Did you know? The developers of New Super Luigi U cheated
to make the game easier than they wanted you to think it is. Luigi U was originally released as DLC for
New Super Mario Bros U, but with harder levels that only give you 100 seconds to reach the
flagpole -- but the devs made Luigi seconds 35% longer than Mario seconds. In an interview, the devs said even though
they're the guys who made the stages, they were having trouble beating em that quick,
and worried the game’d be too hard for the fans at home. They considered making all the stages shorter,
or doubling the timer to 200 seconds -- but they didn't wanna redesign the whole game,
and 100 was such a nice round number, so... they fudged the numbers. We timed it ourselves, and the seconds in
most Mario games, including New Super Mario Bros U, aren't real seconds. Each tick is really only about three-quarters
of a second. But for the Luigi DLC, they made each tick
one actual second. In other words, 100 Luigi seconds are about
135 Mario seconds -- which makes the game a lot easier than you're led to believe. Not only on Wii U, but also the Switch Deluxe
edition. We recently replayed all the New Super Mario
games, read a bunch of old interviews, and did some digging to find some secrets, Easter
eggs, and behind-the-scenes secrets for the entire series. Now, we know these games aren't the most highly-regarded
Mario games -- and a lotta folks say they can't hold a candle to 3D Mario. But let's get one thing clear -- in terms
of sales, the New Super games are way more popular than 3D Mario. The first one sold over 30 million copies
-- which is more than the entire Metroid and F-Zero franchises combined. And the sequel on Wii sold another 30 million. With those kinda numbers, you might be wondering
why they haven't made a new one in almost a decade. We'll get to that later, but first let's get
into some trivia. For most people, when they think of Mario
development, they think of Shigeru Miyamoto. But when it comes to the New Super series,
they should really be thinking of another guy -- Takashi Tezuka, who's basically been
in charge of 2D Mario since the Super Nintendo. According to Miyamoto: "Mario was created
not only by myself, but also with Mr. Tezuka. I am kind of shy accepting all of the compliments
myself all the time.” “Tezuka's sort of my right hand man at Nintendo. And he's responsible for New Super Mario Bros. We talk a lot about the game, but basically
he's in charge." One thing that might surprise fans of the
New Super games is why they have that distinctive art style. Every 2D Mario that came before was 2D pixel
art, but New Super Mario was more like 2.5D, and used 3D models as well as sprites made
from pre-rendered 3D models. All the sequels used that style as well -- at
this point, it's become the series' iconic look. But it wasn't actually an artistic choice
-- according to Tezuka, it was mostly just because it was easier. Back when the first game launched on DS, he
told Nintendo Power: "[We chose that style because it] makes certain types of expression
easier. We can rotate characters, make them bigger,
make them smaller, etc. Those types of things are more difficult with
2D sprites. Also, current development tools tend to favor
3D graphics." New Super Mario Bros on DS was originally
supposed to have two-player co-op -- a few screenshots can be seen in an issue of Nintendo
Power printed about six months before the game hit store shelves. The magazine says: "New Super Mario Bros features
a two-player co-op mode; a first for the series. Not content simply to keep Luigi out of the
limelight, Mario now uses his brother as a human shield. Maybe next time Luigi should leave his hotshot
sibling to rot in the haunted mansion." Well that's pretty much what happened, since
co-op ended up getting cut and replaced with a small versus mode with only five stages. You can play single-player as Luigi, but he
has the exact same physics as Mario, so it's just a cosmetic difference. The gaming press reported seeing an early
build where Bowser was playable as well, possibly as a reward for beating the game, but it didn't
make it into the final game. That idea for full-on co-op eventually made
its way into New Super Mario Bros Wii, but instead of just two or three characters, it
had four -- Mario, Luigi, Ala-Gold the yellow Toad, and Bucken-Berry the blue Toad. Although we should note those Toad names are
contentious -- they're commonly used by fans, but the Super Mario Wiki refuses to acknowledge
them. Those names come from a Destructoid article
claiming a Nintendo of America employee shared them off-camera, but some fans thought the
article was a joke. So we checked in with Destructoid's author
for more details, and he said they were nicknames used by some members of the Japanese Mario
team, but Miyamoto made it clear that he didn't want those Toads to have names, ever. So whether they're really named Ala-Gold and
Bucken-Berry, we'll leave that up to you to decide. Regardless, all four characters controlled
identically and didn't have unique physics or abilities. Other characters like Wario and Waluigi were
considered, but fans would've expected them to have special skills -- and Nintendo didn't
wanna do that. According to Miyamoto: "Mario and Luigi are
the same as always, of course, and suggestions for the other two characters included Wario
