Super Mario 3D World devs – next Mario title in the works, could use the GamePad more, Double Cherry and Cat Mario origins
What’s the team behind Super Mario 3D World working on next? Why, a new Mario game of course!
Nintendo producer Yoshiaki Koizumi wouldn’t say if the new project is for Wii U or 3DS while speaking with EDGE. He did mention, however:
“That’s still a secret! I can tell you, though, that we’ve already started approaching our next challenge.”
“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.”
Assuming the next Mario game on Wii U, co-director and EAD Tokyo team leader Kenta Motokura says that the team “might need to make even more use of the GamePad.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Motokura discussed the origins of the Double Cherry:
“The Double Cherry came about during development on Super Mario 3D World when one of the level designers mistakenly placed two of the same characters into one of the courses. We ended up with a single player being able to control two versions of Mario at the same time! We all tried it and it was really amusing, so we scrambled to readjust the game so that this feature would make it into the final product. If the game had locked up with two identical characters on the level, I don’t think we would have the double Mario feature we have now!”
And here’s how Cat Mario came to be…
“We wanted Mario to make use of not only the ground but other surfaces, which is what led us to this idea. At roughly the same time, we were looking at ideas for more exciting ways for players to run around the courses.
“One of the things we investigated was having characters scamper around on [all fours]. For both movement styles, the test characters were either a normal-looking Mario or a version with a slight difference in colour. In finally putting all this together into a new Mario ability, we felt that a cat ticked all the boxes…for the final design, we strove to make it as cat-like as possible, while keeping it clearly distinct from [3D Land’s] Tanooki Mario.”
