It’s hard to believe that Super Mario Bros Wonder came out several months ago. The title was one of the last “big games” to be released in 2024, and it made quite an impact when it was released. That was largely due to the power of the “Wonder Effect,” which blew everyone away, thanks to the creativity of the Nintendo team in making these “modified levels” as fun as possible. The team even noted that they “took their time” developing the title to have a fresh feel and be something gamers couldn’t help but keep playing.
One of the adjustments they made to the game, outside of the Wonder Effect, was that of the robust player character roster. There was a veritable army of characters you could select from and play as. As director Shiro Mouri revealed to Famitsu and as translated by Nintendo Everything, there was a reason for that:
“The theme this time was letting you play how you want, and we wanted you to play as the character you like so there was a large variety to choose from. Also, we implemented a system to loosely connect with other players online, and we thought it would be more fun to have various characters on the world map when playing online. With this aim, we selected more than ten playable characters (factoring in color variations).”
That is indeed a lot of playable characters, and many have enjoyed playing as them, including the characters that were “invincible” and thus couldn’t die short of falling off the stage. But what was the “motivation” behind picking these specific characters? Well, it had to do with balance:
“As for the process of selecting, Mario, Luigi, Yellow Toad, and Blue Toad were playable in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. After that, New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe added Toadette and Nabbit. We decided to create these members first and newly added Peach, Daisy, and four different color variations of Yoshi. With these members, we decided the male-to-female ratio and invincible characters balance was good.”
The balance was indeed good, and it helped the game overall. Curiously, the director also noted that the “ability” of Yoshi to throw its eggs was almost put into Super Mario Bros Wonder. It wasn’t because it was too difficult for gamers to do with the control scheme while doing everything else the game required.
Perhaps that ability will return in the future.
