"Food JPEGs" in Super Smash Bros. & Kirby Air Riders

Summary

“Food JPEGs” in Super Smash Bros & Kirby Air Riders Have you ever noticed that the food graphics in Super Smash Bros. and Kirby Air Riders is flat “billboarded” stock images of food? This artistic decision from director Masahiro Sakurai has persisted through 8 games over nearly 25 years. I've seen a few folks online remarking about the “JPEG” or “PNG”-like quality of the images in the most recent release: Kirby Air Riders. While researching every game with this art style and all 150+ unique food images I ended up fixing wikis, reviewing a seasonal KitKat flavor, and preserving an uncatalogued image of tempura soba. Burgers from Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001), Kirby Air Ride (2003), Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008), Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018), and Kirby Air Riders (2025). Masahiro Sakurai is the director for every game on this list, so clearly this is his artistic decision. Super Smash Bros. Melee was the first game to contain this food art style, published in 2001. This style was then repeated in Kirby Air Ride (2003), Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008), Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Wii U (2014), Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018), and most recently in Kirby Air Riders (2025). Credit to Nintendo, HAL Laboratories, SORA Ltd., and Bandai Namco Studios as developers and publishers of these games. Artwork was sourced from the Spriters Resource. Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001)§ Where it all began! Super Smash Bros. Melee for the GameCube started off with 28 distinct food items, often found in “Party Balls”. Each type of food had a different “nutritional value” and “yumminess quotient” according to the in-game trophy dedicated to the food items. Melee included many foods specific to Japanese cuisine, such as unagi (eel), omurice, soba, dango, and gyūdon. I do distinctly remember growing up as a “culinarily sheltered” kid in the midwest United States and not understanding what many of these food items were. The original stock images of Super Smash Bros. Melee and the next ...