Yoshi Was Almost Left Out of Super Mario Maker
Mario’s frog suit from Super Mario 3 was added to Super Mario Maker this week, but only as a bonus costume winnable from completing an Event Course. Some people were disappointed the suit didn’t give Mario better swimming abilities as it did in the game, but some items required a lot of thought by the development team, even though fans would want them. For example, at one point during development they considered leaving Yoshi out of the toolbox.
Takashi Tezuka, producer of Super Mario Maker, and Yosuke Oshino, the game’s director, were interviewed by the magazine Nintendo Dream. According to them, some people on the team felt that Yoshi shouldn’t be in the game for reasons that he would have to appear in places and encounter enemies he never would in the normal games. Yoshi made it in at Tezuka’s insistence.
Oshino: We decided to put in characteristic actions like Raccoon Mario, Caped Mario and Propeller Mario during the first phases of development. But Yoshi had much controversy…
Tezuka: I was a bit pushy in requesting to have Yoshi. There were reasons like being responsible for the Wii U game Yoshi’s Woolly World, wanting to use the Yoshi amiibo, and wanting to have some kind of collaboration as it is also Yoshi’s 25th anniversary.
Oshino: But adding Yoshi was complicated, so we discussed what should we do. In Super Mario World, you couldn’t enter a Ghost House with Yoshi for example. As you can freely arrange things in this title, there were many occasions in which it was required to think about how to apply things that you couldn’t do in the original game, like whether or not Yoshi can step on a Boo and what Yoshi can eat and what he can’t.
Yoshi is available on the Super Mario World and New Super Mario Bros. U maps, while on the Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario 3 maps his place in the menu is replaced with Kuribo’s Shoe. Yoshi cannot step on or eat a Boo.
[Source: GoNintendo]