'Super Mario Bros. Wonder' nearly had live commentary.
The developers of the Nintendo Switch game have been revealing some of the ideas that were cut from the final version of the 2D adventure, and one of them was having a sports-style commentator.
Shiro Mouri, the game's director, revealed in Nintendo's Ask the Developer series: "Tezuka-san also once asked, 'Can't we have live commentary?'. I had absolutely no clue what he meant. But I interpreted it as a desire for a new experience, even if it's not necessarily in the form of live commentary."
They even hired someone full-time to work on the feature but they ultimately decided it wasn't the right fit.
Koichi Hayashida, a member of the design team, said: "We actually spent about six months seriously developing live commentary. We tried adding voices to match the player's actions. Even though we'd added various voices, questions like, 'Who's doing this commentary?' started to pop up amongst the team. Something about it just didn't feel right."
The commentator would have had a "generic, like a newscaster" with the option to swap to a Tsundere, a character who appears cold and sarcastic.
Takashi Tezuka, a producer, said: "But if we were to do this commentary feature seriously, just the process of creating voice variations alone would've involved a tremendous amount of work.
"So, unfortunately, we had to let it go. Still, it would've been a shame to shut down the whole experiment. So we brought in an additional team member to dedicate themselves to this feature full-time."
Instead, the game has the Talking Flowers.
Hayashida added: "It's nice that you're never lonely when the Talking Flowers are there. If you were all alone in a course, it might feel like it was you against the world, but the Talking Flowers speak to you at just the right time."
