User:Nintendo101

Casual Nintendo historian. Otherwise an artist and a professional zoologist. Bio degree. I've had an account here since 2012.

I wrote the character sections for Super Mario 64, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and Super Mario Odyssey. I contributed much of the article for Super Mario Sunshine and am currently working on Super Mario Galaxy.

I have been a fan of Nintendo since a very young age. My first Mario games (and three of the first video games I ever owned) were Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2, Super Mario 64 DS, and Mario Kart DS. These games were good company for a young kid who moved around a lot and had difficulty keeping long-lasting friends.

During the, I sequentially played some of my favorite games in the Super Mario series to 100% completion. This includes, in order, Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, and Super Mario Odyssey. It's been really fun so far! These are great games, and I always wanted to marathon a series like this before but never had the time. It has been interesting to see where the series began and where it has ended up. The design philosophies, the characters, the art directions, world building, level design, narrative, etc. All good stuff. It might be fun to write something about it some day.

My favorite video game character is Yoshi.

My hope is to help make the SMG article on par with the best of the wiki (i.e. Super Mario World, Super Mario 3D World, the Donkey Kong Country games), and to use it as a reference for other Super Mario game articles. To me, these games are the heart of the franchise and it'd be nice if the articles can have some uniformity between them. I never intended to fully invest in just this one game, but as a person, it can be hard to move on when it feels like there is still work to be done. My hope is to bring some of what is done here to Super Mario Sunshine, Galaxy 2, and Odyssey.

Development
Shortly after Super Mario 64's development was completed, Shigeru Miyamoto assembled a team at Nintendo EAD to develop a sequel tentatively titled "Super Mario 128". It was expected to only take a year to develop and to be supported by the Nintendo 64DD. Miyamoto envisioned the game having more complex enemy interactions than those of its predecessor, more sophisticated lighting, and special effects comparable to those of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. He wanted to include Luigi as a playable character, with the vision that the player would be controlling both him and Mario over the course of a single-player campaign, potentially simultaneously. This iteration of "Super Mario 128" would never be released, nor would any game of that title. "Mario 128" entered for over ten years, was significantly retooled over several, and influenced the creation of multiple other projects. Notably, none of these projects were Super Mario Sunshine, which Miyamoto asserted was separate from Super Mario 128 and only the latter is the "true sequel" to Super Mario 64. This is despite the fact that Super Mario Sunshine is a follow-up to Super Mario 64 in an objective sense as it is the second 3D platformer of the Super Mario series. According to Yoshiaki Koizumi, Super Mario Galaxy is one of the offshoots from "Super Mario 128", and Miyamoto was ultimately of the perspective that Galaxy was the proper sequel to Super Mario 64.

One of the developments form this period was a demo of the same name directed by Yoshiaki Koizumi and showcased at Space World 2000. It saw 128 individual Marios moving around on a board-shaped platform. It was presented to the press as a tech demo that was demonstrating the capabilities of the Nintendo GameCube, but in subsequent interviews Miyamoto clarified that it represented a game in developement.

Two projects derived from the original "Super Mario 128": one referred to as the "Mario 128 project", the other the "One Hundred Marios Project". The latter project was an evolution of the Space World tech demo and would become the basis for two separate games. One of these games was the near-launch GameCube title Pikmin (2001). The other was "Super Mario Revolution".

•	Of Super Mario 128 and the unreleased sequel to Super Mario 64

•	Yokota on addressing issues with spatial navigation in 3D games

•	Miyamoto on his dissatisfaction with Super Mario Sunshine’s development and the finished title, and how this informed development choices in SMG

•	Review Yokota’s keynote and the Iwata Asks

Pre-release and unused content
•	Guppy was not a dolphin!

Promotion
•	Where exactly did that photo of Mario in the zero-gravity airlock come from?

Legacy
•	SMG released during a period when the strength of Japan-based video game studios was generally thought to be on the decline, in part due to the rise of development in American studios to great financial success and the general marketing trends of the industry

•	Well respected Japanese publishers such as Capcom, Konami, Sega, and Nintendo themselves had attempted to significantly retool some of their established franchises for western audiences; most of these attempts were not received well and sold terribly

•	SMG was not artistically compromised by this trend and it was something noted by commentators at the time; its success at BAFTA over Call of Duty was described as a surprise; its reliance on providing accessible, rewarding fun was considered unique at the time (see comparison to Heavy Rain)

•	Though not attributed as the catalyst to the rival of Japanese studios, the critical acclaim and commercial success of SMG was viewed as evidence that Japan was still a significant player in the video game industry

•	SMG almost immediate influence other titles in the greater Mario franchise, such as Mario Kart Wii; Rosalina has been established as a major recurring character in Mario spin-offs

•	Rosalina was one of the first characters pitched for SSB4

•	Influenced development of Gears 5 (2019), Solar Ash (2021), Mario + Rabbids: Spark of Hope (2022), and Momoka

Remakes and ports
•	Wii U

•	Nvidia Shield

•	Super Mario 3D All-Stars

Adaptations
•	SUPER MARIO-KUN

Notable merchandise
•	Cards

Potential articles to review