Super
Mario
Bros.
Wonder
is
a
game
filled
with
oddball
ideas.
Thanks
to
magical
flowers
that,
once
collected,
introduce
some
unexpected
new
element,
players
experience
everything
from
a
bunch
of
Piranha
Plants
simultaneously
bursting
into
song
to
Mario
turning
into
a
sentient
pile
of
goo.
It
has
so
many
ideas,
in
fact,
that
director
Shiro
Mouri
wasn’t
sure
the
team
could
pull
it
off.
“At
first
when
I
heard
that
we’d
be
creating
one
wonder
effect
per
course,
and
that
all
of
the
courses
are
going
to
have
different
wonder
effects,”
he
tells
The
Verge,
“I
thought:
‘That’s
stupid.
That’s
impossible.’”
As
it
turns
out,
the
problem
wasn’t
so
much
coming
up
with
ideas.
The
developers
at
Nintendo
brainstormed
a
lot
of
potential
powers
—
around
2,000,
which
were
jotted
down
on
sticky
notes
and
placed
on
a
big
board
in
the
company’s
Kyoto
office
for
everyone
to
see.
According
to
producer
Takashi
Tezuka,
who
has
worked
on
the
franchise
since
the
original
Super
Mario
Bros.,
the
game
had
not
only
a
large
development
team
but
also
an
extended
ideation
process
for
coming
up
with
those
different
wonder
flower
concepts.
During
this
time,
no
idea
was
too
out
there.
At
one
point,
Koji
Kondo,
the
famed
composer
behind
the
iconic
tunes
of
Mario
and
Zelda,
pitched
a
flower
that
would
turn
Mario
into
a
human-size
live-action
version
of
himself.
“They
had
an
environment
to
think
freely
in
and
come
up
with
ideas,”
Tezuka
says
of
the
process.
They
were
able
to
whittle
down
the
list
by
coming
up
with
criteria
for
what
would
actually
fit
the
game:
for
an
idea
to
work,
it
had
to
have
some
kind
of
connection
between
the
moment
before
the
effect
takes
place,
and
it
had
to
be
something
that
impacted
the
gameplay.
So
something
purely
aesthetic,
like
a
bizarre
live-action
Mario,
didn’t
fit
the
bill.
Mouri
similarly
thought
up
a
flower
that
would
make
Mario
pixelated,
but
it
had
the
same
issue.
“While
this
was
my
own
idea,
I
was
the
one
who
ultimately
nixed
it,”
he
says.
Once
the
list
was
edited
down
significantly,
the
next
step
was
building
playable
prototypes.
To
do
this,
the
team
split
into
groups,
teaming
up
an
artist,
a
designer,
and
a
sound
artist.
“They
would
create
something,
and
then
they
would
share
the
idea
with
the
other
teams,
and
people
would
discuss
and
combine
and
add
and
tweak,”
Tezuka
says.
“The
first
idea
isn’t
what
we
would
consider
the
best
idea.
It
was
the
basis
on
which
the
layers
were
added
by
the
other
teams,
that’s
what
would
become
the
idea
that
we
would
use.”
An
unused
concept
from
Super
Mario
Bros.
Wonder.Image:
Nintendo
Some
ideas
were
simply
cut
at
this
point.
One
example
involved
turning
Mario’s
head
into
a
gigantic
8-bit
rendition
of
itself,
but
instead
of
pixels,
it
was
made
of
bricks…
which
enemies
would
then
try
to
eat
piece
by
piece.
In
practice,
there
wasn’t
much
strategy;
players
simply
had
to
run
to
the
end
as
fast
as
they
could
before
their
head
disappeared.
Other
ideas
morphed
during
the
prototype
stage.
One
of
the
earlier
levels
in
Wonder
has
Mario
running
on
a
herd
of
stampeding
blue
bulls.
In
the
initial
concept,
the
bull
was
a
rhino
that
could
smash
through
everything
on
its
way
to
the
end
of
a
level.
But
that
proved
too
simplistic
and
easy.
“The
idea
was
interesting,
which
is
why
we
decided
to
prototype
it,”
Mouri
says.
“But
once
we
did
prototype
it
we
realized
that
there
was
a
challenge
there.”
So,
as
a
twist
on
the
Mario
formula,
the
designers
made
it
so
the
creatures
actually
knock
over
everything,
including
the
flagpole
at
the
end,
extending
the
level
further.
That
idea
of
reimagining
Super
Mario
staples
was
an
important
part
of
the
process,
Tezuka
says.
While
Wonder
is
very
much
a
2D
side-scrolling
game
like
its
predecessors,
it
also
makes
many
important
tweaks
to
the
formula.
The
map
is
more
open
so
you
can
approach
stages
in
different
orders,
and
there
are
new
badges
that
grant
special
abilities,
letting
players
customize
the
experience
to
their
liking.
The
previously
stable
green
pipes
can
now
wobble
and
move,
and
sometimes
you
can’t
even
depend
on
gravity.
“We
really
went
through
element
by
element,”
Tezuka
explains.
“Do
we
need
a
1-up
system?
Do
we
need
a
timer?
Do
we
need
all
of
these
things
that
are
traditional
Mario
staples?
We
looked
at
and
evaluated
each
one.”
That
constant
interrogation
of
what
a
Super
Mario
game
should
be
might
be
part
of
why
the
formula
hasn’t
grown
old,
despite
being
around
for
close
to
40
years
—
and
how
Wonder,
in
particular,
manages
to
keep
on
surprising
until
the
very
end.
At
a
time
when
the
plumber
is
as
popular
as
he’s
ever
been,
with
a
hit
movie
and
theme
parks
around
the
world,
his
outings
also
seem
to
be
getting
stranger
and
stranger.
“I
don’t
know
if
there’s
a
limit,”
Mouri
says,
when
asked
if
it’s
possible
for
an
idea
to
be
too
weird
for
Super
Mario.
“I
think
it
really
comes
back
to
if
the
gameplay
is
fun.”
Original author: Andrew Webster
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