Super Mario Bros. Wonder is no doubt a more successful game than anyone might have imagined. It launched to critical acclaim, ending with a better Metacritic score than this year’s most anticipated title, Spider-Man 2. While Spider-Man 2 has a score of 90, Super Mario Bros. Wonder has a score of 93. While it’s second only to Spider-Man 2 in the UK boxed sales charts.
There’s a reason for its success: the unmatched ability of Nintendo in consistently delivering excellent experiences for its fans. What’s surprising is that some people who worked on it have been behind the success of numerous Mario games over the years. No doubt Super Mario has been soaring for 38 years now.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder shares not only its success but also some developers from the first-ever game in the series!
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Almost 38 years ago, a bunch of developers decided to make a game based on a couple of jumpy plumbers. All these guys want to do is save the princess. It was a simple premise backed by simple yet challenging gameplay that would go on to create history. The game was no doubt a success; Nintendo’s first ever Mario Bros. game was met with widespread praise and surprising success.
The first Super Mario Bros. title was the fruits of the labor of mainly five game developers:
Shigeru Miyamoto was the main creator and director, Takashi Tezuka worked with Miyamoto as a co-designer, Koji Kondo worked on the music composition and sound effects. Meanwhile, Toshihiko Nakago and Kazuaki Morita were the programmers. Four of these five developers—everyone except for Kazuaki Morita—are involved with Super Mario Bros. Wonder. It looks like they have been on a success streak for a record-breaking 38 years. And Wonder only takes that record a step further.
To put Nintendo's incredible continuity into a bit more perspective-
Super Mario Bros. (1985) was made by a team of five people, *38 years ago*. Of those five people, four of them worked on Super Mario Bros. Wonder.
— Max Nichols (@maxnichols) October 23, 2023
This means that besides carrying a huge legacy that can be hard to carry and match, Wonder also has the support of some of the most recognized developers in the industry. Although Miyamoto’s involvement was limited to consultation and mainly overlooking the progress. This goes to show that when it comes to gaming ideas, they keep evolving, no matter how old a developer is.
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It is being reported that even though the fifth person on the team, Kazuaki Morita, is still at Nintendo, he has not worked on any titles since 2019. One wonders if he has his own little project being worked on.
What about this game’s next-gen plans?
Nintendo is currently enjoying the success of Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Meanwhile, there’s a big chance of this game making its way to the Switch successor commonly named by fans as the Nintendo Switch 2.
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There’s been rumors going around talking about the possibility of the Nintendo Switch successor being named Super Nintendo Switch instead. Fans came to this conclusion after spotting some button prompts in trailers for Paper Mario, Thousand Year Door, and Super Mario RPG. Even though nothing of the sort was present in the trailer for Wonder, its success might prompt Nintendo to bring it to their new console.
Watch This Story: Highest-rated Nintendo Games of All Time.
