Takashi Tezuka: Pen and squared paper level design on Mario Wonder? "We don't do that anymore!"

Takashi Tezuka (Osaka, 1960) was there when the very first Mario and Zelda games were designed and launched in the 1980's. Since then he pretty much produced or supervised every entry into those series, perhaps focusing a bit more on the 2D games. That is why, when we met Nintendo's legendary producer at Gamescom after playing Super Mario Bros. Wonder, we asked him about the old and the new ways.

"So first off thank you for noting that", Tezuka-san starts around the 2:30 mark in the video as we recall his origins when asked about how much of the good 'ol pen and squared paper went into this game. "And as you mention, back in the days we used to design these courses using paper and pen, but of course we don't do that anymore! (Laughs). So now we've developed a specific tool for this, and so level designers can use this tool to design their courses. So level design doesn't mean that we're just placing certain given elements and items into a course".

"We also need to think about elements such as the enemies and the gimmicks and how these enemies and gimmicks would work and function within the entirety of the course"

"So these level designers need to work together with people like programmers, sound creators, and also other designers as well", the Japanese producer continues. "There's also obviously a know-how from past Mario courses as well and certain things that are sort of predetermined in that sense. So we also go through these fixed points as well but we also have a lot of different types of courses and so we need to think about different ideas to create these courses as well. That's one of the most challenging aspects."

Then we compared Super Mario Bros. Wonder's renewed quirkiness and variety to what users can create with Super Mario Maker and Super Mario Maker 2.

"I think when we first introduced Super Mario Maker there were some people that maybe thought that this was the pinnacle or this is all we needed for 2D Mario", Tezuka-san answers when asked if Wonder was deliberately designed to be something more complex or crazier that really couldn't be possibly created with Super Mario Maker anymore. "Please don't worry there's so many many ideas that we can put into 2D Mario and that new things that we can create! (Laughs). Now that we're finally able to introduce this new kind of 2D Mario, we're very happy to be able to do so".

There's plenty of other Mario topics discussed with Tezuka-san and director Shiro Mouri in the full video including, but not limited to, difficulty, animation, and its brand-new online mode. In fact, the very last question is for Nintendo's producer to reflect on the platforming genre and how it has evolved ever since Shigeru Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka himself, and co. became precursors to it on the original Famicom.