Prerelease:New Super Mario Bros. Wii

This page details prerelease information and/or media for New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

This page is rather stubbly and could use some expansion. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue this article?

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To do: There are more videos and screenshots, plus concept art from a (the 2010?) Nintendo Company Guide). Get them and put them in this page. Merge this. 1-4 paper design doc was apparently shown at the Nintendo New York store: https://twitter.com/beforemario/status/1771851070370693348

While it doesn't have as many compared to its predecessor, there are still some notable differences.

Timeline

2009

• June - New Super Mario Bros. Wii is revealed at E3.
• November - New Super Mario Bros. Wii is released in North America and Europe.

June 2009

E3 2009

Trailer

This trailer has lots of differences:

• The HUD is quite similar to its incarnation in the retail game, but has a few slight changes.
  • The font used is very simple, likely a placeholder.
  • The HUD is always transparent. It only becomes transparent if a player is close enough in the retail game.
  • The margin is slightly larger, causing elements to be closer to the center.
  • The spacing between the time and score are smaller, likely due to the smaller font.
  • At 1:02, the sprite for an eighth note is underneath the timer. Its usage is unknown, but the model for the note still exists in the retail game's files.
• Many course elements, such as ? Blocks, Brick Blocks, Pipes, and Coins all have rougher designs more resembling the first game.
  • The animation for ? Blocks is slightly faster.
  • Flowers are not animated, and most likely do not give out coins.
• The same is true for the course tilesets and backgrounds.
  • One of the Grassland backgrounds features much darker colored and simpler trees.
  • The Desert background has a greenish yellow to orange gradient as the sky, rather than a blue one. There are more cacti, and the pyramids have more detail on them.
  • The Ice in the Ice tileset has a much brighter shade of blue.
  • The Mountain Sky background seems to just be World 1's grassland hills with some clouds.
  • The Cloud background is much less detailed. It also remains in the final game's files.
  • What is most likely World 1-Tower uses World 3-Tower's background.
  • The swinging platforms are less detailed.
  • What is most likely World 1-Castle features a vastly different background with a darker sky and more "mechanical" palette.
    • The arrow signpost has a blue palette.
  • World 5-3 uses the grassland background and tileset. Later trailers show this level with the correct tileset and background, so it can be concluded that this is a placeholder.
• When showing points awarded after performing an action, colors are used differently. Points in the 100-800 range are white. 1000 is green, and any further scores are not shown. The final game color codes scores and 1UPs by character to show who got them.
• Hitting ? Blocks with coins only give 100 points, rather than 200.
• Star Coins give out 1000 points instead of 4000.
  • Their HUD icons are also shaded, rather than having none at all.
• Most of the sounds are pulled directly from New Super Mario Bros., complete with the DS's compression.
• The Propeller Suit makes much weaker sounds, and the spin particle effect isn't transparent.
  • Mario also has a different voice clip. It seems to be the one he makes when dismounting Yoshi in Super Mario Galaxy 2.
• Iceballs don't make a sound when freezing enemies.
  • Enemies also shake immediately after being frozen, instead of shaking when they're about to break out of the ice. They also fall when suspended in the air.
• Originally, grey ? Blocks appeared in ice-themed levels, again, like in the first game.
• Bloopers have a static death animation.
• The Checkpoint Flag is completely different, depicting a grey skull on top of a white flag rather than Bowser's insignia on top of a black flag. It also lacks an idle animation. Note that the first game had a skull on its Goal Poles.
• In what seems to be an early World 1-2, Luigi has a Fire Flower. This implies that this level used to feature Fire Flowers rather than Ice Flowers.
• In World 7-4, the platforms, despite functioning almost the same way as they did in the final game, lack an original texture. Whether they were motion controlled or not is unknown, though Luigi picks up Mario at the same time the platforms move, which requires a shake in the final game.
  • The line guides more closely resembled the first game, being thicker and having red circles at the ends.
• Blue Toad and Yellow Toad have different clothes with a Fire Flower. The white on their clothes was changed to red.
• Jumbo Rays do not make a sound when landed on.
• Gears move faster.
• Piranha Plants had different animations and bigger leaves.
• Lava is much brighter, containing more yellow, and is a bit more detailed.
• There is a Red Yoshi at 1:02. There are no Red Yoshis at all in the final game.
  • Stomping on an enemy with Yoshi makes the normal stomp sound effect rather than one resembling the one from Super Mario World. The puff of smoke is larger, and there are only two stars spawned, rather than four.
• The Bramballs have brown feet.

