SMW has to have been my most requested video of all time... as of now, and why shouldn't it be? The game is amazing! It's been on many atop games lists and has even received the award of "Greatest Game of All Time", by the magazine "Empire." No matter where you look, SMW is highly praised, but how did this all come to be? Where did the idea of Yoshi come from? What about that cape feather power-up? and why is the game subtitled "Super Mario Bros. 4" in Japan's original release? Well strap in, because we're going to take a looooong look at the development of SMW. *SMW title theme* SMW began its development sometime around 1987, with a team of roughly 16 people. Some familiar names on the team include, Takashi Tezuka as the director and Shigeru Miyamoto as producer. Since the Super Famicom released late 1990, it's very likely that SMW was one of the first games to be developed for the system and because of this, there were some difficulties creating this Mario title, that later games on the system didn't have to worry about. Such as; incomplete development tools and, of course, just the fact that they're starting something new with newly created tools. That creates a lot of challenges. Despite problems working on the new hardware, there was an upside. The team had less restrictions compared to developing for the original Famicom. As an example, it was much easier for the artists to depict what they wanted to see on screen. However, it was more challenging for Koji Kondo, the composer of SMW. Creating music for the game was a whole lot different from the original Famicom. On the Super Famicom, he had to create his own sound samples, as they weren't built into the system anymore. This made composing music as Kondo said in an interview, "100 times more difficult." Not only that, the team also had to
include their own expanded color palette. So, despite SMW's cartridge being 4MB compared to 3MB cartridge of SMB3, the team actually had less memory to work with and speaking of SMB3, before even starting on SMW the team ported SMB3 to the Super Famicom in order to experiment with the
new hardware, and while it was the same game it did feature some higher detailed
sprites with better looking colors. Sadly, we don't have any pictures of it... so you're just going to have to take Miyamoto's word for it. Looking at this port though, he realized that the team couldn't just make the same game again, they had to make something "new," and that was an issue that
stuck with them throughout development. At that time, many people who watched the
team as they developed SMW told them that they didn't see much
difference between this game and past Mario titles, which solidified the need
for them to create something "new." One of these new ideas was the cape power-up and I'm sure many of you know it well. At first though, the cape was controlled
differently, according to Tezuka. In order to make sure the controls felt right,
they let some people test the game and give them feedback (as any good video
game development team would do), and as they expected, the controls were too
difficult for the test players and to fix it they adjusted the cape's handling
in order to make it more playable at the cost of Mario flying a bit as Tezuka
said, "clumsy." Another new idea for SMW, was riding Yoshi, though technically it was actually an old idea. In fact, Miyamoto had a sketch of a
dinosaur character taped off on his desk for 5 years, before they finally had the
technology to do it on the Super Famicom. After developing the game further, they
again brought in the play testers. At this time, some mentioned that the game was too difficult, so to fix this problem, the team decided to make SMW geared for beginners. In the end, while SMB3, was aimed to be
for more experienced players. SMW, was meant to be friendly to those less skilled but still provide an exciting experience for those who are veterans of the series. One way they hoped to accomplish this fine balance was with the new dotted blocks, which after you activate a switch, will create blockswhere the dotted lines were. Doing this helped make the game easier for those who were willing to search out and find those switches, but despite being a smart way to balance the game's difficulty... really, it was just a side effect of trying to create new blocks for the game. In early 1990, people on the outside got to see their first images of SMW from a 1989 build of the game. Lets take an in-depth look, starting at this early title screen. Compared with the final this early build is quite different, in fact about the only thing that looks the same is the border, but it's what's INSIDE the border that counts. Inside, is a hand-drawn-esque map of some island. The logo itself, is the same as the Japanese version except for the color, which was changed from all blue to various colors. One thing you need to
know about this build though is that during this point of development the team was modeling SMW after SMB3... at least more than the final game is modeled after it. That's why this early logo is blue, because so is the logo for SMB3. Now, the island in the background is actually the overworld, which you can see in this next image. If you compare this build to the final game really, the only things that are the same is the Mario icon on the map and the borders around the map. On this border, the Mario sprite was DEFINITELY changed between the two versions plus next to it, the world stage label is completely different. In the final game, the label shows the world name and then the stage number next to it but in this early image it uses a similar style to the original SMB1 by having the [world # - stage #]. To the right of the text, you've also got a coin and score counter that I guess was deemed unnecessary and removed from the game The actual overworld on this screen is MASSIVELY different from the final game. From the looks of it, you start at this center, green-looking, mushroom house
