Mario is unsafe again

Super Mario Bros. Wonder looks weird. Nintendo now allows Mario to be weird again. That’s something we haven’t seen in over a decade. Let me explain.

Here is a photo of Cat Mario from Super Mario 3D World and Elephant Mario from Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

Cat Mario from Super Mario 3D World

Elephant Mario from Super Mario Bros. Wonder

See the difference?? Yeah, obviously.

Cat Mario is just a suit for Mario and Elephant Mario is a complete transformation. This is a very drastic change and an important one. The following Tweet explains it perfectly.

For years, Nintendo gave us “the purest distillation of the safe, bland, corporate mascot“. This Mario was perfect in every way, but for many also very boring, me included. Not the games, though. I mean just the character and its visualization.

The games were really good. I played all of them and loved them. However, they were all mostly the same. They had no magic feel to them. No stark difference.

That was all because of Nintendos strict “Mario is untouchable“ policy. That went so far, that other Mario games were crippled, because no one was allowed to change or adjust Mario characters, even a little bit.

The best examples would be the Paper Mario games, which were awesome like Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door from 2004, but then slowly turned out very boring, because no new character was introduced or known characters were not allowed to have different characteristics. The most they were allowed to do, was giving Bob Omb the name “Bobby“.

Nintendo disallowed any changes to Mario. Proof below.

Here is an interview from 2020 that confirms the strict policy: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/features/interviews/paper-mario-origami-king/

Mr. Tanabe (Producer of Paper Mario) says:

Since Paper Mario: Sticker Star, it’s no longer possible to modify Mario characters or to create original characters that touch on the Mario universe. That means that if we aren’t using Mario characters for bosses, we need to create original characters with designs that don’t involve the Mario universe at all, like we’ve done with Olly and the stationery bosses.

Arlo made multiple great videos about that topic. The following video is about that interview I linked above. Jump to 16:00 for the discussion about that very important quote:

Wonderful Hope

Now, that all might change. Mario might not be “untouchable” anymore and is allowed to be different and weird, again.

The trailer for Super Mario Bros. Wonder surprised many.

First of all, many didn’t really expect a new 2D Mario game so late in the Nintendo Switch life cycle.

Second, the design and visualization of all Mario characters. The mimics and movements in every second of the trailer were different and awesome. It looks really cool and fun.

I hope, with this change, that Nintendo now also allows other studios, that work on other Mario games, like Paper Mario and the Mario Sport games to make Mario different and more fun again. It is possible, that only the mainline 2D and 3D Mario games are allowed to have weird Mario, but there is more hope than every before.