Nintendo was initially planning Super Mario Sunshine to be a “disaster recovery mission-style game”
This month, RetroGamer sat down with Nintendo’s Yoshiaki Koizumi. The two sides didn’t really talk about Super Mario Odyssey, however. Instead, the conversation was focused on a different project from Koizumi’s past: Super Mario Sunshine.
Koizumi directed Super Mario Sunshine on the GameCube 15 years ago. Initially, the team had a very different plan in mind for the game. Rather than the strictly 3D platforming gameplay that we know of, Nintendo instead was “exploring the idea of a disaster recovery mission-style game.”
Koizumi told the magazine:
“When we were making prototypes, we were exploring the idea of a disaster recovery mission-style game. We experimented with a lot of different things before we switched over to making it a platform action game. It was a challenge coming up with ways to include new elements (like having people) without it seeming odd.”
“In an early prototype, the player wasn’t searching for Shine Sprites, and instead the story was set on an island that was slowly being polluted by enemies. The idea was that you’d wash the pollution away with FLUDD and also use it to defeat the boss enemy, the source of the pollution.”
Super Mario Sunshine could have ended up being a very different game had Nintendo gone that route. Is that something you’d have liked to see?
