You might not realize it, but while Mario has had multiple games on the Nintendo Switch and its predecessor in the Wii U, not all of them have been “new games.” In the 2D platforming space, the ones you’ve seen in recent years have been ports, not original titles. With Super Mario Bros Wonder, that 11-year streak will end in the best way. The game is not only completely original but features things that the other titles haven’t come close to touching regarding gameplay twists and new ways for the players to enjoy the levels. Some are already calling it a Game of the Year contender before its release!
To further support the game before launch, Nintendo released a special “Developer Interview” with the team behind Super Mario Bros Wonder. The team was asked various things about the title, including Producer Takashi Tezuka being asked how he came up with the general idea for the title:
“I was already thinking about what kind of Mario game we should make next when we were developing Super Mario Maker 2. At the time, some journalists and players were saying that Super Mario Maker had eliminated the need for another 2D Mario game. But I kept saying that the next Mario game would be completely different from Super Mario Maker, so there was no need to worry. In hindsight, those kinds of sentiments may have been what motivated me to come up with ideas for this game.”
That might sound like a “basic thing to say,” but some of the other team members weren’t as confident as Tezuka. One even mentioned that because of the player-created levels, they wondered if they COULD make a game that matched their creativity.
That’s why Tezuka set up something that many of us have heard about by now. Specifically, he made it so there wouldn’t be a time limit for development on the game. That way, the creativity could flow more naturally.
Programming Director Shiro Mouri added to this by stating that in the franchise’s earlier days, there was a sense of “wonder” as you looked for the secrets in a Mario game or did the transformations. But over time, they became “standard” and “ordinary”:
“That’s why Tezuka-san’s goal was to create moments that even modern players would find unexpected and wondrous.”
And as we know now, those “wondrous” moments include things like the Wonder Flower, which completely reshapes the levels in unexpected ways, which you’ll see for yourself when the game comes out on October 20th.
