The world of Super Mario It is a dangerous place. In the games, the plumber falls off a cliff, gets pricked with spikes, and gets everything from wrenches to fireballs thrown at him. But he always gets up and starts again, which raises an important question: does Nintendo's hero really feel pain? According to Takashi Tezuka, who has worked on the series since the original. Super Mario Bros. (including serving as producer in the last year Wonder), there really is no clear answer. “It may be that Mario does feel pain,” she tells me.
But that ambiguity may have been because I was asking the wrong question. The important part, he explains, are the emotions players experience when Mario plummets to his death or is fried by Bowser's breath. “If the player feels that Mario is in pain, it's a better experience, rather than talking about whether Mario is actually in pain,” Tezuka says.
And players can feel that emotion much more in Wonder, with the most detailed and lively animations in the game. Mario's face contorts uncomfortably when the game over screen appears and he shakes in the air after taking damage from a spiked shell or biting into the piranha plant. It's enough to make you cringe, which is the point.
“For us, if Mario hits an enemy and the person playing says 'ouch!' that's ideal,” says Tezuka.