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Game developers in the 80s and 90s were far more liberal in how their IP was used, and it’s still always interesting to get a look behind the scenes at how Nintendo (famously known for its high level of control) operated within this.
Phil Harnage, a writer on The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World, spoke to Eurogamer recently on what it was like working with Nintendo back in the day:
“They were also kind of liberal in letting us do things that had never been in the game and there was no pushback. I think they liked it when we put Mario in the wild west, in the future and underwater. We would take a familiar fairy tale, legend or something the kids already knew and we would build up an episode around that and make it as fun as possible.”
He also explained how it wasn’t always necessary to have a link with the subject matter of the videogames:
“I have never been very good at video games, but I did play Mario because the in-house producer was a fanatic and had a Nintendo [console] in his office. Mostly, I would sit and watch him because he was so good, and he would say there’s that creature and this other creature you’ve got to watch out for. He taught me about the world. It was going to be different [from the games] yet it had to have all the familiar touchstones, like the Goombas, the fire plants…if we ever excused something from the game we heard about it, but Nintendo reviewed the scripts and they made sure that everything was good.”
Of course, there will almost certainly be a far greater level of control by Nintendo in the upcoming Super Mario movie — especially after Mario’s last outing on the big screen.
Source: Nintendo Life
