Nintendo discuss scrapped Super Mario 3D Land ideas

Super Mario 3D Land

During his “Thinking in 3D: The Development of Super Mario 3D Land” presentation held at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco this week, director Koichi Hayashida shared a range of conceptual ideas that didn’t make the cut.

These were all products of early brainstorming sessions, Hayashida showing the attendees post-it note sketches he had made during pre-production.

Amongst these, there was a giant Mario where players were only able to see his legs, as well as a stretched Mario with incredibly lengthy limbs. “That’s sort of scary. I would like to give this idea to the Luigi’s Mansion 2 team”, Hayashida jested.

Further to this, another sketch showed cockroaches that would be killed by shutting the Nintendo 3DS, whereas “Pro Skater Mario” saw the iconic character riding a Green Koopa Shell down a half pipe. Lastly, the team considered allowing the player to replace Princess Peach’s face with that of their own friend.

Whilst none of these had been seriously considered for the game, Hayashida reflected that it demonstrated the importance of the brainstorming process to a games development.

“It reminds me of something important”, he began. “We must always consider ideas outside the normal range from what people expect from a Mario game. We must make others laugh with strange new ideas. We have to keep a feeling of joy in the development process”.

Hayashida concluded by sharing the development team’s mantra, “Enjoying making something leads to making something enjoyable”. We certainly can’t disagree with that.

[Thanks Eurogamer, and to Games Radar for the image]

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