and then choose one of the four paths. Each path is its own world and we know from these images that the bottom path is World 4 and the right path is World 2 Each path looks to end with a fortress, however we can't say for sure because you can't completely see the top path but I do have a couple of theories of
where this top fortress could be. First, we could assume that the fortress was meant to be somewhere in this missing spot, or of course it would be somewhere above these images, but now we have a couple of problems with this and that's because of the level pattern... do you see it? It turns out that the left, right, and bottom path each have 3 stages before the fortress, so assuming that the top path would be the same, the fortress couldn't be on the top of the image, because that would mean that there would be 4 stages and then the fortress. If you want to believe that the top path follows this three level pattern then they would have to be both stages and a fortress in the missing spot on the left, but then if you believe that... what are these stages for? Where do they lead? Needless to say, there's quite a bit of mystery surrounding the top portion of the map. Counting the stages, we can see , including the fortresses, that there were at least 16 levels in this build of the game. Assuming that the game only took place on this island, that means this build was much smaller than the final game. However, this early version is a lot more open and not as linear as the final. Now, let's take a look at some images of actual gameplay. First thing we'll look at is the HUD which looks pretty much exactly the same as the final game (Minus a couple of things.) Now, what are those changes? Well, the bonus star counter is missing and the coin counter is taking its place, plus the life counter is not centered. You may also notice that some of the colors look to have changed but that's actually probably not the case. The colors in these screenshots vary because they were probably taken by an actual camera taking a picture of the game running on a TV. (So technically they aren't screenshots.) For instance, in this image, the saved item outline is blue, like the final, but in this one it's more green. All of these photos were taken of the same build of the game so it's not likely that this was an actual change... just a bad picture. Speaking of that item box, though the fire flower just seems to look a bit different , wouldn't you say? Actually, it more closely resembles a
specific game... can you guess what it is? It's SMB3, of course! In fact, a lot of other sprites in this build were made to look like their SMB3 counterpart. Like the question mark blocks, the wood blocks, and the brick blocks that were replaced with turn blocks. Not to mention, these completely different Paragoombas and Koopa Troopas. Though, the most interesting thing related to SMB3, in this early build, is this raccoon leaf power-up from SMB3, which was never used in the final game. Instead SMW, replaced it with the cape feather. In this image, there's also a few other differences that you should notice. First, the triangle block which looks more mechanical instead of the happy, smiling block it was later. Not only that, there's doughnuts in the sky (not like a real doughnut), just a doughnut-shaped cloud. This cloud is visible in many of the screenshots in Dinosaur Land but it isn't found anywhere in the final game. Also, in this image are some big coins that were definitely not in the final game. Likely they were replaced with the dragon coins which are a similar shape. What's interesting is that there are 4 of them right next to each other, which is strange if they were meant to function the same as a dragon coin since, in the final you only need to collect five or less of them per stage, and just making that one jump would collect more than half. Now, let's move back to this image
which we briefly saw earlier. I believe the stage shown in this image is the final special stage "Mondo," and why do I think that? Well, Koopa Troopas don't normally appear like that underwater except in "Mondo" because in that final stage, the water rises and falls and even when it covers the Koopas they stay the same and keep on walking. There isn't much else to see in this image, but we can say for sure that one of these floating platforms isn't in the final. Can you guess which? It turns out that while the smaller platform is in the final stage "Yoshi's Island 4," the larger one isn't in any stage in the game... In fact this larger platform will be mentioned again in this video... so, you know... stay tuned! Now, you may have noticed that there's no background in this early version of "Mondo" and I probably have the answer to that. It's because this stage is likely using an unused mode that allowed for a transparent water layer over the stage layer. Using this mode leaves no room for the background, which would explain why there isn't one. Now, I can hear you saying, "Wait, what about those other stages with water in them like Yoshi's Island 