The developers of Super Mario Bros. Wonder gave some insight into the game’s development and showed off some of the Wonder effects that didn’t make it into the final cut at this year’s Game Developers Conference.
The panel, which was hosted by Wonder Producer Takashi Tezuka and Director Shiro Mouri, discussed the early stages of the game and gave a look at the first ideas for Wonder effects, some of which can be seen in the final game.
The team showed off some of the unused visuals for Wonder effects, which were captured at the event by Digital Trends’ Giovanni Colantonio on Twitter. The image shows off an alternate version of the Bulrush Express and silhouette levels, along with Mario standing on top of a giant Goomba, dodging fireballs from Piranha Plants, riding on rapidly deflating balloons, and shredding on a surfboard.
According to Digital Trends, Mouri said that the team initially wanted to return to the ideals of the original Super Mario Bros. by having a world filled with secrets. His first idea was to create special items hidden in blocks that would allow players to access another area, but Tezuka pushed him to go further and change the environment itself.
Mouri created a prototype of a green pipe that moves around, which eventually transformed into the Wonder effect from the first level of Super Mario Bros. Wonder. The team set to work brainstorming potential ways to change the environment, reaching around 2,000 total ideas.
The team generated ideas on sticky notes and showed off a small sample at the panel. The concepts shown off that made it into the final game include Mario and his enemies elongated and the silhouette level, while other ideas like placing Mario on a pogo stick, solving a sliding puzzle, and dodging giant Yoshi tongues did not make the cut.
The team highlighted two unused effects in particular – the first turned the characters and background into live action images, with Mario singing the music and mimicking the sound effects, while the second turned Mario’s head into a large 8-bit version of itself which would be slowly eaten by birds. Both concepts were dropped for gameplay purposes.
With so many ideas left over, the door is open for a sequel to Wonder; after all, Nintendo created Super Mario Galaxy 2 from a similar excess of ideas. If these are anything to go by, the ideas left over for a potential sequel could be even weirder than the first.