Nintendo left a lot of ideas on the cutting room floor during the development of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and now at this year's Game Developers Conference, the game's director Shiro Mouri and producer Takashi Tezuka have shared some insight.
In a series of slides (shared by Chris Kohler of Digital Eclipse), Nintendo's Mario Wonder team showed off the kind of brainstorming sessions it had - with ideas like Mario surfing, riding a unicycle, and jumping about on a pogo stick. Then there were a few other slides of "Wonder Effect testing sessions", "unused Wonder Effects" and even a look at a prototype level that was cut from the game.
This prototype level showcased a "giant block Mario" with enemies chomping away at his head. Here's the brief description to go with it, along with a short video:
"Unused Wonder Effects: Player turns into a giant block Mario and advances while avoiding getting eaten"
This admittedly isn't the first time we've heard about cut ideas from Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Takashi Tezuka previously mentioned how the team prototyped all sorts of things during development. In fact there apparently wasn't a deadline during the prototype stage and in the end, the team had "probably" over 2,000 ideas - with the best ones refined.
One, in particular, focused on Yoshi's egg-throwing mechanic. Miyamoto also wasn't a big fan of the early elephant design.