Beta version of Super Mario Sunshine's Delfino Plaza restored

Every game that we ever get our hands on is the end result of years of development. Sometimes the final game is quite different from how things started out, with all sorts of changes and tweaks made over the years. Wouldn’t it be fun to not just see some of that early game content, but play it as well? Well, that’s exactly what some modders have done with Super Mario Sunshine.

The original version of Delfino Plaza was quite different from what we got in the retail version of Super Mario Sunshine. We know this because Nintendo showcased that early version of Delfino Plaza during a Space World event back in 2001. We saw a quick bit of footage from that build, and that’s all it took for modders to painstakingly recreate that area.

The video above shows off a fully-playable ‘beta’ Delfino Plaza that was built-from-the-ground-up by modders. They used footage from that Space World demo to map out the entire area, and then got to work recreating every nook and cranny. The end result is a near one-to-one recreation of what Nintendo originally had planned out for the location.

Without a doubt, the Delfino Plaza we got in the final version of Super Mario Sunshine is better than the beta build, but it’s still crazy to see a playable version of this content surface. It just goes to show how dedicated some Mario fans are!