Super Mario's Wacky Worlds

File:Wacky.jpg

Super Mario's Wacky Worlds was a cancelled Mario platform game for the Philips CD-I. The games was made to be a sequel to Super Mario World, a Super Nintendo game released in 1990. While an early prototype of the game received positive feedback from Nintendo, the game was cancelled due to poor sales of the CD-I.

Overview

A planned platformer for the CD-I console in 1993, Super Mario;s Wacky Worlds is about Mario in a series of wacky worlds including ancient lands, haunted worlds, jungle and icelands, and well as more. The game was attempted to duplicate the gameplay of Super Mario World for the SNES. Though the game's sprites are base on Super Mario World, the level design is based on Earth locations rather than the Mushroom Kingdom or Mushroom World.

History

Wacky Worlds emerged in a time in which its developing company, NovaLogic, was hoping to be hired by Nintendo. Then helping Nintendo with the "SNES-CD", a disc drive for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Philips had a right to make games with Nintendo characters for their CD-i. It was suggested to NovaLogic by a Nintendo sales executive that they port simpler Super Nintendo games to the CD-i, sparking the idea of "putting Super Mario World onto a CD-i disk": making a quasi-sequel to the SNES launch game for the CD-i.

Developers Silas Warner and John Brooks were drafted as the game's designers, and worked 24 hours a day for two weeks on the game, finishing only a part of one level to present to Nintendo. Their meeting with the Nintendo developers came at 8:00 AM on a Friday morning, and they had their short part of the game on a disc four hours before this.

Nintendo was very much impressed at the two men's job, but because of poor CD-i sales was forced to cancel the game. This ended the CD-i career of Warner, who had expected Nintendo's exact reaction, however other developers such as lead artist Nina Stanley stayed with the project.

Though the developers were highly enthusiastic about making a traditional Mario game (partly to clear their reputation surrounding Nintendo-licensed characters), NovaLogic hoped to use as little money as possible on the project, which was mostly executed with the intentions of making a small amount of profit while games such as those of the Comanche series had focus.

Version 0.11, the game's final prototype (a pre-alpha), was finished on March 3, 1993 after the project had about a year of work. Approximately 80% of the game's art, 95% percent of its design, and around 30% of its code was finished.

Three prototypes are in circulation, one of which was sold on the online auction website eBay for $1,000. A certain prototype, perhaps the same one as that sold on eBay, has been leaked to the internet in ROM form and can be played on emulators. The ROM has also been unofficially ported to the CD-i itself.

Gameplay

As it is a pre-alpha, the prototype is rather limited; Super Mario can only walk both ways and jump, and no powerups exist. He cannot slide or swim, but it would appear that these abilities would have been implemented had development continued. Enemies are also not programmed correctly; they disappear when Mario ends up above them, suggesting incomplete stomping attempts. Enemies also cannot harm Mario, and are stopped in their tracks if touched, even if it means ending up floating in the air.

Level progression is not explicit, but can be pieced together by the selectable stages. Most worlds have two or three levels, the first of which end with Warp Pipes (or similar things, such as the Trojan Horse in Greek 1), whereas the last most often has a stylized "M" object holding tape, presumably a similar aspect to the Giant Gates, but ending worlds instead of levels. However, the mysterious "M"s may serve another purpose, as one is found alongside a Warp Pipe in Igloo 1; perhaps they would have signified bonuses.

Both "M" marks and Warp Pipes are non-functional, so one must restart their CD-i or emulator to escape a level.

Limitations

Due to the limitations of the CD-I, several features couldn't be included in the game, such as a large number of sprites on the screen, Mode 7 and many visual effects. The nature of the pointing device controller provides difficult controls for Mario, as the game had default controls for running and jumping.

Cancellation

This game was to be one of the few games in Philips' deal with Nintendo that actually played like a Nintendo game — other titles such as Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon and Hotel Mario featured Nintendo characters and aspects of Nintendo gameplay, but were made without much more than concept approval from Nintendo in Japan and differed significantly (where comparisons are even apt) from the NES/SNES games. Despite its ambition to look and play just like a real Super Mario game, this title was never completed due to the poor sales of the Philips CD-i