It’s been a few months since Super Mario Bros Wonder came out (read our review!), and many are still in awe of said “wonder” that Nintendo produced. Leading up to its release, the team talked about how they came up with the “Wonder Effect” and how it made the game completely different than every other 2D Mario title that came before. But another key thing that made this game different was the amount of characters you could play as. In a chat with Famitsu, game director Shiro Mouri noted how they came up with the list of characters you could play as:
“As for the process of selecting, Mario, Luigi, Yellow Toad, and Blue Toad were playable in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. After that, New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe added Toadette and Nabbit. We decided to create these members first and newly added Peach, Daisy, and four different color variations of Yoshi. With these members, we decided the male-to-female ratio and invincible characters balance was good.”
Speaking of those “invincible characters,” while Yoshi did come in its “colorful forms,” an ability it had in the past, throwing eggs, was not available in Super Mario Bros Wonder. However, the team did try to make that happen in one prototype:
“As for Yoshi’s actions, I thought it would be better if he could throw eggs, so we tried to create a prototype and test it. However, it became hard to control, and to let first-time-players have fun, we decided the current way was the best.”
