Trivia / Super Mario Bros. Wonder

---

• Author's Saving Throw:
  • The biggest criticism of the New Super Mario Bros. subseries, particularly New Super Mario Bros. 2 and New Super Mario Bros. U, was their lack of fresh and original ideas, often relying on reusing older ideas from previous games over making new ones. The game's director — Shiro Mouri — would acknowledge this in an interview with Eurogamer, admitting that what were once original surprising elements in the 2D games have become increasingly "normalized" over time and that he wanted to do something new and bring that element of mystery and surprise back into 2D Mario with Wonder, explaining the game's Denser and Wackier direction.
  • The advent of the Super Mario Maker subseries of Game Makers caused several players and journalists to worry that they eliminated the need for another full-fledged 2D Mario game. Longtime Mario developer and producer Takashi Tezuka revealed in an interview that he started conceptualizing the game with this in mind from the very beginning and developed the game planning it to be completely different from Super Mario Maker.
• Cross-Dressing Voices:
  • Caitlyn Elizabeth voices Prince Florian.
  • Dawn M. Bennett voices Nabbit.
  • Non-binary actor Giselle Fernandez voices Daisy.
• Cross-Regional Voice Acting: The English voices are recorded at both the Seattle-based Bad Animals, where most of the previous games in the series were recorded, and the LA-based Cup of Tea Productions, which has recorded the English dubs for other Nintendo series such as Fire Emblem from Awakening onwards and WarioWare from Get it Together! onwards.
• Content Leak: About a week before release, some people managed to get ahold of the game early and upload playthroughs to YouTube. By October 16, 2023, Nintendo managed to take down every video spoiling the game, but the damage had already been done; some people had seen, among other things, all seven worlds, the colors of the different Wonder Seeds, most of the badges, and even the final boss.
• Dueling Works: With Sonic Superstars, as both are 2D sidescrolling Platform Games with four-player co-op multiplayer, a fresh stylistic art-style, and form-changing mechanics releasing in October 2023, in days of each other, in addition to the long history of Mario and Sonic as rival franchises. Mario producer Takashi Tezuka has acknowledged this in an interview with Game Informer, describing the scenario as an "interesting coincidence".
• God Never Said That: In the interim between the June 2023 reveal trailer and August 2023 Nintendo Direct, various people claimed that Nintendo confirmed Elephant Mario was an exclusive power-up for Mario in a similar vein to the Toadette-only Super Crown form from New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, with every other character receiving a different animal transformation. While many people took it as fact (with others imagining said forms), the source of the supposed claims (the official website) never actually said anything of the sort, with it merely noting the playable cast can all transform into new power-up forms. Additionally, Mario power-up forms have always been referred to as Mario's specifically as well, regardless of who can use them. Sure enough, elephant forms for the other characters (minus the Yoshis and Nabbit) were eventually revealed in the August 2023 Direct.
• Incidental Multilingual Wordplay: "Wonder Seed" is translated in Spanish as the rhyming "Semilla Maravilla", while in German it's "Wundersamen", which includes the word "wundersam" ("wondrous").
• The Other Darrin: Several characters were recast in this game for the first time in decades:
  • Nintendo announced the retirement of longtime Mario voice actor Charles Martinet in August 2023, and later confirmed that Wonder would be the first game to have Mario (and later Luigi) voiced by someone else since 1996. Kevin Afghani would confirm on Twitter he'd be voicing both Bros. on October 13, 2023.
  • This is the first game since Mario Party 5 where Daisy is not voiced by her longtime voice actress, Deanna Mustard. Instead, she is voiced by series newcomer Giselle Fernandez.
  • Instead of being voiced by Nintendo sound designer Natsuko Yokoyama, Dawn M. Bennett plays Nabbit.
• Promoted Fanboy: Kevin Afghani, who took over the voice roles of Mario and Luigi beginning with this game, is a big fan of the series; notably, he dressed as Mario for his high school prom.
• Role Reprise: While several characters are recast, some longtime voice actors still stick around:
  • Kenny James returns to the role of Bowser, having played the character since Super Mario Strikers.
  • Caety Sagoian once more reprises Bowser Jr., this time with brand new voice clips.
  • Samantha Kelly comes back to her roles as Princess Peach and all of the Toads (Yellow and Blue Toad, Captain Toad, and Toadette).
  • Though uncredited, Kazumi Totaka voices Yoshi once again as he has since Yoshi's Story in 1997, notably with brand new voice clips for the first time since Super Mario Galaxy 2.
• Star-Making Role: While Kevin Afghani was an unknown voice actor, his role as Mario and Luigi helped put him on the map.
• Sequel Gap: This game is the first new full-fledged (Not counting Super Mario Maker and Super Mario Maker 2, or Super Mario Run) mainline 2D Super Mario Bros. game for consoles since the original release of 2012's New Super Mario Bros. U. It is also the first mainline 2D Mario game not connected to the New subseries since 1992's Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins.
• Uncredited Role: Kazumi Totaka voices Yoshi once again, but isn't listed in the credits.
• Unspecified Role Credit: The end credits shows a list of voice actors, but not with the specific characters they voice. Many of the voice actors later confirmed their roles on Twitter/X, such as Mick Wingert as the Talking Flowers, Christine Marie Cabanos as the Poplins, and Caitlyn Elizabeth as Prince Florian.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The developers considered having live commentary during gameplay, including a mode where the commentator was a Tsundere. This was scrapped due to the amount of commentary for various actions needed, and decided to scale it down with the Talking Flowers.
  • Scram, Skedaddlers! was originally meant to be in the slot Here Come the Hoppos occupies, based on the internal filenames for both stages (Course004 and Course003), respectively. This change was actually made quite late in development, as the reveal trailer for the game shows both stages with different tilesets and backgrounds based on their original locations on the World Map. Heck, Here Come the Hoppos was the third level shown after Welcome to the Flower Kingdom! and Piranha Plants on Parade - the first 2 stages of the game.
  • According to Takashi Tezuka, the team originally wanted to incorporate the egg throwing mechanics from Yoshi's Island into Yoshi's moveset. While a prototype was made, it was scrapped due to it being too hard to control.
  • Composer Koji Kondo pitched a Wonder Flower effect that would've had Mario turn into a giant live-action version of himself who would hum to the background music and say "boing" when jumping. This pitch was rejected due to it being too extreme and bizarre. However, the "Sound, Off?" badge received as a prize for beating the Brutal Bonus Level does replace most of the sound effects with spoken versions of those effects, meaning a little bit of Kondo's original idea is still there.
  • One proposed Wonder effect, shown off at a 2024 panel, would have had Mario's head replaced with a giant pixellated version of his NES sprite's head made out of blocks, which he would have to keep from being destroyed by the environment and by the Gnawsher enemies.
• Written for My Kids: As stated by Shiro Mouri in the aforementioned interview, Daisy was made playable because his two daughters would often fight over who got to play as Peach in past Mario games, and was hoping that the fights would be resolved by giving them the option to also play as Daisy, thereby averting The Smurfette Principle. Nonetheless, he also mentions in the interview that he thought that "having Daisy would be something that a lot of Mario fans would be happy with!".

---