Super Mario Bros. Wonder director Shiro Mouri has credited the younger members of the development team for coming up with new ideas and innovations for the upcoming game.
Nintendo has not released a 2D Mario game since New Super Mario Bros. U back in 2012. Wonder appears to break many of the original formulas and has the most significant changes since the 1990’s. Together with the new art style and the ‘wonder’ mechanic, the stages included in the game break many of the traditional formulas and transform in new and surprising ways.
Shiro credits the younger individuals in the development team for the break in formula and is quoted saying, “When looking at creating a new Mario, we actually went ahead and brought in a lot of younger people into our staff,” he said. “They’re, of course, developers, but they’re also people who enjoy playing games, and so they wanted to create something that they themselves would enjoy as players. We got a lot of different ideas and different thoughts from as many people as we could within that group.”Series producer Takashi Tezuka, who has worked on every Mario game since the 1985 original, explained that Nintendo brought in a whole host of younger developers for a reason. The intention in doing so was to help shape the franchise’s latest reinvention.
Feedback from the newer members of the development team lent inspiration for Tezuka and Mouri to create big changes to the core Mario formula. This lead to the removal of the in-course timer system and the score system. Continually, players can now stomp enemies while underwater and have the ability to start right back into the stage after losing a life. Mouri admits that much of the new ideas and innovations belong to the newer and younger development team saying that they could more easily recognize where the franchise needed to change. Mouri goes on to say, “The thing about developers who are new is that they’re not too preoccupied with ‘It was this way, so we must do it this way.’ I think that there’s a good side to that in that we can really hear their opinions and feedback and really re-evaluate and think what kinds of changes and what kinds of adjustments we want to make to each of those gameplay experiences.”
Super Mario Bros. Wonder will release on Nintendo Switch on October 20.