Super Mario - Jeff Ryan [32]
In lieu of a proper sequel, Mario and Donkey Kong were going to star in an educational game, Donkey Kong’s Fun With Music. Players would be able to jam alongside Donkey Kong on the upright bass, Mario on the keyboard, Pauline on vocals, and Junior on the drums. While jamming, players would learn about rhythm, and how to sightread music. Miyamoto and Kondō both loved music, and this was a perfect way to make learning a true joy.
But the music project was canceled. The first U.S.-released game in the series, Donkey Kong Jr. Math, was a dud. Junior had to answer math problems by maneuvering through vines and chains littered with numbers, picking the right integers and actions to get the correct number. It was fun, and reinforced math fundamentals, but it was challenging. There was another game, one that taught basic English reading, called Popeye’s English Game, or Popeye no Eigo Asobi. Obviously, it was for Japanese audiences, and not released in the U.S. After swinging 0 for 2, Nintendo gave up on the NES being a learning machine.
Another never-finished game was Return of Donkey Kong. It was a remix of the first three Donkey Kong games, with the clever conceit that Mario (with his jumping) and Junior (with his swinging ability) would have to navigate the same board in two different ways to get from point A to point B. The game would have redesigned levels from all three games, adding challenges for both sets of characters. It was two different new games in one, masquerading as three warmed-over games.
All these games that never made it out of development hell must have been frustrating. Great ideas, great execution, and they get killed because people wouldn’t understand them. People just wanted more of Mario in the Mushroom Kingdom. More of the same, just, you know, a little different.
Miyamoto, possibly with a raised eyebrow, decided to deliver on exactly that. His new protégé, Takashi Tezuka (memorably credited as “Ten Ten”), would do most of the work for a Super Mario Bros. sequel that would look and play like the original. Gamers would be immediately comfortable: this was what they wanted. Question mark blocks! Smashable bricks! Mushrooms! Digital comfort food!
Then, they’d go grab that mushroom, which in the previous game made Mario super. And they’d see what a little difference could do. (Insert maniacal laughter here.) In this game, the first mushroom would kill Mario. Boom, dead. Miyamoto could never pull a stunt like that with an arcade game: folks would demand their quarters back. But home console players would have touched the hot stove, and learned: okay, the mushrooms are all deadly.
Except only certain mushrooms were deadly, not all of them. That was only the beginning. The swimming “Blooper” squid here could swim on land and air. One endpoint could only be reached by climbing a vine, which in the previous game was just for bonus levels. A new element was rain, which could stir up from nowhere to push Mario back. All jumps now had to be weighed against the possibility that a freak shower would blow Mario off course.
Developers have a code of conduct about how to make a proper game. No blind jumps, for instance: Mario had to see both ledges. Miyamoto wouldn’t break those commandments. But he’d certainly tweak them. If the first game had Mario schlep his way up a pyramid to get a 1-Up, this one would create a similar obstacle course that led to a worthless poison mushroom. Mario’s warp zones took him forward in the first game? The warp zones in the sequel might take him back to the beginning of the game. Level after level, Miyamoto was pranking the player.
This was exactly, precisely, what video gamers had said they wanted. They wanted a game just like Super Mario Bros., but with new challenges. But did they really? Or did they