and Waluigi, Toad, and Princess Peach. The thing is that with Wario he'd need to
have a fart attack, Peach would have to be able to fly with her skirt, and so on. With this game we wanted every character to
play the same way." Okay Miyamoto, we suppose that does keep everyone
on a more even playing field... but c'mon. It ain't e-sports -- it's a party game. Peach flying and Wario farting would've been
way better than two Toads. After Mario Wii was already finished, the
devs kept on playing it for fun, and during their play sessions they came up some ideas
for a Challenge Mode. But it was too late to add it into the game,
and DLC wasn't really a thing back then, at least not for Nintendo. They still wanted to share those challenges
with fans though, so they posted them on Nintendo's official Japanese website. There were 89 challenges, all ranked from
one to five stars -- like finishing levels with zero points, self-imposed limitations
like winning with mini-Mario, and speedrun times for every stage. Nintendo released the challenge list in English
too, but for some reason they later deleted it. They also banned that webpage from the Internet
Archive, so it's completely wiped off the internet with no way to find it. Lucky for us though, one of our viewers printed
it out on a piece of paper about a decade ago and sent us pictures -- so here they are
if you're curious, or if you're a hardcore fan who thinks you've got what it takes to
complete them. Having to get those challenges off a website
wasn't ideal though -- which is why the devs built them directly into the next game, New
Super Mario Bros U, as a separate mode available right from the home screen. There's actually less of them; with Mario
U having only 67 instead of 89. But they take place on their own custom courses,
so it's definitely a more fleshed-out experience. This situation of supplemental content being
online instead of in the game itself was actually reversed for Hint Movies -- they were included
in Mario Wii, but only on the internet for Mario U. In case you don't remember, if you go to Peach's
Castle in Mario Wii, you can watch videos that teach you how to do Super Skills, speedruns,
and secrets. There's some tricky techniques in there -- so
tricky in fact that some fans thought they were tool-assisted or made by bots. But it the gameplay was actually from Nintendo
debuggers, with the director and other high-level staff breathing down their necks to make sure
everything was perfect. Every time they went through a pipe, they
had to go right down the middle; if there were a group of coins floating in the air,
they either had to skip them for speed or grab ‘em all. Only getting some was unacceptable, and meant
they'd have to reset and start over. The debuggers replayed again and again until
all 65 Hint Movies were absolutely flawless. They did something similar for Mario U, but
this time Nintendo put all the Hint Movies on the game's YouTube channel. When New Super Mario Bros Wii released in
2009, it outsold Mario Galaxy almost three to one. But it might have sold a tiny bit more if
not for an Australian man named James Burt. Burt got a copy from a local game shop about
two weeks before the official release date, then after some of his hacker buddies talked
him into it, he uploaded the game to the internet so anyone could play it for free -- and about
50,000 fans did exactly that. That's when things took a turn for the worse. We interviewed James, and he told us: "My
house was raided and there were about 6 local authorities and Nintendo lawyers with big
black plastic bags who came to my house [...and took] my Wii and a handful of DVDs and Wii
games." Long story short, he ended up owing Nintendo
$1.6 million for potentially lost sales. Nintendo's senior director of anti-piracy
told the gaming press that James would end up paying, quote: "a significant lesser amount." We asked James how much that undisclosed amount
was... and he said it was zero dollars and zero cents. James never paid Nintendo a single penny. He declared bankruptcy as part of the agreement
with Nintendo, which had some long-lasting effects on his credit score, but otherwise
he counts himself lucky. He thinks Nintendo just wanted to make an
example out of him to scare away other pirates who might wanna do something similar. If you've heard this story before, you might've
heard that three years later, Nintendo sent James a limited edition Ganondorf figurine. Gaming outlets framed it as Nintendo "letting
bygones be bygones," as sort of an olive branch to say they forgave him for pirating Mario. That's a fun story, but James said that's
not what actually happened. He told us: "When [journalists] don't know,
they just make it up I guess. They never bothered to ask me... which is
why I'm happy to go into detail with Did You Know Gaming." The real reason was he won a contest at the
local game shop -- because he spent more money than anyone else that month on Nintendo products,
so they gave him Ganondorf as a prize. James says even after everything that happened,
he still loves Nintendo, and doesn't have any hard feelings about the Mario lawsuit. And in case you're wondering, yes, they did
eventually give him his Wii, games, and DVD's back. Nintendo games and especially Mario almost
