The Philips CD-i is one of the rare consoles that has the distinction of having played host to a few officially licensed Nintendo games. And not just any old Nintendo licenses, either, but Zelda and Mario. The latter of the two only got one game on the system — Hotel Mario, which is often considered one of the worst Mario games — but the creator of the game has shared some insight into developing a Mario game for the CD-i.
Executive producer and designer on Hotel Mario, Stephen Radosh, sat down with Samuel Clemens of GamesReviews to talk about this often-derided entry in the Mario universe, made famous from its over-the-top animated cutscenes.
- Further reading - Hardware Classics: Uncovering The Tragic Tale Of The Philips CD-i
In the interview, Radosh shares some tidbits about his time working on the game, including that originally they weren't going to include a jump button for Mario until an engineer's daughter said that "it was strange playing a Mario game that didn’t allow jumping". So they added his daughter to the credits!
Of course, with Mario being Nintendo's most well-known franchise, the Big N had to be involved in some way, and Radosh shared that he had to seek approval to use a lot of the characters and enemies:
I had to get approval from Nintendo with a lot of the things that we did. They wanted to be sure the world that we created looked like it belonged to the franchise, as anything portrayed in Hotel Mario was a reflection on them. A manager at Nintendo named Cammy [Budd] was our main contact. They were pleased as far as I knew. In fact, there were rumours that Nintendo wanted to bring Hotel Mario to their platforms.
Radosh believes that Nintendo was happy with the final product and even says that there was a chance that Hotel Mario could've made it to other platforms. But that never happened despite rumours.
The creator did admit that, publicly, Nintendo didn't share any thoughts about Hotel Mario, but that the team "loved it", saying that "The technology of the CD-I wasn’t meant for such interactive gaming, but we overcame that obstacle."
The team working on Hotel Mario were also pleased with reviews and sales for the game too. Despite the CD-i being a bit of a flop, Hotel Mario "was a financial success" according to Radosh.
You can read the full interview with Stephen Radosh below. And make sure you let us know down below what you think of the interview, and if you've ever played Hotel Mario!
[source gamesreviews.com]
Comments 29
"I had to get approval from Nintendo with a lot of the things that we did. They wanted to be sure the world that we created looked like it belonged to the franchise..."
So how did Hotel Mario manage to get through?
I still think it's pretty awesome how they managed to get Mario and Zelda titles on the CD-i. Philips were ahead of their time with that machine and it's a shame it never really caught on. It doesn't really help that the games were rather bad, though and it does make me wonder how they ever managed to get approval, because they're definitely below the standards of Nintendo during that time period. I remember the Nintendo Seal of Approval actually meaning something back then
@CharlieGirl Haha, I had the exact same thoughts. Maybe there was a lot of money involved
@CharlieGirl
Nintendo probably had a minimum bar for third-party educational games, like with Mario's Time Machine, Mario is Missing, Mario's Early Years, Mario Teaches Typing, and Mario's Game Gallery.
As in, they needed to make sure the primary characters (Mario, Luigi, Peach, Bowser, Koopa, Goomba, Toad) were model accurate, and some other familiar elements like those hills or blocks are faithful.
But on the other hand, they probably weren't too strict about other unique elements, because they wouldn't want their own development studios being outshone by a foreign company.
This is the same Steven Radosh who also created the successful "say what you see" game show Catchphrase. Where did it all go wrong? 😅
@Pillowpants What are you talking about? NES, Gameboy and SNES were plagued by licensed mediocre games from infamous companies like Ocean, LJN, Jaleco etc. Sure, it wasn't Wii-level of shovelware apocalypse, but the Seal of Quality never stood for perfection
@Flashlink99 I was talking about it in regard to their own IPs. But yeah, you're right, the seal was never much of a guarantee that you were buying a top notch product.
Wow, just looked up the gameplay of Hotel Mario and I'm sure I've played that game when I was young in a computer game store, just never realised it was an actual Mario game
Honestly I had a blast with this game. Have it in a storage box though my brother has the CD-I currently where he is living. Can't say the same for the Wand of Gamelon (only Zelda one I owned) game.
