Super Mario 3D World was designed with the New SMB crowd in mind

‘There?s still a lot more room for discovery and invention,’ says producer

Having finally gotten a Wii U, my goal this week has been to play Super Mario 3D World and at least try not to burn through it too quickly. It’s tough, though, with the promise of something new pushing me to continually do “just one more level” until, well, might as well just play the next world to see what it looks like since it’s right there on the screen and all.

In an Edge making-of article, producer Yoshiaki Koizumi said “We do feel a need to keep delivering games that will surpass our audience’s expectations. As creators, we try to fill our games with as many unique elements as possible. Moving into the future, we want to continue to deliver even more surprises as fast as we can so that it never feels like there aren’t enough … There’s still a lot more room for discovery and invention, and we’ll continue to propose new and exciting game mechanics going into the future.”

That was the standout quote, to me, but I also liked the explanation for why EAD Tokyo didn’t include Mario’s triple jump: “Back when we were discussing the character abilities for Super Mario 3D Land, we thought about what was the simplest bit of fun that could be had using Mario’s regular abilities,” said co-director and team leader Kenta Motokura. “We decided it was jumping across a series of platforms without falling — think back to the doughnut blocks and rotating platform courses in previous games.

“This decision helped us make comparatively intricate courses for Super Mario 3D Land and 3D World. In contrast, in a game like Super Mario 64, I think the fun needs to be on a slightly larger scale, hence why the triple jump worked so well there. It’s not that one ability is better than the other, it’s just that we use ones that best fit the design of the game.”

The other tidbit I liked from the article is that the development team considered not doing goal poles at the end of levels — “it was quite a challenge for us [in 3D Land],” said co-director Koichi Hayashida — but Shigeru Miyamoto had staff work through the difficulties. Good call.

The Making Of: Super Mario 3D World – bridging the gap between Mario’s past and present [Edge]