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Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s Prototype Had No Deadline

• Jacob Chambers
• September 4th, 2023

In early hands-on previews, Super Mario Bros. Wonder was praised as one of the most refreshing takes on the 2D series in a long time, and it appears that the lack of a deadline in its early design was a factor.

Takashi Tezuka, the game’s producer, told Wired that there was no due date during prototyping, which encouraged creativity and ideas. His exact words:

Takashi Tezuka: “I wanted to prevent people from saying, ‘We won’t make that deadline, so that’s why we didn’t do it—we can’t do it,’”

Mario Wonder’s director Shiro Mouri added to Tezuka’s comment that thousands of Wonder effects ideas were generated and refined:

Shiro Mouri: “The number of ideas we got was probably over a thousand, 2,000 ideas.”

Wonder effects can completely change courses in unexpected ways. Elephant power-ups and talking flowers are other notable differences from the average 2D Mario game in this upcoming Switch release.

This insight into Wonder’s development is intriguing, especially in a time when the games industry talks about studio crunch culture and new release deadlines.