You may have heard that Super Mario Galaxy 2 will feature 90% new content, but it won’t have 90% new storyline, according to a Wired interview with Mario creator, and SMG2 producer Shigeru Miyamoto. Even though the original Super Mario Galaxy included a comparatively richer plot than most Mario titles, Miyamoto explained that he’d “like to go with as little story as possible […] I’ve always felt that the Mario games themselves aren’t particularly suited to having a very heavy story.”
Miyamoto continues:
I just feel that the Mario games are something that should be a much more bright and active experience. […] With the Mario games, you don’t need to have such a complicated setting where you have these particular characters with complicated backstories that can weigh down the bright and fun feel of the game.
I feel that even if all that you have is that the villain is just simply a villain and you fight them, and you throw them down, and you find out, well, that wasn’t such a bad villain after all, that’s enough story for ultimately what is just about a very fun experience.
However, it seems that Miyamoto’s stripped down philosophy has caused some friction with other designers during his career at Nintendo. Director Yoshiaki Koizumi prefers his games with a little more narrative meat, according to Miyamoto: “Mr. Koizumi is the type of person who, whenever we’re working on a new Mario game, he always wants to bring more story elements into it, as he did with Super Mario Galaxy.”
Perhaps the funniest excerpt from the interview was Miyamoto trying to explain how and why Princess Peach keeps getting kidnapped:
“They always want to have these dramatic scenes where Princess Peach gets kidnapped, but I always tell them, no, it’s fine — Princess Peach likes cake, so you can just have them use cake as bait to kidnap Princess Peach, and that’s enough,” he laughed.
“Glutton” was the word in Japanese he used to describe Princess Peach.
“I was thinking they could have these big ships come in, and they’ve got these big chains all over them, and they drop a plate down with cake on it,” he said.
The lack of story or plot in Mario games has never really bothered me, and I’ve never really noticed before now, but maybe I’ve just been hoodwinked by Miyamoto and my Nintendo nostalgia. What do you guys think — does Mario need a story or not?
[Via Wired]
