Super Mario Bros. Wonder had no development deadline, staff came up with over 2,000 gameplay ideas

Everything we’ve seen so far from Super Mario Bros. Wonder makes it look like the most inventive 2D Mario we’ve seen in decades, and a new interview with the staff sheds some light on why that might be.

In an interview with Wired, producer Takashi Tezuka reveals that Super Mario Bros. Wonder never had a date it was supposed to be finished by. Right from the prototype stage, the team has as much time as they wanted to build Mario’s next 2D adventure. There’s no doubt this freedom from a deadline let the team run wild with their imaginations, and one example of that comes from the game’s Wonder effects.

Every single mainline stage in Super Mario Bros. Wonder includes a Wonder effect that will twist, warp or change the experience in some way. According to director Shiro Mouri, the team came up with over 2,000 ideas for Wonder effects. These ideas came from pooling together the entire development team, and members could submit their proposals no matter what part of the game they were working on, or how long they had been employed by Nintendo.