Mario & Luigi: Brothership devs initially made an “edgier, more rugged Mario”
As part of a new Nintendo interview, we’re able to get some insight into the early days of Mario & Luigi: Brothership’s development and how Acquire initially pursued an “edgier, more rugged Mario”.
Nintendo wasn’t quite on board with that idea. According to art director Hitomi Furuta, the company felt Acquire should go with a look that fans would resonate with. Producer Akira Otani said Nintendo “wanted Acquire to have their own unique style, we also wanted them to preserve what defines Mario.”
Below is the relevant discussion with Furuta, Otani, and director Haruyuki Ohashi:
While I understand the desire to create this game in 3D, 3D visuals have long been established in Mario action games, haven’t they? This could end up making this game’s visuals more similar to those of other Mario games. If this is the case, I imagine you needed to come up with a style that’s unique to the Mario & Luigi series while still being 3D, right?
Furuta: Precisely. Our challenge was to develop 3D visuals that would bring out the unique appeal of the Mario & Luigi series and differentiate it from other Mario games. I’m ashamed to say it, but we weren’t conscious of that when development started, which led to us making a huge detour. And in our search for a new Mario & Luigi style, at one point we ended up trying to present an edgier, more rugged Mario instead… (Laughs)
Then we received feedback from Nintendo that we should aim to make the art direction identifiable by fans as belonging to the Mario & Luigi series. After that, we were able to narrow down our focus to how we could combine two things: the appeal of illustrations featuring, for example, solid outlines and bold, black eyes, and the charm of pixel animations depicting the two characters moving around comically in all directions. I think that’s when we finally started to develop an art style that’s unique to this game.
These early concepts certainly do make Mario feel a bit different from the series so far.
Otani: From Nintendo’s perspective reviewing the character designs, they gave the impression of something different that just resembled Mario. So we called for a meeting in order to reassess the direction.
Furuta: During the meeting, Nintendo showed us a document describing what defines Mario and Luigi in the Mario & Luigi series. Although we’d enthusiastically pitched this rugged version of Mario, when I considered it from a player’s perspective, I started to worry about whether it really represented the Mario that players would want to play. So, when we got that clear direction from Nintendo, it made perfect sense to us. I think that’s when we realised for the first time, “Ah, this is what we should be aiming for this time in terms of a 3D visual style from Acquire”, and were able to establish the fundamental direction.
Ohashi: We had a strong desire to experiment with new visual styles, but they articulated their vision to us each time in a way that we found convincing.
Otani: Yeah, it’s like we’d unleashed Acquire into the wild…only to go chasing after them again.
Everyone: (Laughs)
Otani: While we wanted Acquire to have their own unique style, we also wanted them to preserve what defines Mario. I think it was a period when we were experimenting with how those two things could coexist.
Ohashi: As mentioned earlier, Acquire has hardly ever created games with other companies’ characters, so we didn’t have an established process for this. That was truly a challenge we faced as we kicked off the development of this game. That said, we were able to course correct at the beginning of development by communicating in the way we just described.
Thanks to Nintendo for the news above. Otani also spoke about how things were looking bleak for the Mario & Luigi series at one point, which you can read about here.
