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Prerelease:Super Mario Bros.
This page details prerelease information and/or media for Super Mario Bros..
Conception
Originally, Super Mario Bros. wasn't even meant to be a Mario game. The game started development as a generic Famicom title starring... a rectangle that measured 16 pixels wide and 32 pixels tall, which was obviously just a placeholder until the actual player character was designed. At this early stage of development, the player wasn't even able to jump. However, when he noticed how well Mario Bros. was performing in arcades, designer and assistant director Takashi Tezuka pitched to project head Shigeru Miyamoto the idea of using Mario as the main character. Miyamoto agreed, and the rest was history.
At various points in development:
- Visible checkpoints were considered, similarly to the checkpoint flags in modern Mario platformers.
- The game focused far more on shooting enemies than platforming tasks. Mario could carry weapons, with a rifle and a "beam gun" being usable.
- The original control scheme was very different from the one we're familiar with; Up on the D-Pad was used to jump, while A either used an item if Mario was carrying one or caused him to kick if he wasn't.
- The game had sky segments in addition to the ground segments which ended up being used. These levels consisted of Mario riding a rocket and shooting enemies amongst the clouds. The sky-based bonus rounds of the final game are apparently a remnant of this idea.
- Instead of scrolling continuously, the game's environments scrolled screen-by-screen, similarly to Super Mario Bros. Special.
Concept Art
According to concept art, Yoshi from Super Mario World was planned to be playable. Due to the technical limitations of the NES without a mapper, the idea was shelved until this became possible on more powerful hardware.
