Super Mario - Jeff Ryan [84]
Post-Conker, the rules were changed for Nintendo. Conker was vulgar, but Miyamoto knew that its real enticements were graphics and game play. Every other franchise needed to have a new personality for the Gamecube. If it couldn’t promise the best graphics or sound, then it would scrape together enough sheer moxie to draw attention. Miyamoto sometimes told staffers, when they had an unworkable idea, to put it in a drawer, because one day the technology would be around the fix the problem. It was time to root through that drawer.
First up was Metroid, which had never received a N64 game and had been forgotten. It was in development as a 3-D sci-fi exploration, through cramped dark spaceships and distant planets teeming with hostile life. Exploring around in ball form would be a game in itself. A new Star Fox flight-combat game was also in the works, as well as a new Zelda title.
That was fine, but Miyamoto pushed for more. A twist, something no one expected. Metroid, he announced halfway through development, would be a first-person shooter. Star Fox would keep the flight-combat angle, but Fox himself would get out of his vehicle and explore around as well. Zelda was going to use a new rendering tool called celshading to make Link and Ganon look like hand-drawn 3-D cartoons.
For the new F-Zero game GX, there weren’t many changes other than increasing speed and challenges. There is no such thing as a racer that’s too difficult, so Miyamoto and company were free to reach for insanely difficult levels, while showcasing the neon explosions that made GX comparable to the best PS2 or Xbox experiences. The biggest change was behind the scenes: Miyamoto’s team codesigned the game with Amusement Vision, one of Sega’s game-making divisions. Perhaps to take himself down a notch, Miyamoto included a fat mustached android, with a Starman on his belt, designed by a “Shiggs Mopone,” called Mr. EAD. (EAD was the name of Miyamoto’s R&D division.) Shiggs’ favorite food? Italian, of course.
And then there was Eternal Darkness, Nintendo’s foray into survival horror, and Shigeru Miyamoto’s first M-rated video game. It was about Alexandra Roivas, who finds an ancient evil book that attracts monsters and makes the possessor go insane. She gets flashbacks to previous generations who possessed the book, and the player has to survive the flashbacks to find out what happens to Alexandra and the Tome. The game had a sanity meter; see too much weirdness and hallucinatory monsters start surrounding you. Get scared enough and the Gamecube will even start acting like it’s possessed, spitting out illusory error messages.
All of this was great, of course, but none of it was a new Miyamoto Mario game. He hadn’t made a true Mario game since Super Mario 64 way back in 1996. Now everyone and his brother had 3-D platformers. Developers had learned to program in 3-D. Mario, like a rich movie star who flirts with retirement every picture, had more to lose than gain from a new game.
Certainly Mario titles were attempted: Super Mario 64 2 was announced for the 64DD, then failed to materialize. Then Super Mario 128, which had turned into Pikmin. Mario needed something new, something distinct. At the same time, one of Miyamoto’s many protégées, Yoshiaki Koizumi, was working on a water-gun game. The Gamecube allowed for great water effects, as Wave Race: Blue Storm showed, and Koizumi had game-play ideas for how to use a power washer—to clean graffiti, propel around like a jetpack, hover, and batter down doors.
There was enough there for a Super Mario – type game: instead of getting new suits, Mario would get new nozzles. Years of 3-D experience would make the challenges a mix of exploration and action. The tropical-isle setting (Isle Delfino, a wink to the Gamecube’s development name of Dolphin) would