4, the one you literally just showed us?" and, well... yes Yoshi's Island 4 does include water, platforms, and a background but there's one thing... The water is not transparent! If you watch the water while the game is playing it may look transparent, but pause the game, and you can clearly see it's actually a checkerboard pattern with one blue square and one non-existent square. This creates the illusion that the water is slightly see-through. For evidence that this early image is actually using transparent water; notice the Koopa and other objects under the water don't appear pixelated due to checkerboarded water, which is why we believe that it's using the unused mode. The next stage we're going to be looking at is some castle level. The first image of the stage showcases a different looking floor and seems to be missing lava. Other than that, the background looks to be roughly the same though it likely appears different because of the HORRIBLE exposure of the camera that took the photo. Why don't we take a look at another image and see if we can spot some more differences without those fences blocking the view? Ah... okay. Well, it looks like the candlesticks are slightly different, but there's definitely more changes to he floor which is a lot different compared to the final. The next image here is of a ghost house, but due to the strange placement of the note blocks, platforms, and... lack of a background, this as likely just a test level... ...and... that's really all I've got in this stage... but there is a big conglomerate of screenshots, in this next image, and after removing ones that we've already seen or ones that never changed there's still some more that we've got to look at! The first one here shows off a piranha plant, but if you look real close (and I mean REAL close), the enemy looks to be a normal Piranha Plant, as in... it has a stem. Now, for those of you who really know SMW, you may be saying, "Hold up! There are some normal Piranha Plants in 'Vanilla Dome 3.'" To which, I will say "Yes... but there is some differences." One, they all go down but the removed version goes up and Second, they're all red, and the removed version is yellow. The next image is pretty interesting to me.
It shows off Larry Koopa's boss battle, from the final game but has some very distinct differences. First, Mario is wearing a raccoon suit, but we've already seen that before. The interesting changes are that the platform is much closer to lava making the battle more difficult, and Larry is in the air. In the final game, Larry Koopa never jumps in this boss battle, so apparently, he was meant to. It's likely that both of these changes were made in order to keep this battle from being too overly challenging. The arrow you see on this image points to another image that shows what happens after the boss battle is won. Ignoring the text from the magazine... there's a couple of changes you'll want to know. If you look at this image next to the final, you can see that next to the text saying "Mario" is the course number, which was originally meant to be shown plus, underneath that "Course" is misspelled (because it's missing an "r") which is more of a mistake than a removed feature... Perhaps the most interesting thing though, is that Mario is giving the "V" sign which in the final game, is only done after finishing normal courses, it never happens after a boss battle. Fast-forward a little while to a new build of SMW, which from the look of the HUD in this image, was taken much closer to the final release. What's nice is that we know exactly where this image was taken, in relation to the final game; the stage "Yoshi's Island 1." Shall we compare and contrast? First, you probably already noticed that the sky here is yellow instead of blue, but did you notice that there's only one Rex on the ground in this early build instead of 4? (RIP 4th Rex :<) Now this could be because the team hadn't added them in, or perhaps Mario had already defeated them. Each scenario is entirely possible. The biggest change though, is the Banzai Bill. The early version is grey instead of black and lacks lot of details, overall... it's just... boring. Banzai Bill actually appears in this second early image as well which was taken shortly after the first. The last change we'll look at is the evolution of the North American title screen. Now first off in the final game the SMW logo in the North American Release compared to the Japanese release looks very different, thanks to the shadow placement and the trademark logo. but thanks to this early screenshot, we can see that at first the North American title screen logo was going to look very similar to the Japanese version, at least in terms of the shadow. Other than that though, there is still many changes between these two versions Like "Super" being above "Mario" instead of being in the middle and the addition of the subtext "Super Mario Brothers," next to "Super." Other than that logo, the only other difference is the missing copyright text and that the ground is missing grass on top of it. Moving forward, we have a slightly later
