To mark the arrival of the NES Classic Mini (and its Japanese sibling, the Famicom Mini) Nintendo has run a series of interviews on its site with key personnel who worked on the system.
Two interviews - one with Shigeru Miyamoto and the other with Yoshio Sakamoto - have been translated into English already, but a third remains in Japanese at the time of writing. The industrious folks over at Nintendo Everything simply couldn't wait and have translated the piece, which focuses on the Super Mario Bros. series.
One of the more interesting sections of the interview relates to the development of Super Mario Bros. 3, arguably one of the best NES games ever made. Interestingly, director and designer Takashi Tezuka reveals that when the project started, he had his heart set on adopting an overhead perspective:
What sorts of things did you have trouble getting right?
Tezuka: When we first began development, we wanted the game to have an overhead perspective, rather than a horizontal one.So instead of having a horizontal view of the game like in Super Mario Bros, you wanted something like an isometric view.
Tezuka: That's right. But, we just couldn't make it work.Miyamoto: He said "I want the game to be viewed from a little bit above." But having a clear indication of where you're going to land after jumping was a key part of the original Super Mario. Viewing everything from above made it very difficult to tell how far you were from the ground, so I told Mr. Tezuka "This will take forever."
Tezuka: …He did (dry laugh). In fact, there are still remnants of the top-down view in the final game, from before we switched to the horizontal view…
Miyamoto: Yes, there are.
For example, things like the black and white checkered floor?
Tezuka: That's right.
With the benefit of hindsight it's easy to scoff at the idea of playing Mario from a bird's eye view, but the fact that it was seriously considered just goes to show how Nintendo's designers are constantly looking for new ways to innovate and entertain. Ironically, Sega would use an isometric viewpoint for the Traveller's Tales-developed Sonic 3D on the Mega Drive.
Let us know what you think of this news by posting a comment, and don't forget to check out Alex's hands-on impressions of the NES Classic Mini.
(if you're wondering where that amazing image at the top of the page comes from, wonder no more.)
[source nintendoeverything.com, via topics.nintendo.co.jp]
Comments 25
The right decision was made. Otherwise they'd have been in over their head.
Well that's something I didn't know. I'd be very interested to see what this overhead Mario game would have looked like.
Just a little ahead of his time... seems like he probably had in mind something similar to the 3D games we get nowadays, but was attempting to create it in only 2D.
@DragonEleven Well judging the accuracy of jumps was definitely a problem in early (arguably still) 3D games.
Sonic 3 was originally going to be isometric too
We already have the 3D NES Emulator for that!
Super Mario 3D on the 3DS has a lot of that.
I guess that explains the weird perspective on that checkered floor...
love reading these behind the scenes interviews.
@Muqsit Was that an accidental link? If it's an intentional ad I'm reporting you. Don't follow it anybody, it goes to a chocolate ad or something.
Would love to see the prototypes!
@aaronsullivan He's a spammer. He's been doing it all morning. I've been reporting him and some of his posts have been removed.
There is a huge typo in the third paragraph, it should read thusly:
"One of the more interesting sections of the interview relates to the development of Super Mario Bros. 3, arguably the best game ever made."
@Asaki No! Super Metroid holds that crown.
@aaronsullivan you must have missed the rumor that the Switch will also double as a fudge maker...
I don't think he meant isometric per se. I think he meant something more like this:
Look at this photoshop I did: (I only moved mario a bit)
Well, it sorta eventually happened with Super Mario RPG, even though it took Square to do it. I know what he means about the jumping and landing... even in SMRPG it took a little practice. Or it could be that in their minds, they were really trying to conceive what SM64 would become. Nice article.
I highly doubt this would have turned out well so they made the right decision. If you can't perfect a new game mechanic, then I think it works best if you can fine-tune an existing mechanic — and thus we got one of the best Marios, SMB3, instead of some unique isometric platformer that wouldn't work quite right.
However, it's still really interesting to know they were thinking of 3D platformers even in the NES days. The only game I can think of that does that on NES is 3D Worldrunner... I can safely say I wouldnt have enjoyed a Mario game designed like that.
Looks like there was going to be some overhead parts in the canceled Virtual Boy Mario game.
Yes, 3D Land has a lot of levels that are top-down.
that's cool. Now whenever I see that checkerboard floor in Super Mario Bros 3, I'll remember this article. Haha.
Fun information!
@impurekind We call it, "Super Mario RPG".
Edit: Sorry, It was already answered.
So they wanted it to look like the Mega Man X games in the PS1 days? That would've been nice, but the old NES would choke like crazy...
This is the kind of game-centric innovation that Nintendo would do well to refocus its attention toward, much more so than gimmicky hardware parlor tricks.
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