Super Smash Bros Ultimate is turning 5 years old, getting new spirits, and Sora Amiibo release date

Everyone stay calm! Super Smash Bros Ultimate is getting new content. This is not a drill.

Image: Nintendo / Sora Ltd.

On December 7th, 2023 in Japan (and late in the evening on the 6th here in the US), the official Japanese X (formerly Twitter) account for Super Smash Bros gave some interesting and surprising news: Super Smash Bros Ultimate is getting some sort of new content.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate is turning five years old on December 7th, having come out in 2018 (roughly a decade and a half ago, it feels like). So, to celebrate, they announced a couple of things.

While we already knew that a Sora Amiibo would eventually show up to round out the final DLC roster from the game, we didn’t yet have a date. They announced that Sora, from Kingdom Hearts, is coming on Friday, February 16th, 2024. Awesome. Somehow the news we've been waiting on for years is the least important part of this announcement, however.

They also announced that due to the anniversary, they were doing some additional in-game festivities. Starting off, since their X account and posts are entirely in Japanese, we used Google Translate to figure it out.

“Super Smash Bros. SPECIAL” celebrates its 5th anniversary today! Starting tomorrow, we will be holding an in-game event "Thank you!! 5th Anniversary of Super Smash Bros. SP Release" for 5 days. During the period, the experience points and SP you receive after battle will be multiplied by 5, and you can also obtain 5 additional "Snack L". #スマブラSP

To break it down, you’ll be able to get 5 times the experience points and SP, as well as receive 5 additional “Snack L”, which would upgrade your fighters in the game. The event will last for five days to stick with the theme.

The event will be held from Friday, December 8th to 13th, 2023.

It’s great to see some love given to the game so far off from the original release and over two years since the last DLC character, who happens to be Sora, came out. Since the post was on their Japanese account, it’s currently a mystery if we will see it here in the west. We may potentially see a post from Nintendo of America tomorrow detailing the same thing.

While there’s not a lot going on for the main celebration, Masahiro Sakurai, the renowned creator of the Super Smash Bros series, had to come along and add to the mystery. He quoted the other post, also on X, and added some extra tantalizing details.

His post, when translated, is bigger news:

“Super Smash Bros. Ultimate” is celebrating its 5th anniversary today! Has it been that long? It's been so long. thank you very much. It seems that an event with new spirits will be held here (starting in January). What game is it from?

Wait, hold up! Did he just say that an event with new spirits in the game will be held “starting” in January? This is big, considering the game has not had any new content for over two years.

While he teases that the spirits are coming, he does ask what game it is from. This could be from a newer game or series, or be various characters from already represented games in Smash.

If you head to the official Japanese Nintendo blog, they go a little more into detail. Starting in January, as Sakurai mentioned, new spirits will appear. The article goes further by saying this will happen four times. They also plan to hold tag tournaments where you can challenge the Amiibo that you have raised.

The important takeaway is that Sakurai’s cogs are spinning again. This could potentially lead to additional 2024 in-game events or, dare I say it, more DLC fighters in the future.

Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. It’s exciting, however, that Super Smash Bros Ultimate is getting some new content on its own. With games like Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 and Smash Bros tournaments keeping the Smash spirit alive, maybe it's time that we saw some new goodies from the old fighter.

I guess we will have to wait until January to find out more details on the new spirits. In the meantime, happy 5th anniversary to Super Smash Bros Ultimate.