Do YOU know Super Ma-RPG?
I regretfully have not played Super Mario RPG, but I have a feeling it wouldn’t be so revered as a classic had Nintendo followed Square’s initial pitch, which included Mario riding a horse, wearing a cape, and holding a sword. It’d just be Mario in a Final Fantasy game, really, which is somehow less weird than Mario playing basketball with Shaq and Kobe in NBA Street Vol 3 on the Gamecube (my create-a-character was a 3-point specialist who looked like Johnny Cage).
Anyways, as “Did You Know Gaming?” goes on to explain, Mario’s creator, Shigeru Miyamoto immediately responded to the illustration with “that’s not right.” I imagine he did it in Hank Hill’s “that boy ain’t right” voice.
All sorts of cool tidbits accumulated in this video. Demos of a swords and magic Mario RPG and one with jumps and the hammer were shown to a crowd and crowd applause level dictated which Nintendo would go with. And Super Mario RPG started as a pure 2D RPG, with the overhaul into a forced 3D perspective coming during development.