@Pillowpants Compared to most of the crap that was shoveled onto the Atari 2600, a lot of those horrible games on the NES were masterpieces, though.
Hotel Mario isn't like the worst game ever made and the animated scenes were very similar to the Mario cartoons at the time. It's a pretty basic puzzle platformer though, nothing special. It's not nearly as notoriously bad as those CD-i Zelda games!
Hotel Mario was definitely nowhere near the hilarity that is Zelda CD-i titles. For its time it did feel kinda antiquated gameplay-wise, and the cutscenes were a relic of the time, but it wasn't so bad. Just basic.
@RupeeClock chances are it could be a cultural thing too. As long as the characters are well represented and designed, Nintendo in Kyoto didn’t care. Nintendo of America were probably giddy with it since it was easy money. Another factor, Nintendo and Phillips were very cozy with each other at this point too.
I wish we get additional spin off Mario games these days other than just Mario sports and party titles like in the early 90s. I’m surprised we haven’t gotten a new Mario Paint game yet.
Nintendo really love Hotel Mario cause they were in the love hotel business once.
While HM was never something to brag about I never found it that bad compared to most CD-i titles as well as some of the other "infamous" Mario games. The gameplay was just pretty basic as a few here mentioned.
Footage here if anyone’s curious:
https://youtu.be/bkVq8rkrsms
@RupeeClock Clearly they didn't pay attention to the cutscenes.
Switch port when?
@progx The thing is like they did to Sony, Nintendo back out of the Philips deal as well but not before Philips ruin Zelda with 3 games already. This is why Nintendo quickly make Ocarina of Time, Link's Awakening, and Majora's Mask so to wash away the awful existence of those games. Nintendo found out that the Philips CD-i was not very powerful and Philips own CD-i disc format were very poor quality compare to Sony. This eventually made Nintendo lose all hope in the disc format until the GameCube when mini-DVD disc came along. Unlike Sony's CD-i disc, Philips CD-i disc could easily get corrupted and Philips doesn't had hardware powerful enough for 3D capability which Nintendo wanted for next gen at the time.
@Serpenterror that’s true, but Nintendo was willing to put their approval on these games before they pulled out. Although, I’m thinking it’s why Nintendo of America didn’t get a seat at the table until the Switch due to this blunder.
It was a fun and fine game. Soooo much better than the 3 Zelda games.
@Pillowpants Didn't Phillips have some sort hardware/software deal with Nintendo? They made some hardware for Nintendo in exchange for some gaming IP?
"The technology of the CD-I wasn’t meant for such interactive gaming" and that's ultimately the biggest problem with the games on the platform... "but we overcame that obstacle" yeah, no lol.
This game wasn't THAT bad. It was basically like a board game where you open doors and stuff. I played it and it is entertaining for a few minutes. It's basically just a Mario random spinoff. It was never meant to be a platformer or party game or racing game like the main series games but it's more of an "other" game like the Mario typing games and stuff.
I actually enjoyed this game back in the day
Considering the CDi barely has any internal hardware to play games proper, getting anything resembling a decent game on it was a feat for the ages
@Pillowpants @CharlieGirl do you remember the computer games at the time? Everyone was trying to go live action FMV games. A lot of them were really good. CDi tried to be the live action machine. End of the day, the games were too straightforward. Either you played the whole game in live action or you saw outcomes in love action.
Who wants to play a game that ends not because you died by going left in the hall, but because they didn't have FMV to get you out of that left turn?
It doesn't like a completely horrible game but it'd around the likes of Mario's time machine. Where its a licensed game but it looks like a knock-off.
It wasn't really until Iwata was president of Nintendo until the standard minimum standard for spin-offs were raised.
There was a bit of a transition post NSMB where even the worst Mario games were still polished experiences and properly matched Mario's visual identity.
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