When you’re trying to pioneer something, it’s not as simple as just coming up with the idea and hoping it works. You have to really go full force and hope that people take your idea seriously. To that end, sometimes you have to showcase various ideas and styles so that you can work out what to do and what not to do. In the case of Super Mario RPG, when Square was making it for the SNES, they were trying to do more than just “make an RPG with Mario.” They were trying to make something that would stand out, even if it stood out in the “wrong way.”
Enter Jiro Mifune, who worked on the original SNES game and had some original concept art pieces for the title. Ever since the remake came out on Nintendo Switch, he’s been posting some of those art pieces so that fans could understand some of the processes and steps the game went through. Like what? Well, as he showed off yesterday, Super Mario RPG was almost in the style of the Three Musketeers. No, really, check out the art below:
But it went far beyond art. The core characters you were going to play were Mario, Luigi, and Wario! How’s that for a trio? Furthermore, even Bowser and Peach got a “Musketeer Glow-up,” and Peach was even given the title of Queen!
However, while this was a bold choice for a visual style, Mifune didn’t like it. He felt it was too much like other RPGs on the market then, and he wanted to do something that fit Mario a bit better. There was also another version where he drew Mario and the crew as knights!
It may seem silly to think that Nintendo or Square would have considered doing something like this in the past, but again, this title was the first of its kind. So, given Square’s history with RPGs and how Nintendo wanted to try to “capture the imagination of the market” in some ways, it’s understandable they would look to the RPGs of the past and see what works. Taking characters and putting them in medieval settings or something similar that is “familiar yet exciting” is a classic thing for developers to do!
Thankfully, they took a more “bare bones” approach and made the characters look as we still picture them, and they took other liberties in keeping things “unique,” like with characters such as Mallow, Geno, and the Smithy Gang.
