Super Mario Bros. Wonder almost had sports-style live commentary
Super Mario Bros. Wonder almost had running 'live' commentary, like a sports game.
Nintendo has released the final part of its Ask the Developer interview for the game, which includes discussion of live commentary that was ultimately scrapped.
«Tezuka-san also once asked, 'Can't we have live commentary?'. I had absolutely no clue what he meant. But I interpreted it as a desire for a new experience, even if it's not necessarily in the form of live commentary,» said Shiro Mouri, the game's director.
Koichi Hayashida, who worked on the game design, added: «We actually spent about six months seriously developing live commentary. We tried adding voices to match the player's actions. Even though we'd added various voices, questions like, 'Who's doing this commentary?' started to pop up amongst the team. Something about it just didn't feel right.»
The default voice for the commentary was «generic, like a newscaster», explained Mouri, but an option to switch to a Tsundere commentary was also included.
Tsundere is a Japanese term for a character who acts rude and cold, often to conceal more caring feelings. Mouri noted that quite a few playtesters switched to this style of commentary.
«But if we were to do this commentary feature seriously, just the process of creating voice variations alone would've involved a tremendous amount of work,» said Takashi Tezuka, a producer on the game. «So, unfortunately, we had to let it go. Still, it would've been a shame to shut down the whole experiment. So we brought in an additional team member to dedicate themselves to this feature full-time.»
Mouri then explained discussion about the Talking Flowers occurred around the same time, and so the commentary morphed into these characters
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