Series creator and director Masahiro Sakurai returned along with Bandai Namco Studios and Sora, the studios that developed 3DS/ Wii U, with the return of the studios speeding up the preparation process. Sakurai's goal with Ultimate was to include every character from previous games in the series despite the various development and licensing challenges this would present. Several well-known video game musicians contributed to the soundtrack, with Hideki Sakamoto writing the main theme 'Lifelight'. Nintendo first teased Ultimate in a Nintendo Direct in March 2018 and fully revealed it at E3 2018 the following June. It later received two additional Directs before it was released on December 7, 2018. The game received universal acclaim, with some critics calling it the best of the series. They praised its amount of content and fine-tuning of existing Smash gameplay elements, although its online mode received criticism. Ultimate is the best-selling fighting game of all time, having nearly sold 25 million copies by June 2021, and is a popular competitive fighting game. Pre-release screenshot of a four-player match on the Great Plateau stage (from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild) between Ganondorf, Link, Mario and Mega Man The game was supported with downloadable content adding new fighters, stages, and other content from its release until October 2021.
