How Nintendo made Super Mario Bros. Wonder so weird
by Andrew Webster from The Verge - All Posts on (#6KQ1M)
Super Mario Bros. Wonder director Shiro Mouri (left) and producer Takashi Tezuka (right). | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a game filled with oddball ideas. Thanks to magical flowers that, once collected, introduce some unexpected new element, players experience everything from a bunch of Piranha Plants simultaneously bursting into song to Mario turning into a sentient pile of goo. It has so many ideas, in fact, that director Shiro Mouri wasn't sure the team could pull it off. At first when I heard that we'd be creating one wonder effect per course, and that all of the courses are going to have different wonder effects," he tells The Verge, I thought: That's stupid. That's impossible.'"
As it turns out, the problem wasn't so much coming up with ideas. The developers at Nintendo brainstormed a lot of potential powers - around...