One thing we’ve grasped about Super Mario Bros Wonder by now is that the team at Nintendo worked really hard not just to create a unique title but one that would stand out on its own compared to the 2D titles from Mario’s past. As the Metacritic reviews showcase, they were able to make things work and impress a ton of people. However, when it comes to “throwing things at the wall to make it stick,” you will inevitably have some ideas that don’t make the cut. As revealed during a developer interview with Nintendo, one such idea was about live commentary.
If you’re confused about that, we’re talking about the kind of thing where “outside people” would record reactions to things you’ve done, and then they would be played in real-time. You might recall that a certain Capcom fighting game had that recently, and it was a big hit. Well, as the team noted, they almost had that feature:
“We actually spent about six months seriously developing live commentary. We tried adding voices to match the player’s actions. Even though we’d added various voices, questions like, “Who’s doing this commentary?” started to pop up amongst the team. Something about it just didn’t feel right.”
It’s not hard to see how that kind of “feeling” would pop up as it’s not something you’d expect from a 2D platformer like Super Mario Bros Wonder. For a fighting game? Yeah, that makes sense, as there are commentators in all sorts of fighting sports. But the twist took a bit of a turn when they revealed that one of the voice ideas they had for the commentary…was a Tsundere voice. AKA, a woman who would be mean to you and yet was also kind of nice.
And apparently, people liked the option:
“In fact, according to our play test records, quite a few people were switching to the Tsundere commentary.”
As for why they nixed the idea, they noted that it would take plenty of work to not only record the voices but input them properly into the title. Given everything they were trying to put into the game, that’s not a bad thing to cut out, even if it didn’t give certain people their “fix” that they would’ve enjoyed.
Even still, the game is packed full of new ideas that were implemented. There are new power-ups like the elephant fruit, the drill cap, and being able to use bubbles for various things. Plus, there are the new enemies, badges, and, of course, the Wonder Flower.
The game comes out on Friday.
