Real-time But Mario: The Story of Sound Off?

Don’t worry if you’re seeing flashbacks of Bob Hoskins from 1993. The live-action Mario segment for Super Mario Bros. Wonder was never produced, but the concept is still there.

TFD – Explore the fascinating journey behind the creation of the Sound Off badge in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, diving into the concept of Wonder Flowers and the challenges faced by the development team. Step into the real-time world of Mario like never before.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s titular flowers can make the game Get Weird, whether it’s by changing the game’s stage or turning Mario into something slightly terrifying. One prototype idea in particular, however, would have temporarily turned the game into a live-action one.

The Wonder game team was given an unheard-of amount of time to prototype Wonder Flowers, the game’s most significant feature. “There were no guidelines at first regarding what makes a good Wonder effect versus a not-so-good Wonder effect,” director Shiro Mouri stated this week at the Game Developers Conference. Some were rather straightforward, like the rookie Nintendo employee who wrote “A Wonder Quiz Starts” on a sticky note alone itself without adding anything further; that message later became the trivia flower for the game. Others, while more intricate and aspirational, eventually failed to integrate with the game.

For instance, sound director Koji Kondo’s concept for a Wonder Flower would have transformed Mario into a real-life version of himself, a common man who would create the sound effects and hum the game’s soundtrack.

“It’s a really funny idea,” Mouri remarked. However, the concept was ultimately dropped since it was difficult to understand how the pre-Wonder flower effects related to the Wonder effect during the live-action. Furthermore, according to Mouri, it was “hard to imagine the gameplay changing much by having Mario turn into a live-action version of himself.”

Even though it would have been funny, players might not have been too fond of it. Many long-time Nintendo enthusiasts probably still recall the disastrous 1993 live-action Super Mario Bros. film, in which Bob Hoskins portrayed Mario. Not to be disrespectful to Hoskins, but even he felt the film was a disaster, and it furthered the theory that perhaps the overalls’d plumber would make a better animated character. Refer to The Super Mario Bros. Movie as well.

However, Wonder Flowers turned out to be Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s covert tool. Even so, there were plenty of good ideas that ended up in the trash. According to Mouri, over 50% of the Wonder Flower prototypes were dropped from the final version, including one that required foes to consume Mario’s head in order to transform it into a massive block. (Developers believed that because Mario’s head was so big, there was no way to escape adversaries, and this made the game feel like a frantic race to the finish.)

Real-time But Mario wasn’t completely abandoned. The idea was so popular that the team decided to tweak it and develop the game’s final badge, Sound Off?, which substitutes an acapella rendition of the game’s typical sound effects for the original ones. (Imagine: When Mario jumps, someone says “boing” instead of the typical sound.) According to Mouri, “it would have been’mottonai’ (a waste) to not use it because it was such an interesting idea.” When players use that badge, what voice does it sound like? Naturally, that would be Kondo.