image which is almost exactly the same as before except for the addition of "4" next to "Super Mario Brothers," the final copyright text, and the fact that the ground looks like the final, but is taller than it and that was the last early version that we got to see but, the interesting thing is that even though the subtext "Super Mario Brothers 4" is gone from all versions of the SMW title screen on the Japanese box art, it still has it clearly visible on the front of the package, and it's even on the cartridge itself too. Following the development of SMW, Miyamoto said in an interview that he felt that the game was incomplete when it released since its development towards the end was seemingly rushed in order to get the game released on time. (Whoo!) Now it's time to move on to unused stuff in the game's filesystem, which there is a lot of. Like... A LOT. Unused graphics, objects, enemies, items, levels, sounds and more(!) In fact, there's SO much stuff that I literally can't list them all, so I suggest heading over to The Cutting Room Floor, after this video, if you want to see more. The link is in the description! Okay, we're going to be starting with unused objects. First, there's that platform that was floating in the early image we saw earlier. While the smaller ones are already in the final game the bigger ones went unused. Speaking of screenshots, remember the removed yellow Piranha Plant with the stem? Well, there's actually an unused RED Piranha Plant with the stem, in the game. Now, you're probably saying, "Hey, the red variety IS in the final game, we saw it earlier!" However, that Piranha Plant is going down and it's not simply flipped in the game. This is a completely different, unused version, but you continue... say; "Where's the stem? All I can see is this weird fish..." Well, it turns out that, that specific place in memory that held the stem was replaced with the Cheep Cheep sprite that's used when it's out of water. Needless to say, the Piranha Plant was not meant to have a fish as it's stem. Another unused enemy, is the blue Swooper and if you played SMW, you should know that the final Swoopers are green. In order to get these unused enemies into the game, you can place a spawner which will create them on the same Y-Position as the spawner. Trying to jump on these enemies, like in the final game will instead hurt Mario and not defeat the Swooper. So, perhaps this was the original intended
functionality of the enemy but was changed in order to make stages easier. One other thing about the Swoopers is that they're missing a frame of their flying animation. So after the team scrapped this color scheme, they must have replaced what was in that frame with something else. What's interesting is that the Swooper's green color scheme was eventually changed back to the unused blue color scheme for every other Mario game since and speaking of flying things, there's a couple of unused flying items that Mario was originally supposed to collect. One is a flying golden mushroom that, when collected, gives Mario an extra life. The other is a flying red coin and in case you didn't know, there are no red coins in SMW. In fact, the first Mario game to have red coins was SMW2: Yoshi's Island, which was released 5 years later. This scrapped coin moves to the right and when collected, awards the player with 5 coins, but not only was there and unused red coin, but there's also an unused blue coin except this one seems to function the same as a normal coin... pretty disappointing... but these blue coins do have a secret function when you hit the P-Switch. It turns them into magenta blocks, though they can still be collected like a normal coin because, likely they had never finished programming this object. Going back to flying stuff, there is also a very glitched, flying cage that went unused in the game. If you place it in the stage, Mario will automatically start inside of it and if you make the level autoscroll as well, the cage will also move along the screen on a specific path. Someone (BMF54123 on TCRF) was nice enough to do a mock-up of what they think it would have looked like had everything been shown correctly. Also, that blue bird there; some think that's the one that held up the cage and it's also unused in the game... but we'll get back to that in a little bit. Next, we're going to be looking at an unused block, that by simply walking into it, will make it bounce and release a feather for the first time, but that that it will be empty. There's a glitch with the graphics though, because when hitting the block, it will show a P-Switch which was obviously not intended to be shown. There's also another unused block in the game, but this one is just a normal question mark block... right? Wrong! This one was going to release a Koopa Troopa, who's hiding in it's shell. If you wait long enough though, it'll come out of its shell, and start walking around like normal but, if you want to defeat this enemy, you cannot use fireballs, because the collision with fireballs was not implemented for this Koopa. Next up, there's some removed conveyor belts that use an animated version of the rope sprite. They work just as you'd expect, but were never used in the final game. Another unused object that still works as expected, are these half sized doors. Now, how would you expect them to behave? Well, it turns out that these doors can only be opened and entered by small Mario and any other form of Mario will not be able to. Both the normal and P-Switch versions work perfectly in game. The last unused object were going to look at is this... grass. It's only used in 4 stages and looks and... acts like... grass. Now, I know I just said that grass was the last unused object that we'd look at but what I really meant to say is that it's the last unused STAGE object we'd look at. We've still got plenty more unused overworld objects to look at which, as