exploit. 

Affected games allegedly include Mario Kart 8 and its Deluxe version, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, ARMS, Splatoon 2, Splatoon 3, and Super Mario Maker 2, Splatoon 3 and Mario Kart 8. 

Here's our pick of the best Nintendo Switch games available to play right now.