Screenshots

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Demo

Closer to the final but still some differences. This demo was used in Nintendo's E3 2009 Conference, on the E3 show floor and in a room where GameSpot played it privately. It was also used at later 2009 trade shows, such as Gamescom 2009 and PAX 2009.

General Differences

• The HUD now acts as it does in the final game, becoming transparent when a player is close to it. The shading on certain icons were also changed.
• Some sound effects still are pulled from New Super Mario Bros.. The music for underground and sky levels outright use the music as well.
• Many voice clips from the characters are different.
• Camera movements are snappier and only affect the terrain, and not the background.
• Awarded points are now color coded, as they are in the final game.
  • The text for collecting 1UPs are very close to the final game, albeit slightly bigger.
• The common tileset more closely resembles the final game's.
  • Semisolid bridges still look like their DS counterparts, however.
• When hitting coins on top of ? Blocks or out of ? Blocks, they don't explode into particles like when they're collected by touch.
• Mushrooms don't bob from left to right while moving.
  • Funnily enough, this same thing happens in both Super Mario Maker and Super Mario Maker 2's New Super Mario Bros. U style.
• Fire Flowers and Penguin Suits are completely static.
  • While that might be true for the latter, Fire Flowers in New Super Mario Bros. only animate slightly and after a short while. It's possible they do have an idle animation, but it's never seen. The final game has power ups always moving.
• The Propeller Mushroom is, amusingly, a red bolded letter "P" with a propeller slapped on top of it.
• Pipes look similar to their final appearance.
  • The screen wipe transitions when entering pipes have more "peaks" for lack of a better term.
• Red Yoshi is still present, counting its hours before its untimely demise.
• The Goal Pole has darker shading, along with the same skull on its flag as the one used in the first game.
  • The base of the Goal Pole as well as the Castle behind it still resemble the first game, in both appearance and color.
  • Getting the top of the flagpole only awards 8000 points instead of a 1UP.
• Frozen enemies now seem to act like they do in the final game, shaking once they're about to thaw.
• At the end of every level, a results screen was displayed, showing placements of each player. This was only used for Coin Battle and Free-For-All in the final game. Its design is, expectedly, much different.
  • This concept would later go on to be used in Super Mario 3D World... For better or for worse.
• Most Fireballs and Iceballs are different.

Grass

• Bushes are green, rather than yellowish green.
• The ground in grass semisolids use a darker shade of brown, rather than a paler shade.
• The ground in the ledges in the background seem to be yellower.

Snow

• The darker stripe of dirt in the tileset is, in this demo only, light blue instead of dark brown.
• The snow is shaded more, and with turquoise instead of black.
• The grey ? and Brick Blocks were replaced with typical yellow and brown ones.
• The background trees have more vibrant colors.

Mountains

• Mountain levels use the brown underground tileset.
• The background has simpler clouds, along with a blue-green gradient sky. The mountains have more detail on them.

Enemies

• Hammer Bros. and their hammers are slower, and have different animations.
  • The hammers are slightly bigger.
• Cooligans are faster and sweat while falling.

Level Clear

• In the E3 2009 demo, whenever a character completes a stage, the message "Level Clear!" was seen. This was changed to "Course" in the final build for unknown reasons.
• Every character's victory animation is shorter.
• There are no star particles when the text changes color.

Boss Battles

• In the first battle against Larry Koopa as presented in the E3 2009 demo, whenever he goes into his shell, he barely covers any ground.
• The first battle with Morton Koopa was held in World 1-Castle in the demo, not in World 6-Fortress (that level wasn't featured in the demo).
• In the demo, Morton doesn't have Skewers stabbing the platforms to the side; instead, there were Lava Bubbles jumping out of the lava.
• The design of the arena was different, as it was using the castle tileset, instead of the tower tileset that would later be used in the final build.
• In the E3 demo, the players drop from the top of the screen after they enter the boss door, as they did in the first game. In the final version, the player simply appears on the floor of the boss room.

November 2009

PAX Trailer

While it's based on the E3 Trailer, it was taken using a later version and the only levels that seem to have differences to the final game are World 7-4 and World 1-Tower.

• The control block in World 7-4 still isn't there, though the platforms are closer to their final designs.
  • The emblems are placed at the end of tracks instead of on the lifts themselves.
  • World 7-4 also uses the normal cloud background instead of the one with a lot of clouds.
• The Fireballs are still different.
• The moving rock platforms in Towers are grey instead of brown.