the name implies, are objects that were meant to appear on the overworld map. Like this unused Piranha Plant, which was meant to be a decoration on the map. Sadly his poor plant was never used, likely because the classic Piranha Plant with a stem was barely used in the final game as it was... so why have a decoration of it? Even though this Piranha Plant was only a decoration, the next few unused objects actually have some functionality besides just looking cool. Remember the mock-up of the flying cage we saw earlier? Well, this bird designed for the overworld map is the one speculated to have been the one carrying the cage. On the overworld, the bird doesn't do much though, except follow Mario around the map, with the exception of Vanilla Dome, where it can't follow him. Another unused overworld object is good ol' Lakitu. It functions exactly the same as the bird, except it can't appear on ANY of the sub-maps, including Vanilla Dome. It's assumed that this object was going to appear on stages where Lakitus are present, but there's one thing... Lakitus only appear on sub-map stages... and the overworld Lakitu can't appear on those stage's icons AT ALL, so in the end, we really don't know exactly what the purpose was for this object. The last overworld object we'll see is, this never been used Koopa kid though, technically they are used... in a way. There are actually three of them on the map in the final game, but you can't see them because, the path that makes them function was replaced by the corners in Star World. So, what did they originally do? Well, it turns out they function exactly like the hands in SMB3, which drag Mario into stages. The interesting thing, is that the placement of these three Koopa kids don't make any sense, with the layout of the map so it's likely that these were scrapped early on and that the overworld used to be very, VERY different. Next up, we got some unused sprites that no longer have an functionality left... well, except for this one; originally when jumping on Yoshi, dust was suppose to appear, and that's really about it. and even though it was removed, you can always re-enable it with a Game Genie code, should you feel the need to. Now onto something that's a lot more interesting! It turns out there's an early, not-yet-animated sprite of a Yoshi Berry that's loaded into memory each time a level starts, however that place in memory is then overwritten with the final animated berry. Comparing both versions, the early berry is much rounder and brighter than the final version. There's actually one more, slightly later version of the berry in the game which is a mixture between the early and final iterations. Another unused sprite, issome text that says "5UP," which would have been used if you hit enough enemies in succession. Now, in the final game it's impossible to get this because the bonus for hitting enemies caps at 1UP, which is 8 enemies in-a-row but there is a glitch that does allow us to see it it. It turns out the developers forgot to add this bonus cap when bouncing on Wigglers, so if you bounce on more than 8 of them you can see these additional bonuses, and
everything here after 3UP is unused. Of these bonuses, only the 5UP sprite is still in the game, though it's not displayed correctly. Once you get past the 25-Coin bonues, the game actually starts giving you random bonuses, which are usually just high amounts of coins and points. Moving on, do you remember these
small birds that jump around on top of Yoshi's house? Well, according to these unused animation frames, those birds were actually meant to fly. The nice thing is that, even though these birds never flew in SMW for the SNES, they did spread their wings in SMW for the GBA. If you find all the goals in the GBA remake, you'll be presented with a cutscene that shows the same birds flying around Luigi in a hot-air balloon. Next up is the Dino Rhino, who, same as the birds, has some unused animation frames. To preface; in the final game, Dino Rhinos won't attack you... per se however if Mario jumps on them, they'll turn into a Dino Torch, who will attack Mario with fire. Now, why do I mention this? Well, originally it looks like big Dino rhinos were going to attack Mario with fire as well, as evidenced by these unused animation frames and Yoshi's fireball which is rotated 90 degrees and placed with the Dino Rhino sprites. It's funny though. These same animation frames that went unused in SMW were later used in Super Mario All-Stars for the SNES in SMB3. Remember how in that game, the Kings are transformed into various creatures? Well take a look at World 3's King and compare. Turns out all the did was change the color and add a crown! Interesting, huh? Now let's look at the Koopalings, specifically Iggy. Looking back at SMB3 as we've done (a lot) in this video, compare Iggy and Larry's hairstyle. Completely different, right? Iggy's hair goes out towards the front and Larry's goes towards the back, so why is it in SMW they both have the same hairstyle during boss battles? To make things even stranger, why is Iggy's hair in the ending totally different from the rest of the game? Well, it turns out that likely due to an oversight by the team, Iggy uses the same hair as Larry and here, unused in the game, is what his hair was supposed to look like. Notice how it goes out towards the front just like in SMB3, so in the end, this unused hair sprite was likely meant to have been used and Iggy have Larry's hair was probably just a mistake. (See? Even