Email: Mario 3d + Zelda BotW

Hello Master Malstrom,

I hope you are well with the crazy storm in you region…

I have being reading a lot from you that Mario Bros influenced Zelda 1 and vice versa, so that made me think how to improve the 3D Mario.

I have no problem with Mario being 3D, I always preferred the 2D games because they always felt more complete and more like an adventure. The Mario 3D games always felt like I am in chain, since I NEED to do certain things to get the star, I don’t have an option of how to do it, I just need to discover how to developer want me to do it. Also the world always felt empty and disconnect, they were just areas where you need to follow the path created by Nintendo to reach the goal.

Mario 2d you have the freedom of how to finish the level as you have being saying many and many times in your blog.

So while playing my Zelda BotW I had the crazy idea, why they dont use the engine from Zelda BotW to create a “real” Mario 3D.

Create a huge over world where Mario can run free and go save Peach, The world bosses would be like divine beast / Hyrule Castle, Phantom house & Fortress could be like shrines where you go to a different place in the world.

I know they need to adjust a few things but the graphics output from Zelda BotW matches quite well what we see in the mushroom kingdom, the physics system would be awesome for a Mario game.

Link surfing on shield can be Mario surfing on shell, fire/ice flower = Link ice/fire scepters… etc

I think this mashup would be more true interpretation of Mario in the 3d space and I can have the potential to be killer app like Zelda BotW… curious to hear of thought about this idea.

Cheers,

Long time reader

 

I would like the BotW engine to be used for a Metroid game. But a Mario game could be interesting.

Super Mario Brothers is so much like Legend of Zelda. You have the Overworld you must go through where you go to a dungeon at the end. If you look at Super Mario Brothers by itself, the game seems linear, but if you compare it to every other 1985 game, Super Mario Brothers was breaking linearity. (So too were games like Mega Man.)

Nintendo has two souls: EA and Origin (just to use these two companies as illustrations). EA Nintendo makes Yet Another Mario Kart, Yet Another Sports Mario Game, Another Fire Emblem, Another Kirby game, and so on and so forth.

I’m not interested in EA Nintendo. Nintendo loves EA Nintendo because it is a machine like way to make games and money.

I like Origin Nintendo. Origin Nintendo invents game genres, pushes genres to ways we’ve never seen them before, and creates stuff that is truly new. NES Era Nintendo was largely Origin Nintendo. Since then, Nintendo lazily slaps a hardware feature (16-bit graphics, omg-3d, omg-motion controls) to an old game so they can sell their old games all over again.

It is easy to be EA Nintendo. Origin Nintendo demands work, sweat, and blood.

Nintendo keeps being EA Nintendo until the gravy train stops. Then, they reluctantly become Origin Nintendo. The gravy train starts up again so Nintendo rides EA Nintendo until they have to become Origin Nintendo again. It is like the waxing and waning of the moon.

I know Nintendo will become complacent and lazy with their Switch success. The gravy train is rolling in. Nintendo will now become EA Nintendo until they can’t. Expect the next Zelda game to be as if EA made it: completely risk-less (except for Japanese culture pride parade displays).

Breath of the Wild only occurred because so much heat was brought to bear onto Aonuma and his shitty selling Zeldas. Now Aonuma will be Aonuma. This means ‘open air’ Marvelous. Mark. My. Words.