Nintendo has announced that Super Mario Bros. Wonder is Europe's fastest-selling Super Mario game ever.
18.10.2023 - 20:41 / gamedeveloper.com / Shiro Mouri / Takashi Tezuka / Koji Kondo
Like other 2D Mario games, the upcoming Super Mario Bros. Wonder features online multiplayer. But it also introduces a new feature to the series that would allow solo players to feel like they were interacting with others, which the team dubbed "casual connection."
In the developer's new pair of blogs, the Wonder team described it as such: if two solo players are playing the same course at the same time, they can connect and play together. The other player is represented as a shadow, and they can interact with each other, exchange items, and help progress through the course.
This form of asynchronous multiplayer is already common in games like Death Stranding or Devil May Cry 5. It's a less stressful form of cooperation that fits with previous 2D Mario games like New Super Mario Bros. U and allows some online protection for Mario's kid-focused audience.
Director Shiro Mouri acknowledged how online games can often lead to inappropriate behavior, and wanted to "create fun online gameplay free from those sorts of worries." Sound designer Koji Kondo called the casual connection feature "the most significant innovation we've made for this title."
"I’m no good at competing, so I’ve mainly been playing NES games that don't involve online matches," Kondo admitted. "With this casual connection, I feel more comfortable stepping into the world of online this time."
The Wonder staff said they had numerous mechanics to make the game more challenging (or fun) to play, either solo or with others. But one idea they eventually had to scrap was live commentary similar to real-life sports commentators, or in Street Fighter 6 from this past summer.
Designer Koichi Hayashida revealed the team spent "about six months" genuinely working on adding live commentary to the game. They wanted to have the commentary match the player's actions in real-time, but admitted it eventually "didn't feel right" because they couldn't help but overthink things.
"Even though we'd added various voices, questions like, 'Who’s doing this commentary?' started to pop up amongst the team," he laughed.
Mouri went on to reveal that said voices ranged from a standard "generic" one (like a newscaster) to a "tsundere" voice (someone with a frosty exterior with occasional glimpses of affection). "According to our playtest records, quite a few people were switching to the Tsundere commentary."
What also led to its omission, said producer Takashi Tezuka, was that voice variations "would've involved a tremendous amount of work." But the feature wasn't completely scuttled, and he revealed the staff later brought on a full-time staffer to dedicate themselves to it so it can presumably be used in another project.
The live commentary idea led to the in-game
Nintendo has announced that Super Mario Bros. Wonder is Europe's fastest-selling Super Mario game ever.
The original Super Mario Bros. on NES was made by a team of five people, and it seems every single one of them is still at Nintendo and was credited on Super Mario Bros. Wonder.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder is one the most unusual and surreal spins on a 2D Mario game that Nintendo has released in a long time, and so far, fans have embraced the new style and liveliness. One of the game's most interesting stylistic upgrades is expanded voice-over work from characters, and apparently, this was once planned to be much more ambitious. In a recent Ask the Developer blog post coinciding with the launch of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, game producer Takashi Tezuka and designer Koichi Hayashida spoke about many of the ideas that were worked on yet ended up being tossed into the development trash bin, including a live commentary feature that would praise - or judge - your every move. According to game director Shiro Mori, Takashi pitched the idea of having live commentary on the game - just one of the ideas that the developers received via 2,000+ sticky notes. The concept went pretty far into the development, with a full six months of work done. It was used in internal play-tests and even included tsundere-style commentary, a personality that hides genuine tenderness behind a cold exterior and is especially popular in Japanese media .
Today — Friday, Oct. 20 — two wildly clashing and yet somehow complementary works from creators at the top of their game, both sitting right at the intersection of art and commerce, arrive at the same time. It’s Barbenheimer all over again, but this time it’s just for me. Today, we are blessed with both Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder is now available to play on the Nintendo Switch.
It turns out that Super Mario Bros. Wonder had a “live commentary” feature during its development that would have matched players’ actions as they progressed through the 2D platformer’s levels, with the option to switch the generic default voice to “tsundere commentary”. However, it didn't make the final cut.
Do you ever wonder what it would be like if someone commented on every decision you made in Mario? Well, according to a recent Super Mario Bros. Wonder developer interview, the idea of live commentary was tested for the game.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a pretty major shake up for the plumber's 2D outings, and despite there being a lot of creativity on display, not every new idea that Nintendo had will have made it into the final game. Some weird and wonderful concepts will have been left on the cutting room floor, which is exactly what happened with a live commentary feature that almost made it in, one which would have had an optional "tsundere" mode.
The Super Mario franchise’s line of 2D mainline platformers hasn’t quite been on the same level as its flagship 3D entries over the last couple of decades, but with the New Super Mario Bros. series firmly in our rearview mirror and the upcoming Super Mario Bros. Wonder making lofty promises, there’s plenty of excitement surrounding the 2D Mario line’s future once again.
Nintendo's soon-to-be-released Super Mario Bros. Wonder is looking to be a wild step forward for the traditional style of 2D Mario games. Along with its bold, new visual style, it also features some intriguing changes to the conventional style of 2D Mario platforming action. While Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder's developers have confirmed that the game wasn't inspired by and has nothing to do with Illumination's Super Mario Bros. Movie.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder almost had running 'live' commentary, like a sports game.