Games
Mario Mario 128 128 The The Unfinished Unfinished Game GameYou’ve You’ve Probably Probably Played Played WORDS BY ROBERT GIBBONS
The year is 1996. Nintendo is hot off the launch of the Nintendo 64 and the groundbreaking, genre defining
game: Super Mario 64. It was the darling of every critic and consumer. Wanting to strike while the iron is hot, work began in the back rooms of Nintendo on its successor: Mario 128. A game that held so much promise, yet never came to pass. A game whose development characterised the next decade of Nintendo games, yet is erased from the annals of their history. A game that doesn’t exist, yet one that you’ve likely already played. Mario 128 began with a few simple ideas that had been scrapped from Super Mario 64: Luigi as a co-op character and a rideable Yoshi being chief among them. With these, Shigeru Miyamoto began work on the last game he would ever direct. The Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development Division (Nintendo EAD) began work on several prototypes to see how these ideas could play out. Through this process, what began as a simple Super Mario 64 sequel, began to grow. Firstly, Luigi stopped being an optional character for co-op, but instead became someone the player would control simultaneously with Mario. Secondly, Miyamoto, following the release of Super Mario 64, grew increasingly frustrated with Mario’s popularity as a children’s character. So, in a 2002 interview with Playboy Weekly Japan (yes, that Playboy), he promised that Mario 128 would have more mature graphics and themes. Thirdly, they wanted to include a new type of enemy AI that would react in more varied ways to Mario’s attacks. Finally, Miyamoto wanted a more complicated way of platforming that would see Mario traversing spherical stages. The production process dragged on with countless delays. It was first delayed by the release of Ocarina of Time, which was intended to be an N64 launch title, but was delayed by almost a year. Nintendo was unwilling to devote the staff necessary for Mario 128 until production was completed on Zelda. It was then delayed further by Miyamoto’s own schedule, since he insisted on directing Mario 128, despite supervising countless other games simultaneously. Even when Nintendo EAD had prototypes ready, Miyamoto didn’t have the time to play them. In 1999, he told Nintendo Power that he had a prototype for Mario 128 that had been sitting on his desk for over a year, but he hadn’t had the time to play it yet. What these delays meant in concrete terms was that the goalposts kept shifting on where Mario 128 would end up. It began as an N64 game, then it became a game for the 64DD (a failed disk drive peripheral for the N64 that only saw release in Japan) and then it became a Gamecube title. This brings us to Nintendo SpaceWorld 2000. The SpaceWorld showcase was an annual trade show that Nintendo hosted from 1989 to 2001 which Wikipedia describes as “three days of high-energy party atmosphere”. Existing before widespread international video game journalism, it has become a treasure trove of video game legend and hearsay. From SpaceWorld 2000, however, we have footage from the crowd as Nintendo shows the only public demo of Mario 128 A blank screen with the words Mario 128. 22
