When Sakurai focused on the 3DS edition of the new Super Smash Bros. game, and unveiled a multitude of new, exclusive game modes for it, he did promise that exclusive modes would also be present in the Wii U game, but would be talked about at a later date. Now, with the release of the 3DS game safely behind all of us, he seems to be doing just that, as in a post on the Miiverse, he posted a cryptic picture that may be showing us two new, Wii U exclusive game modes for Super Smash Bros… without telling us anything more about them.

You can see the picture above (it was accompanied with just a cryptic, “Now, what mode is this…?!”); you can clearly see that at least part of both the mode names is blurred out, leaving us just with ‘Master’ and ‘Crazy’ who have traditionally been the bosses of Super Smash Bros. games. The picture also seems to indicate that these modes will be single player.

We don’t know much more about them, but we should soon. Hang on, and stay tuned.

Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of Kirby and Kid Icarus: Uprising has lost 18 years worth of data, as his PS3’s hard drive has crapped out on him.

He had one of the original 2006 models which were compatible with the PS1 and PS2. Which means he’s lost the save data for virtually three systems.

“The hard disk on my PlayStation 3 has completely died,” he wrote in his column in Famitsu. “It’s a full crash. The end. Goodbye, Planet Earth.”

“All of a sudden, I have lost all of my data for the PS1, PS2 and PS3,” he lamented. ” I’d like to say ‘All you can do is laugh,’ but I can’t! The first PS came out in the end of 1994, so that means I’ve literally built up 18 years’ worth of save data on the thing. This isn’t just a matter of losing data I spent a few hundred hours on, or losing my character in some MMORPG. This, that, and the other thing; every single bit of it is gone.”

He continued: “I had a lot of save data from games I spent dozens of hours on. Now I can’t go back to those epic RPGs and take in all the famous scenes where I saved just before. The fighting games where I unlocked all the characters; the experience points I earned for being all those liquid metal slimes… I could take off of work for half a year and still not have enough time to get it all back.”

He finished with some friendly advice: “Going through this, I wanted to take this column to nag at all of you a little. If you don’t want to come face-to-face with this depressing turn of events, then it’s best if you back up your game save data as much as you can. Right now! Immediately!”

How devastating. You have our condolences, Sakurai-san.

Nintendo’s all star mascot brawling series, Super Smash Bros. is due for a new installment. Announced last year at E3 for both the Wii U and the 3DS, the game was conspicuously missing in action this year, something that many attributed to the fact that the game probably hadn’t even begun development yet. Sakurai confirmed, however, that development on Super Smash Bros. 4 has finally begun in earnest.

‘We’ve just taken what you could call the first step of the process. This is the first time I’ve ever had my next project announced before it’s even entered development, and because of that, I fear that players will be forced to wait even longer than they expect to. Please be patient,’ he said.

The wait for Super Smash Bros. Brawl was three years from its initial announcement at E3 2005 to its eventual 2008 release (with numerous delays along the way), and seven, if you count the wait from the time Melee released in 2001. If we go by Brawl’s announcement to release timeframe, we could probably expect SSB4 in 2014, although considering that it’s being made for two systems, and not just one, and that the code will probably be have to rewritten from the ground up, considering both systems are far too different and far superior to the Wii in their capabilities, we may not see the game for quite a while now.

In any case, this will indeed be a long wait. Strap your seatbelts.

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