Super Mario 64-2 The name
Super Mario 128 was first used as early as January 1997 by
Shigeru Miyamoto, as a possible name for a
Super Mario 64 sequel. The name
Super Mario 64-2 was also used interchangeably with
Super Mario 128. This rumored expansion and sequel to
Super Mario 64 was said to be developed for the
64DD, but was canceled due to the 64DD's commercial failure. Miyamoto mentioned at
E3's August 1997 convention that he was "just getting started" on the project. At Nintendo's
Space World 1997 trade show in November 1997, Miyamoto added "We haven't decided [whether it's two-player] yet. We are currently working with a system where Mario and Luigi can co-exist, and they are both controllable by the player. But we will decide more game elements when we finish everything about
Zelda." In May 1998, Miyamoto expressed hope in making the game as complex as
Banjo-Kazooie. In November 1998, Miyamoto said, "Well, for over a year now at my desk, a prototype program of
Mario and
Luigi has been running on my monitor. We've been thinking about the game, and it may be something that could work on a completely new game system." The game had only a demo of one level made for it. Miyamoto claimed that multiplayer functionality was the first aspect of the game that he wanted to include. {{quote|
Nintendo Power: How about the sequel to
Super Mario 64?
Miyamoto: We've been thinking about the game, and it may be something that could work on a completely new system.
Nintendo Power: Are you planning on making a two-player game with simultaneous, cooperative play?
Miyamoto: We've actually been considering a four-player game with simultaneous play, but each screen would need to be very small, and we would have to implement new camera work. But it's these sort of problems that I like to tackle. Miyamoto had considered the two next frontiers of the
Super Mario series to be a gameplay mechanic of walking on a rotating sphere, and coincidentally a setting in spacebut it took a long time to find a way to resonate these ideas with the production team. He loved the novel idea of sphere walking, because it was totally unexplored in the game industry, and because focusing on a full sphere can eliminate camera movements and thus motion sickness. He learned greatly from the world's adaptation to the 3D gameplay of
Super Mario 64 and he briefly experimented with rolling fields during the development of
Paper Mario (2000) for Nintendo 64. During the development of
Doshin the Giant for Nintendo 64, he eagerly proposed that it could become the first sphere walking game but the staff rejected such an exceedingly massive development for the game which was released in December 1999. This software was controlled by staff to show new gameplay mechanics and the processing power of the upcoming
GameCube game console. Development of the demo was directed by
Yoshiaki Koizumi, who would later become the director of
Super Mario Galaxy. Koizumi said he spent much thought after the event about the "close to impossible" undertaking of productizing
Super Mario 128 as demonstrated. Combining that demo's rounded surface with Mario's need to freely roam, Koizumi's next imagined groundbreaking objective was to demonstrate Mario walking upon a gravitational sphere. To even be able to attempt that, would require tremendous technological expertise, motivation, and achievement from a dedicated team and would not be undertaken until 2003. At Space World 2001,
Super Mario Sunshine was unveiled as the next in the
Mario series, released in 2002. The 2001 GameCube game
Super Smash Bros. Melee alluded to
Super Mario 128 with a battle stage titled "Super Mario 128", where the player is assailed by a total of 128 tiny Mario figurines. Rumors said that the reason for Nintendo not having shown
Super Mario 128 at E3 2003 was because the game was extraordinarily innovative and Nintendo did not want other developers stealing the ideas from the gameas some had assumed about the Space World 2000 show. In 2003, Nintendo's George Harrison stated that
Super Mario 128 may not appear on GameCube at all.
Yoshiaki Koizumi, who had directed the original
Super Mario 128 demonstration, joined Nintendo's new
EAD Tokyo office. There,
Shigeru Miyamoto pushed him to hold a much bigger vision for the next
Mario series game and Koizumi said this: "By working on [
Donkey Kong Jungle Beat] together, I got to know the staff well enough by then, and I thought, if it was with this team, we may just be able to tackle the new and difficult challenge of making spherical platforms work." There at EAD in 2003, Koizumi's team began working on prototypical spherical platforms in an intensive three-month process of iterative demonstrations for Miyamoto. Nintendo's President
Satoru Iwata requested Miyamoto's singular signature effort to turn this product, which would become
Super Mario Galaxy, into a showcase for the
Wii. Miyamoto again confirmed the existence of
Super Mario 128 in an interview during February 2004, but the game failed to surface. Some believed this was due to the announcements of
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and the
Nintendo DS, both revealed at the 2004 show.
GameSpy asked Miyamoto about the game after E3: IGN later in the year got a similar response. Miyamoto again asserted
Super Mario 128s experimental nature. At the
GDC 2005, Nintendo of America's VP of Marketing,
Reggie Fils-Aimé, stated that
Super Mario 128 would be shown at E3 2005, probably in the form of a non-interactive video. However, for the third year in a row, the game once again failed to surface during E3. During a
GameSpot video interview at E3, Reggie Fils-Aimé stated, "I can only show what Mr. Miyamoto gives me to show." When a reporter asked if it exists, he responded, "I've seen bits and pieces." In an interview with Miyamoto from 2005, a Wired News reporter confirmed that
Super Mario 128 would not be produced for the GameCube, but rather that it had been definitively moved to the
Wii (then code-named Revolution). In September 2005,
Shigeru Miyamoto gave his least ambiguous comments regarding
Super Mario 128. Questioned as to the status of the game by a Japanese radio station, he revealed that Mario would have a new character by his side and reiterated that the game would appear on the
Wii with a different name. He mentioned that
Super Mario 128 had played a large role in the conception of the Wii console (then known as Revolution), as
Super Mario 64 had done for the
Nintendo 64. He went as far to say that the Wii was based around "this new type of game". In 2006, Miyamoto said that he had forgotten whether
Super Mario 64-2 had been prototyped for the 64DD, and said that "it's become other games". When asked whether he meant that the demo's gameplay functions are being used in other games, Miyamoto responded, "From the time that we were originally making
Mario 64, Mario and Luigi were moving together. But we couldn't get it working in the form of a game", echoing his statements from 1999. He also hinted that some elements inspired by
Super Mario 128, such as running upon a spherical surface, had been incorporated into
Super Mario Galaxy. On March 8, 2007, Miyamoto delivered the GDC 2007 keynote speech. He mentioned that
Super Mario 128 was merely a demonstration of the
GameCube's power and restated that several techniques from
Super Mario 128 had become foundational gameplay concepts of the
Pikmin series and the upcoming
Super Mario Galaxy series. He said "The one question I'm always asked is, 'What happened to
Mario 128?' ... Most of you already played it ... in a game called
Pikmin". ==Legacy==