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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.'"
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.
That's not the same thing.
There was a GameCube tech demo shown at E3 and Space World before the GC's release called "128 Marios". A lot of people over the years have confused this with Super Mario 128. They are two different things. 128 Marios was literally just 128 Marios - it was intended to show the power of the GameCube by rendering 128 Mario characters from the N64's Super Mario 64 simultaneously. That idea is what made it into SSBM.
Super Mario 128 was supposed to be the next actual Mario game after Super Mario 64. The "128" was really just a number, it didn't mean anything, really, and probably would have been changed before the game's release. It was just how Miyamoto and co. referred to the game internally and in the press.
From what I understand, SMB128 was more of a concept and maybe some early programming demos rather than a nearly-finished game, as some have speculated. But it was supposed to be a real game, not just a bunch of Marios running around, which is what 128 Marios is.