the developers behind SMW, can't be perfect.) but we're not done with the Koopalings just yet. According to some more unused animation frames, both Roy and Morton Koopa were going to spit fireballs at Mario as an attack. but, how by these frames do we know that they're shooting fire and not... I don't know, yelling...? Well, it's because these unused frames are roughly the same as Ludwing von Koopa's fire attack. So apparently, Roy and Morton were meant to attack Mario with fire in the same way. The last set of unused graphics we're going to look at are a few unused parts of the title screen. Now, if you remember way back when we were talking about the early North American title screen you would recognize this unused graphic right away, as it appears in one of the images we looked at before. Something that we haven't seen before though, is this "AND." and... the only place that it likely would have gone is between 1990 and 1991 in the copyright text on the bottom of the screen. Alright. We finally made it to the end of unused objects and graphics in SMW but we're still not done yet, we've actually got some unused stages to look at. Before we get to that though, you may remember that some levels in the final game have intros; like when going into a castle, for example. Well, there's an unused intro in the game that has Mario looking at a sign that appears to be saying "no Yoshis allowed in the stage." Which was never used in the final either. Interestingly this intro actually has three different backgrounds. So it's likely it was going to be used quite a bit with many different stages. One unused stage that uses this intro is a test level that's been called well... "TEST" and if that wasn't enough for you to decide that this level was a test level, it also comes with a bunch of turn blocks forming the word "TEST"... and an arrow. When you play this level, all there is to do is walk to the right, though underneath the T you will receive a 1-UP but only if you pass these four points in order, which are only view able in Lunar Magic (A SMW editor.) The downward pointing arrow in this level is just pointing to death because sadly, that's your only way out of this level. There's also three other test levels in this game the first of them is a room for testing boss battles. At the beginning you have two question mark blocks. The left one is holding a cape feather and the right, a fire flower. Beyond that are nine doors. The first is Bowser, as evidenced by the "B." and the other eight are; Morton, Roy, Ludwig, Iggy, Larry, Reznor, Lemmy, and Wendy, in that order. Going through these doors will take you to their respective boss battles as you would expect. The next test level was designed to test slopes and how they would function in vertical levels. Nothing too special here, though you do have to change the tile set to an unused one to get the background to appear properly. Finally the last test stage is just two blocks side by side. Likely used to test enemies that stick to walls as evidenced by the two Hot Heads and two Sparkys moving around the blocks. The next three levels we are going to look at are for ghost house exits. Though technically this first one isn't guaranteed to be a ghost house exit since it's only a pipe and ground but in the final game this ground only appears in ghost house stages, so that's enough for me to at least group them with the next two unused levels. This one is certainly a ghost house exit, but is missing the exit and arrow sign as well as the doors on the house. And the last ghost house exit level is literally the exactly the same as the last one, but it includes clouds. There's also some entire levels that were scraped too. Though none of them can actually be completed. One of them is this underground cave with lava. Which, I was sadly unable to get fully working in the game, so enjoy this picture of the stage instead of the game play video. It's not the most difficult looking level, but what's cool is that the orange platforms were going to sink into the lava. Like in Vanilla Dome 1. For those of you with technical know-how you may be interested to know that this level, instead of using the lava from the underground tile set as would have been usual. It's using a generic lava object as you can see by the waves in it. Which, are usually not there. Also. the pipe at the end is indeed set to allow Mario to enter it, but there is no level it's set to go to so it defaults to the bonus room. Which is normal if you don't tell a pipe or exit where to go. The next almost complete level we'll look at is actually an early version of Wendy's castle, and it turns out this is the only early version of a final level that's been found in the game. Though they do look similar they are defiantly not. What's interesting is while this early version is easier on the first half, it's more difficult on the second half. At least for me, or I could just be terrible at Mario games... but anyway, once again you can't complete this level. This time it's because it lacks a door at the end to take you to Wendy's boss battle. Sorry Mario, but you can never leave. Now that we are on the subject on early unused levels, there are two levels that we know for sure, are from a quite early version of SMW. The first has Mario jumping atop mushroom scales. What's interesting is that in the final game putting in one mushroom scale, automatically puts a second one a specific distance away. However, in this stage you can clearly see they are definitely