Nintendo Took a Surprising Inspiration While Building Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury

Inspiration can come from anywhere; people walk their usual paths, and a simple butterfly can spark the flame of an idea in their heads. This is something that pretty much every artist realizes; hence, they are always on the lookout for inspiration. Nintendo developers are no different, especially the developers of Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury.

Recently, the developer of this Nintendo Switch platformer has revealed some really interesting tidbits about how they came up with those insane-level designs!

The Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury developer talks about their source of inspiration for levels in this game!

Super Mario 3D World was released for Nintendo’s Wii U console in 2013. Nintendo pitched it to the crowd as a direct sequel to the 3DS exclusive Super Mario 3D Land. They named it this way to specify the implementation of 3D mechanics in that game. Various levels required players to turn on 3D in order to solve the puzzles.

The game was such a monumental success that Nintendo followed it up with a sequel exclusively for the Wii U. It became 3D World and was not much of a success because of the console’s failure.

Nintendo then decided to port it to the Nintendo Switch, as they have done with their other games. To add to its charm, Nintendo even included a new, smaller campaign in the package called Bowser’s Fury. While fans and critics were indifferent to the original game, Bowser’s Fury received instant critical acclaim. Everyone loved it for its innovative design and mind-blowing visuals.

Now Nintendo developer Shuhei Sugimoto has revealed that they had a bunch of references for those levels. This small campaign features a Bowser who is huge and keeps throwing huge fireballs everywhere he looks. The scale of this campaign is something else, and the developer states that they looked to monster movies for inspiration, and to design those levels more effectively.

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He said, “I paid particular attention during my effects work on this title to distinguish it from Super Mario 3D World. Since Mario and Bowser fight while transformed into giants, I focused on expressing that sense of scale in my effects work. I watched monster movies as reference, and I tweaked the details and distortions over and over on Bowser’s fireball and shock wave attacks so they felt serious and huge in order to create a more impactful sensory experience.”

Well, this paid off as the game was good-looking, and people kept going back just to experience this new content. Bowser was surely looking menacing in this one. If one has to guess, maybe the inspiration was Godzilla.

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