How Involved Was Shigeru Miyamoto In Super Mario Bros Wonder?

Many people have Super Mario Bros Wonder on their minds, given that the title just had a significant Nintendo Direct that broke down the various elements of gameplay, plot, and the new kingdom players will be in. As if on cue, the floodgates opened after that, and the team talked about everything to do with the game, including the parts of its development process. For example, the team wasn’t rushed to develop something special early on, as the producer wanted them to make something special. But a question about what Mario’s creator had to say about the game has popped up.

Specifically, we’re talking about Shigeru Miyamoto, the man who made Mario and his games for Nintendo in the 80s. He has had a hand in many Mario projects, including the movie that made over a billion dollars at the box office this year. In a chat with IGN, Super Mario Bros Wonder Producer Takashi Tezuka noted that Miyamoto did have some “influence” over the game, but not as much as you may have expected:

“It wasn’t like Mr. Miyamoto was in our hip pocket during this whole time whispering in our ears or anything like that. Sometimes he would come by where we are working and look at things and give some opinions. He would generally observe things and make comments here and there, and even things that didn’t seem like they were big comments – I have worked with Mr. Miyamoto for a long time and really understand him, so I was able to get what he was implying or getting to and we would have conversations around those sorts of topics.”

One of the things he did comment on was that of “Elephant Mario,” as he noted it didn’t feel like a “Mario character” in an early rendition. The team agreed and had already planned to make changes, and later on, he noted how some of the mechanics of Elephant Mario wouldn’t work in a physics sense with how they had them currently, which the team took to heart.

Many were curious about Shigeru Miyamoto’s involvement because Miyamoto’s “station” within Nintendo has led to significant changes within games over the years for better and for worse. He once changed an entire game simply because he felt that the main character looked like Fox McCloud. In the Paper Mario franchise, he insisted that things continually change mechanics-wise, which eventually doomed the series.

Thankfully, that doesn’t seem to be the case here.