Takashi Tezuka, the producer of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and Masanobu Sato, the art director, were asked in an interview about the influence the Super Mario Bros. Movie had on the game. While they were sure to push down any rumors that they had seen the movie during development, they did reveal an interesting tidbit about the game’s potential audience and how it’s changed because of the movie.
In an Ask the Developer interview at Nintendo, the pair were asked if the movie had any influence on development, to which Sato responded that the team “didn’t hear anything about the film’s content during development.” Clear as day answer, the movie is unrelated to the game. However, Sato was sure that Tezuka knew the details about the movie.
Tezuka responded that he “didn’t know when the movie would be released,” which makes us think he did know some details of the movie. However, he was sure that “some people would play the game because they watched the movie,” which had an effect on his approach to the development and an impact on the budget. They didn’t want to disappoint fans of the movie, so they “dedicated ample budget and time to create the characters with even more care and attention and in greater detail.”
You can see the differences between Super Mario Bros. Wonder and previous games in the series. We’ve reported that the game had more than 2,000 new ideas pitched during development, and wanted to add to the formula they considered “ordinary.” In this case, they put the money into expressions, some of which helped the Goombas. Players who have played Mario sidescrollers can tell that the enemies and characters aren’t very expressive, looking more like 3D sprites.
In the pictures provided above by Nintendo, Mario’s face looks distorted when he’s moving in a certain direction, as shown on the right. However, in the picture on the left, you can see how Mario looks on the screen, with attention given to his facial expressions and overall body adjustments during gameplay.
The developers went so far into this in Super Mario Bros. Wonder that even sound director Koji Kondo was “very surprised at how the expressiveness of the animation kept improving during development.”
In this game, the developers assigned unique jump sounds to each character to enhance the player experience and convey their movements effectively. They also incorporated musical instrument sounds into the game’s sound effects, using an electric ukulele made of Yezo spruce for Mario’s jumping sound, giving it a fresh and distinctive feel.
This and many other changes were made because they wanted to make sure the newcomers from the movie would enjoy the game just as much. The movie made the developers try to improve these once stale expressions and animations, which is how movies should influence games.
The developers even added a feature we’ve seen in Dark Souls, and considered Tsunadere live-commentary. Make sure to review our countdown on the game so you’ll know exactly when it releases in your time zone.
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