Trivia / Next Level Games

• What Could Have Been:
  • Super Mario Spikers was a potential sports game that began development after the release of Mario Strikers Charged. It initially started development as a standard volleyball-based game called Mario Volleyball, but game mechanics based on wrestling were slowly added as the concept was refined, due to the team wishing to utilize the knowledge gained from previous cancelled project (WWE Titans: Parts Unknown). Nintendo rejected the game upon Next Level Games showing them the prototype, deeming the violence to be too realistic to fit alongside the publisher's usual fare, as seen with its use of realistic wrestling moves. One example of this is seen in one of the few animations of the prototipe that were discovered, which shows Waluigi violently stomping a downed Mario, leading even some journalists to think that this violence is out of place for Mario. The company would end up producing Punch-Out!! for the Nintendo Wii instead.
  • Project Valkyrie was a Metroid PvP multiplayer shooter project that was worked on-and-off starting towards the end of Punch-Out!!'s production. It began development for the Nintendo DS, with these three pieces of Concept Art being the only things to publicly surface from that stage of development. The project would end up being put on hold when Nintendo requested that the company make Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, then revived afterwards as a potential Wii U title, before being retooled into Metroid Prime: Federation Force for the Nintendo 3DS.

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