Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s titular flowers could make the sport Get Weird, whether or not it’s by altering the sport’s stage or turning Mario into one thing barely terrifying. One prototype thought particularly, nonetheless, would have briefly turned the sport right into a live-action one.

During the event technique of Wonder, the sport’s staff had an unprecedented amount of time to prototype its most necessary characteristic, Wonder Flowers. “At first, there were no rules on what constitutes a good Wonder effect vs. a not-so-good Wonder effect,” director Shiro Mouri stated on the Game Developers Conference this week. Some had been fairly easy, such because the first-year Nintendo worker who merely wrote “A Wonder Quiz Starts” on a sticky observe with nothing else (that later turned the sport’s trivia flower). Others had been extra sophisticated and impressive, however in the end didn’t work with the sport.

Like, for instance, sound director Koji Kondo’s thought for a Wonder Flower that might have turned Mario right into a live-action model of himself—a daily man who would hum the background music and make the sport’s sound results himself.

“As an idea, it’s very funny,” Mouri stated. But in the end the thought was rejected as a result of it was arduous to see the connection between pre-Wonder flower results, and in the course of the live-action Wonder impact. It was additionally “hard to imagine the gameplay changing much by having Mario turn into a live-action version of himself,” Mouri stated.

As humorous as it could have been, it additionally won’t have gone over nicely with gamers. Long-term Nintendo followers possible nonetheless keep in mind the ill-fated 1993 live-action film Super Mario Bros. film, that includes Bob Hoskins as Mario. No offense to Hoskins, however the film was a dud (even he thought so), and cemented the concept possibly the overalls’d plumber is best when he’s animated. (See additionally: The Super Mario Bros. Movie.)

Wonder Flowers, although, ended up being Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s secret weapon. Still, for each nice thought, there have been many left within the discard pile. More than half of the Wonder Flower prototypes didn’t make it into the ultimate recreation, Mouri stated, together with one which turned Mario’s head into a large block that enemies must eat. (Developers felt Mario’s head was so giant there was no technique to avoiding enemies and the mechanic turned the sport right into a mad sprint to the top.)

Live-action Mario didn’t get completely scrapped, although. The staff appreciated the thought a lot they modified it to create the sport’s closing badge: Sound Off?, which replaces the sport’s typical sound results with an acapella model. (Think: An individual saying “boing” when Mario jumps, somewhat than the same old sound.) “It was such an interesting idea it would have been ‘mottonai’ (a waste) to not use it,” Mouri stated. The voice gamers hear once they use that badge? That could be Kondo, after all.