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A Lost Miyamoto Project - Super Mario 128
Wowzer writes "After the 1996 release of Super Mario 64, magazines for years mentioned Super Mario 128 - a game that would feature both Mario & Luigi for release on the N64 or its 64DD add-on. Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto lays the game to rest as one of his lost projects. From the article: 'Super Mario 128 was just one of many experimental games we had. Suddenly, everybody started talking about it. I'm in the all-too easy habit of starting a project only to later on not do much of it. There is a great deal of unfinished work on my desk. I worked on a prototype for the Nintendo 64 game with Mario and Luigi in it for some time." As it turns out elements of Super Mario 128 live on in Super Mario Galaxy on Wii.'"
Didn't they use the basis of this game as a tech demo for the Gamecube at one point?
(You know, to show of the polygon processing count)
I would be surprised if he didn't have unfinished work on his desk. The fact that he's using elements from 128 in Galaxies probably means that only the best parts were used and the rest was fodder. The fact that 128 stayed unfinished is probably a good thing.
I have nothing to say.
I'm sure there's thousands, if not millions, of ideas and projects that he has thought upon or even started on. To simply badger at him for laying one to rest shouldn't be too harsh; at least he mentioned it was half-alive in Super Mario Galaxy, meaning he combined ideas he had - usually a very difficult thing to do for game designers.
Speaking of the 64DD, what ever happened to that thing? So many people used to talk about it, and Nintendo Power had it in its "Most Wanted" list for a long time...and then nothing ever happened. I believe we were promised a new "Earthbound" game, as well, the production of which was delayed so that it could be released as a 64DD game. What happened to that?
All 64DD indicates to anyone now is Scarlett Johansson's bra size.
I mean really, Super Mario 128? Super Mario 64 worked as a title, but I dunno...seems silly :P
How can the first post be redundant?
It was already ported over to Gamecube (sorta). In Super Smash Brothers Melee, one of the challenge states set you up as a huge character versus 128 tiny marios.
It was hard, even if you did a constant Donkey Kong hand-slap
"The 64DD was announced at 1995's Nintendo Shoshinkai game show event (now called Spaceworld).
However, the 64DD was only released in Japan on December 1, 1999. Nintendo, anticipating that their long planned out disc drive peripheral would become a commercial failure, sold the system through a subscription service called RANDnet rather than selling the system directly to consumers or to retail outlets. As a result, the 64DD was only supported by Nintendo for a short period of time.
With the release of the Nintendo GameCube, many games that had been released or were still in development for the 64DD were released on the GameCube instead."
So there you have it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64DD
There was a demo early on showcasing some of the processing power of the Gamecube by displaying dozens of little Mario characters running around on the screen. Some game journalists referred to that as being "Mario 128".
The tech demo would eventually be reworked and refined to become "Pikmin".
"Super Mario Galaxy" sounds incredibly Japanese. Please tell that Mario shoots lasers out of his eyes, or fights Godzilla.
Was it just me or did that video from the article look a lot like Pikmin? The sounds seemed to be the same, and the throwing was similar. It makes sense because he was instrumental in that one too. Pikmin is one of my favorite GC games.
I think Miyamoto would be a cool guy to talk to for even just 5 minutes. He seems to have a lot going on in his mind yet he somehow manages to keep it all coherent enough to get the relevant information to the right people to make great games. That's impressive.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
IDSJ, but I'm pretty sure that was a GameCube tech demo. The word 'GAMECUBE' on the disc's surface was a give away. I remember seeing this video in fact.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
I'd be willing to bet money that Mario does fight the monster that replaced Godzilla in the Super NES port of SimCity.
What else is Miyamoto experimenting with? And I don't mean that as a joke. I'd love to see an interview where Miyamoto takes someone though all the things he's got in the hopper. I've seen this with writers before -- one of my favorites walked a reporter through about 30 poems he was working on. In some cases the poems had been in development for years. It was fascinating. Creative people can juggle a dizzying number of ideas, for long periods of time.
-Tony
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
The Princess is pretty stacked, but I hardly think she's a 64DD!
I'm one of those weirdos who loves betas of games and such. I love seeing the features that never worked out, the levels that were cut, etc. It'd be awesome if Nintendo (or any company really) released a disc full of the various betas, demos, and preleases of major games. I think it'd be cool.
I bought a gameshark just to play with the stuff in Zelda 64. Who'd a thunk there was a fully-functional arwing enemy left in there that cirlces and takes potshots at Link.
It has been rumored that the Mario 128 demo eventually inspired (or perhaps even evolved into) Pikmin... basically the only carry-over is the idea of having a large number of characters moving around, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me if this was the case.
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
This is clearly abusive moderation; I suspect it was carried out by a crony of the person I insulted... but regardless, it's only trolling when you say something you don't believe. I Really do believe the guy is an idiot.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"