Super Mario 128 as shown at the event in August 2000.Series/,Super Mario 128 is a code name which was reused for two different development projects at Nintendo in the 1990s and 2000s. Originally intended as a sequel to, the sequel was canceled and the impetus was reused in a technology demonstration.
As debuted at 's trade show in 2000, the demonstrated graphics and physics concepts were gradually incorporated into various games through the 2000s. This includes the rapid object generation in, the sphere walking technology used in and, and the physics of. It is one of the two cancelled games after. That demo has also intrigued widespread study, rumors, and anticipation throughout the 2000s.
Contents.History Super Mario 64-2 The name Super Mario 128 was first used as early as January 1997 by, as a possible name for a Super Mario 64 sequel. This rumored expansion and sequel to Super Mario 64 called Super Mario 64-2 was said to be developed for the, but was cancelled due to the 64DD's commercial failure. Mentioned at 's 1997 convention that he was 'just getting started' on the project.We're in the middle of preparing Mario 64-2 for release on the 64DD. I'd like to take advantage of the 64DD's ability to store information. As of now, Luigi's also a full part of the game, but we haven't started thinking about 2-player gameplay with Mario and Luigi yet. We'll tackle that once we've got the system ironed out—we've figured out the processing power issues, so we could do it if we tried. — Shigeru Miyamoto, December 1997In November 1999, Miyamoto said, 'Well, for over a year now at my desk, a prototype program of and has been running on my monitor.
We've been thinking about the game, and it may be something that could work on a completely new game system.' The game had only a demo of one level made for it. Miyamoto claimed that multiplayer functionality was the first aspect of the game that he wanted to include.Nintendo Power: How about the sequel to Super Mario 64?Miyamoto: We've been thinking about the game, and it may be something that could work on a completely new system.Nintendo Power: Are you planning on making a two-player game with simultaneous, cooperative play?Miyamoto: We've actually been considering a four-player game with simultaneous play, but each screen would need to be very small, and we would have to implement new camera work. But it's these sort of problems that I like to tackle. — Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo Power Subscriber Special, December 1998 Tech demos The name was reused at the event on August 1, 2000 when Nintendo showed a titled Super Mario 128 to display the power behind its then-upcoming game console.
The demo was directed by Yoshiaki Koizumi, who would later become the director of Super Mario Galaxy. In the demo, a large split off into 128 smaller Marios across a circular board. The demo went on to display the technical power of the GameCube by rendering additional Marios at once until the number of characters on the screen reached 128. The terrain in the demo was manipulated, rotated, and spun to show the physics abilities of the system. GamePro then declared Super Mario 128 to be one of the 15 most anticipated games of 2001. Regarding Nintendo's secrecy and lack of elaborate demonstration of the camera system, GamePro assumed that 'The precautions are warranted as developer after developer aped the exact camera mechanism from Mario 64 for their titles.' Koizumi said he spent much thought after the demo about the 'close to impossible' undertaking of productizing Super Mario 128.
Combining that demo's floppy saucer surface with Mario's need to freely roam, Koizumi's next imagined groundbreaking objective was for Mario to walk upon a gravitational sphere. To even be able to attempt a demonstration, this idea would require tremendous technological expertise, motivation, and achievement from a dedicated team and would not be undertaken until 2003.There had always been distinctly separate development of Super Mario 128 and Super Mario Sunshine, which Miyamoto considered to be similar to Super Mario 64 anyway. He said, 'obviously we were doing work on the Mario 128 demo that we were showing at Space World, and separately we were doing work on experiments that we made into Mario Sunshine.' At Space World 2001, was unveiled as the next in the Mario series. It was released in July 2002 in Japan and one month later in North America.Nintendo commemorated the height of Super Mario 128 hype in the 2001 GameCube game with a battle stage titled 'Super Mario 128', where the player is assailed by a total of 128 tiny Mario figurines.
