Super Mario Bros. Wonder Almost Had A Live Action Wonder Effect

thegamer.com:

Super Mario Bros. Wonder was a much-needed shake up for the 2D series, giving our favorite Italian plumber a design change and a creative new world to explore. You never really knew what you were going to get when starting a new level, and a lot of that was down to the Wonder Effects, which drastically altered each level every time you picked up a Wonder Seed.

There are a wide range of Wonder Effects, ranging from simply altering the level structure to turning Mario into all kinds of creatures and objects, but there are also a bunch that never made it into the final game. Speaking at a panel at GDC 2024, which TheGamer attended, Super Mario Bros. Wonder developers explained that the entire team wrote ideas down on sticky notes for potential effects, which generated over 2,000 ideas.

Lots of them were inevitably left on the cutting room floor as a result of this tactic, one of the weirdest coming from sound director Koji Kondo, who wanted one of the Wonder Seeds to briefly turn the game into live action. Kondo wanted both the game's backgrounds and Mario himself turned into live action versions, with the background music and sound effects of the level being hummed by the now fully human Mario.

Given how Mario's last live action outing went, maybe it's actually a blessing that the team decided against this particular feature.

Unfortunately, this absolutely wild idea didn't end up making it into the final game, but it did inspire something that did. Super Mario Bros. Wonder has an extremely tough Badge to collect, which essentially tasks players with collecting everything, beating every stage, and touching the top of the flagpole on each one. After doing this, you'll earn the Sound Off Badge, which has absolutely zero gameplay benefits, but turns off all the sound and has a random person make noises instead.

Another unused Wonder Effect would have had Mario's head turn into a giant block, while enemies circling him would have eaten his head. With Mario's head being so