Trivia / The Wonderful 101

• Acclaimed Flop: Despite positive reception from critics, due to some questionable decisions by Nintendo worldwide, the game bombed hard globally after 60,000 units in total sales in just two months. The game has since dropped down to half price at many American retailers due to low sales.
• All-Star Cast: Good Lord, yes. Tara Strong, Kari Wahlgren and Roger Craig Smith among many others are featured here.
• Approval of God: Despite being a Nintendo-funded IP, Nintendo allowed Platinum Games to port the game to other platforms for the remastered version through their Kickstarter.
• Ascended Meme: Platinum leaned in a lot on the meme of Kamiya blocking people on Twitter, with one of the higher reward tiers of the Kickstarter being that you can personally be blocked by him.
• Channel Hop: The original version was released by Nintendo exclusively for the Wii U, while the remastered ports were self-published by PlatinumGames for multiple platforms with Nintendo's permission.
• Colbert Bump:
  • Music and main Wonderful One trophies featured in Super Smash Bros for the Wii U have helped give this game attention (and helped convince unsure people it's a first party Nintendo title).
  • It got additional bumps thanks to Chip Cheezum's Let's Play, and all four members of the Best Friends Zaibatsu putting it on their Best of 2013 lists.
  • The game was offered as one of the final Club Nintendo rewards for 600 coins. Leading to a big boost in the eShop sales charts.
• Creator-Driven Successor: The game contains many elements from past Platinum Games and its predecessor Clover Studios:
  • Viewtiful Joe: Both games feature Henshin Heroes who wear black-colored masks and can transform between their normal and superhero attire any time. Some mechanics such as Ukemi and the Battery Meter also make an appearance here. Silvia even makes a cameo as Wonder-Cheerleader. The DLC game The Wonderful One: After School Hero also plays out like the side-scrolling beat-em-up platformers that the Viewtiful Joe games were.
  • Ōkami: The drawing mechanic works similarly to the Brush techniques that can execute different attacks.
  • Bayonetta: Many elements from Bayonetta make a return here, such as the combo system, the grading system, the use of secret levels, and quick time events. You could also unlock Bayonetta, Jeanne, and Rodin as playable characters.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: Kari Wahlgren voices Wonder-Green, while Debi Derryberry voices Luka and young Will.
• Descended Creator:
  • Director Hideki Kamiya appears as an unlockable character. As a joke, he's intentionally slow and dies in a single hit.
  • The dub's voice director, Kris Zimmerman, also voices Wonder-Black (the few lines he does have).
• Development Gag: Secret Character Poseman's design was the starting point for the character who would become Viewtiful Joe. Here in The Wonderful 101, he's turned into an Expy.
• Invisible Advertising: Both the original Wii U release and Remaster suffered this for different reasons.
  • The original Wii U release received zero TV commercials or print advertisements, with any promotion being relegated to online ads. Kamiya himself was upset about this and tweeted about it. This can also likely be attributed to Nintendo's notorious Creator's Apathy in the Wii U era.
  • The Remaster did have a successful Kickstater campaign, but after the game launched, nobody knew it was out there. Likely due to PlatinumGames not having a proper marketing budget as they were handling publishing duties.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Not the game itself, but the Official Soundtrack. As of the end of 2016, it was delisted from digital storefronts. Physical copies were only made for the remasters Kickstarter.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Charlie Schlatter as Wonder-Red.
  • Kari Wahlgren as Wonder-Green.
  • JB Blanc as Wonder-Yellow.
  • Yuri Lowenthal as Wonder-White.
  • Fred Tatasciore as James Shirogane.
  • Steve Blum as Wanna.
• Screwed by the Network:
  • Nintendo gave this game very little marketing outside of Japan and then shipped thirty-thousand units in Japan alone. After about 5,000 units in one day of Japanese sales, the game went to sell near 3,500 more in the following week since launch, almost clearing a third of the initial shipment of units.
  • The game is doing even worse in Europe, only selling about 7,000 units after one week of sales.
  • In America, it shared the same fate as in Japan and Europe with 15,000 units after one week of sales. It didn't help that Nintendo of America made the ridiculous decision of releasing it two days before Grand Theft Auto V, and that initial shipments to stores were as slim as or slimmer than Japan's initial shipments. Even worse is the fact that Nintendo keeps trying to push eShop purchases rather than retail, and gave the game no television ads whatsoever (although it did get quite a bit of online advertising). As such, the game has been selling a lot better digitally than retail-wise.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original product proposal was for the game to be a sister series to Super Smash Bros. with 100 playable Nintendo characters at once. It was also going to have a darker artstyle rather than a colorful and cutesy artstyle.
  • According to Kamiya's tweets, Platinum approached Nintendo asking if the Punch-Out!! theme could be used in Operation 5-C, but Nintendo declined their request.
  • There is a number of thought up Wonderful One concepts that did not make it into the final team. Among these are more color names — Orange, Purple, Brown, etc — but whether or not they were planned to be major members with their own weapon types as with the final color members is not known.
  • The Remaster was originally planned to be released on the Xbox One and other Microsoft systems, but Platinum Games was unable to do it citing the engine of the original game compared to the Xbox would make a port very expensive. Though they insisted cost was the only reason they held up on an Xbox release and didn’t rule out doing it in the future.
• Working Title: Project P-100

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