not a fixed distance away. So that functionality must have have been programmed in later but, you're asking, "How can we be sure that this stage is actually an early one?" Well, look here. Those are the scrapped normal Piranha Plants that we looked at earlier. They were scrapped pretty early on, so for this level to be using them is incredibly interesting to say the least, but perhaps, the earliest unused level in the game is this stage, which has been dubbed "Ride Among the Clouds." Some say that this level resembles stage 1-4 from SMB3, but there's just not enough resemblance to say for sure if that's what the level designers were going for. Also this is pretty interesting. This unused stage features that removed platform we talked about earlier floating in mid-air, which when you step on it, starts moving to the right. At the end of the stage there's even a pipe, but as expected it leads nowhere. In fact, it's not even set to be enter-able. So after saying all that, it's obvious that this level was definitely never in a finished state when the team scrapped it. To finish up, I saved the best unused stage for last! It's three bushes, nothing else, just bushes... now, I bet you thought we were done I mean we've talked about nearly everything unused in SMW what else could there be? Well, it turns out it's time to look at early sprites in a completely different
game and technically it's not even a "game." There are actually some early sprites of SMW in the SNES Test Program, which was used by Nintendo World-Class Service, to test and diagnose issues with the Super Nintendo and its accessories. There are actually a ton of differences between the sprites in this test cartridge, versus the final version of SMW. However, a lot of them are just like 1 or 2 pixels different so we're just going to focus on the major changes that were made, starting with these blocks that resemble their SMB3 counterparts. You probably remember them from the early images, we saw a while back at this
point. Another early sprite, we saw in these images was an early fire flower which is present and accounted for, in this test cart. Raccoon Mario also makes an appearance in these sprites. However, it's only the leaf and two Mario poses. The first was obviously used for the end of levels. The other though, is very interesting. Some think that it may have been used when Mario spins his tail or when Mario hits the spinning fence panels but we can't be completely certain as there's no other sprites to go on to help us answer this mystery. There are also some other scrapped Mario sprites that were seen in some early images. The first is of, Super Mario and if you compare them side-by-side with the final version you can see that the early version is more saturated but that's not it No... no, no, no... well, okay, maybe it is for Super Mario... but it's not for small Mario and here he is now and yeah as you can clearly see it's been changed in more ways than one. In fact, it's the same small Mario we saw in those early images of the world map. Interesting, is it not? The next sprites we didn't see in early images, but we did talk about them before.
It's those unused bonuses we'd never saw, because they were corrupted but here
they are in perfect shape. There's also another sprite that would have been used as a placeholder for when Mario hits the P-Switch, at least until the switchable object's secondary sprite was made and moving on to the next unused sprite, it's of a squished *Galoomba which means that these, enemies in SMW were meant to function like Goomas in earlier Mario games instead of the final functionality, where jumping on them just flips them over. The most interesting scrapped sprite for me though, is this fire Piranha Plant which was seen before in SMB3, like pretty much everything else. Unlike the normal Piranha Plant, this enemy was never in SMW and still hasn't been found in the game's memory either. As someone noticed, with the mouth open the head doesn't quite fit on the stem correctly, seeing as it's attached by the mouth for some... odd reason. So, everyone we finally made it to the end! The only other thing left to talk about is this unused sound effect in the game. While some speculate it to have eventually been used in SMW2: Yoshi's Island I couldn't find the sound myself in Yoshi's Island so I can't say for sure it is... so why don't you take a listen and if you know exactly where it's from, let me know. *This sound effect is used in SMW2: Yoshi's Island. It's the sound Expansion Blocks make when hitting them.* So that's the development of SMW! There was just so much stuff that changed in those three years of development that I could never pinpoint one single change that thought I was good or bad. Really, this whole development story could be summed up by saying the team was creating new directly from old. They basically started the whole thing with a port of SMB3 and just kept making change after change until eventually it became what SMW is today... One of the best Mario games ever! So, this
has been Beta64 with the development of SMW. Thanks for watching! *SMW Course Clear theme* Captions by Brodie, Evan Streblow, FSC 89, Furutaka7575, and Redstonian101
Neat video. But damn, do you really need to spend 10 minutes going through every single difference in a screenshot comparison?
This is awesomely nerdy! Subscribed and watched a few.
Very interesting, thanks for posting!
And I thought I damn near knew everything since I used to be an SMW rom-hacker lol