Koji Kondo’s Mario Wonder Pitch Was a Super Tall Live Action Mario That Said ‘Boing’

The developers at Nintendo had thousands of ideas for the latest Mario game, many of which made it into Super Mario Bros. Wonder through the game’s world-shifting Wonder Flowers. But some ideas didn’t: including sound director Koji Kondo’s whacky idea for an “eight-heads-tall, life-sized, live-action Mario.”

This wild idea for Mario was mentioned in an Ask the Developer interview published by Nintendo today for Super Mario Bros. Wonder, in which the development team shared insights from the creation of Mario’s latest adventure. In the interview, they talked about the process of coming up with the Wonder effects.

Originally, they had everyone on staff writing game ideas on sticky notes, ending up with over 2,000 ideas to sift through. Later, after Wonder Flowers were created, they went back to these sticky notes for ideas on different Wonder Effects, and used many of the suggestions they found.

But one idea that didn’t make it was Kondo’s, as he explains:

“I shared the idea of an eight-heads-tall, life-sized, live-action Mario humming along with the background music as he goes along,” Kondo said. “When he jumps, he says to himself, ‘Boing!’ …The idea was never used, though…I felt I had to take the lead in going to the extreme.”

Kondo’s giant Mario idea isn’t too far off Mario’s usual size-changing abilities, but what really makes it is the idea of a Mario doing all his own music and sound effects. It’s even sillier when you consider that if Kondo’s idea had been used, all these sounds would have been done by new Mario voice actor Kevin Afghani. It was recently announced that Afghani has replaced long-time Mario voice Charles Martinet after Martinet’s retirement from the role.

The interview with the team comes just ahead of the release of Super Mario Bros. Wonder at the end of this week. We ran a final preview covering our early impressions of the game last week, and while our preview is spoiler-free, be warned that spoilers have leaked online elsewhere already.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].