Resurfacing In 2002, Miyamoto predicted that Super Mario 128 would let players 'feel the newness that was missing' from Super Mario Sunshine because he thought of that game as more of a revisitation of Super Mario 64.Rumors said that the reason for Nintendo not having shown Super Mario 128 at E3 2003 was because the game was extraordinarily innovative and Nintendo did not want other developers stealing the ideas from the game —as some had assumed about the Space World 2000 show. However, Miyamoto later confirmed that Super Mario 128 was still in development and that the development team had planned to take the Mario series in a new direction.In 2003, Nintendo's stated that Super Mario 128 may not appear on GameCube at all. Yoshiaki Koizumi, who had directed the original Super Mario 128 demonstration, joined Nintendo's new Tokyo office.
Old Mario Games
There, pushed him to hold a much bigger vision for the next Mario series game and Koizumi said this: 'By working on together, I got to know the staff well enough by then, and I thought, if it was with this team, we may just be able to tackle the new and difficult challenge of making spherical platforms work.' There at EAD in 2003, Koizumi's team began working on prototypical spherical platforms in an intensive three-month process of iterative demonstrations for Miyamoto. Nintendo's President requested Miyamoto's singular signature effort to turn this product, which would become Super Mario Galaxy, into a showcase for the.It was thought that Nintendo would unveil the game at E3 2004. Miyamoto again confirmed the existence of Super Mario 128 in an interview during February 2004, but the game failed to surface.
Some believed this was due to the announcements of and the, both revealed at the 2004 show. asked Miyamoto about the game after E3:It's moving along secretly like a submarine under the water.
When developing, we often look at the different hardware and run different experiments on it and try out different ideas. There have been a number of different experiment ideas that we have been running on the GameCube. There are some that we have run on DS, and there are other ideas, too. At this point I just don't know if we will see that game on one system or another. It is still hard for me to make that decision.
I am the only director on that game right now. I have the programmers making different experiments, and when I see the results, we will make the final decision.
— Shigeru MiyamotoIGN later in the year got a similar response. Miyamoto again asserted Super Mario 128 's experimental nature.At the 2005, Nintendo of America's VP of Marketing, stated that Super Mario 128 would be shown at E3 2005, probably in the form of a noninteractive video. However, for the third year in a row, the game once again failed to surface during E3.
During a video interview at E3, stated, 'I can only show what Mr. Miyamoto gives me to show.'
When a reporter asked if it exists, he responded, 'I've seen bits and pieces.' In an interview with Miyamoto from 2005, a Wired News reporter confirmed that Super Mario 128 would not be produced for the GameCube, but rather that it had been definitively moved to the (then code-named Revolution).In September 2005, gave his least ambiguous comments regarding Super Mario 128. Questioned as to the status of the game by a Japanese radio station, he revealed that Mario would have a new character by his side and reiterated that the game would appear on the with a different name. He mentioned that Super Mario 128 had played a large role in the conception of the Wii console (then known as Revolution), like had done for the.
He went as far to say that the Wii was based around 'this new type of game'.In 2006, Miyamoto said that he had forgotten whether Super Mario 64-2 had been prototyped for the 64DD, and that 'it's become other games'. When asked whether he meant that the demo's gameplay functions are being used in other games, Miyamoto responded, 'From the time that we were originally making Mario 64, Mario and Luigi were moving together. But we couldn't get it working in the form of a game', echoing his statements from 1999. He also hinted that some elements inspired by Super Mario 128, such as running upon a spherical surface, had been incorporated into Super Mario Galaxy.On March 8, 2007, Miyamoto delivered the GDC 2007 keynote speech. He mentioned that Super Mario 128 was merely a demonstration of the 's power and restated that several techniques from Super Mario 128 had become foundational gameplay concepts of the series and the upcoming series. He said 'The one question I'm always asked is, 'What happened to Mario 128?'
Most of you already played it. In a game called Pikmin'.
Legacy Started as a demonstration of the 's computational power, the secrecy and hype of Super Mario 128 provoked some of the greatest anticipation in video gaming of 2001 and into the 2000s. The 2001 GameCube game commemorates the height of its intrigue with Event 22, a battle stage titled 'Super Mario 128', where the player is assailed by a total of 128 tiny Mario figurines.The software technology and concepts within the Super Mario 128 demonstration became or inspired core components of other games: the explosive herding and wandering behaviors of multitudinous characters in the series; the sphere-walking gravity of the series and; and the physics of. The director of the Super Mario 128 demo, Yoshiaki Koizumi, became the director of Super Mario Galaxy. References. Nintendo Power.
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