never leave Nintendo consoles -- but Mario Wii was one of the few exceptions. Almost a decade after its original release,
it got an official, upgraded port on the Nvidia Shield TV. The original Wii version ran in 480p, but
on the Shield it runs at 1080p and 60 FPS. Here they are side by side, and we'll zoom
in a little so it's easier to see the difference. Not only is it leagues better than the original,
but it sold for just 10 bucks. A few other classic games got the same treatment
and had their motion controls turned into normal controls, like Donkey Kong Country
Returns and Twilight Princess. Nintendo agreed to the partnership as a way
of expanding into the Chinese market. Unfortunately though they didn't sell too
well, so some games that got announced, like Mario Kart Wii, never got released. Well, not officially anyway... some folks just downloaded Dolphin emulators
on their Shields and were off to the races. This video's mostly about the mainline New
Super Mario games, but there's actually one more that most people don't even know exists. New Super Mario Bros Wii Coin World was an
arcade game developed by Capcom in 2011, two years after the Wii version. But unfortunately for Mario enthusiasts, it
was only released in Japan. Coin World even had its own six song soundtrack. Half are remixes of music from the mainline
games, and the other half are fully original, one of which you’re hearing right now. The soundtrack might actually be the best
part of the game, because as far as gameplay, it's mostly a small-stakes gambling simulator. You have to cash in some real-life yen to
get arcade tokens, then you'll be spending most of your time playing slots. Most forms of gambling are illegal in Japan,
so even if you hit it big, you'll just get more tokens you can't exchange for real cash. All you can really do is keep playing slots
or spend them on other games in the same arcade. In addition to slots, Capcom also threw some
simple mini-games into the mix, a Bowser boss fight, and support for up to four players. Fans outside Japan aren't missing out on too
much by not being able to play Coin World -- unless they're really into gambling of
course. But it's definitely an interesting piece of
Mario history, and you can't hate that soundtrack. After the first two New Super Mario games
went gangbusters, Nintendo decided to do something they'd never done before -- develop two 2D
Mario games at the same time. One for 3DS, and one for Wii U, with each
team trying to outdo each other like rivals. But Nintendo didn't have enough developers
for two full teams, so Tezuka started what he called a "Mario Cram School" to train a
bunch of designers all at once. Yusuke Amano was one of the students, and
was eventually chosen to direct the 3DS project. He said: "Participants got a firm grasp of
the basic ingredients of what makes 2D Super Mario enjoyable and experienced actually making
stages, so we were able to begin this project with a solid foundation... Mario Cram School [resulted in courses with]
twice the number of staff it usually takes to make Mario courses... [and all that new
blood allowed us to] make something new that [previous development] teams so far hadn't." With both games being made at the same time,
Tezuka was constantly mixing them up, and sometimes people had to remind him which game
they were currently working on. He was trying to figure out how to make the
two games unique, and after a lunch with Miyamoto, came back to the office with a new idea -- to
make the 3DS version focus on coin collecting. They were originally thinking about calling
it "New Super Mario Bros Gold," but worried that might make it look like a small-scale
spin-off, so they ended up calling it New Super Mario Bros 2 instead, to send the message
this was a full-size mainline entry. To make collecting faster, the Cram School
students added the Gold Block that shoots coins out of Mario's head. When they showed it to Miyamoto, he thought
it was kind of dumb. According to director Amano: "Miyamoto-san
said, 'I don't like it'... he didn't like how you never really understand it -- you
put this thing you don't really understand on your head, and for no clear reason coins
come out... Miyamoto said that he hated how he didn't
know what he was supposed to do after suddenly getting this block on his head." Miyamoto's got a background in industrial
design, so the Propeller Mushroom introduced in the previous game made sense -- but a block
attaching to Mario's head and dumping out coins was just nonsense. Eventually though, he reluctantly accepted
and it made it into the final game. Tezuka said the goal of a million coins was
meant to, quote: "keep people coming back potentially forever." And he did mean forever -- worldwide, fans
collected about 3 trillion coins. On our recent playthrough, we finished with
100% completion, grabbing every coin along the way, but when the credits rolled we'd
only managed to get about 50,000. We weren't even close -- and full disclosure,
we didn't replay stages forever and ever to get to a million. In the runup to launch day, Nintendo used
the "million coin challenge" as a major marketing campaign, even mass-emailing fans to get them
excited for it, all while the actual reward was shrouded in mystery. A lot of fans were expecting something big,
and speculation was wild about what it was gonna unlock. But once the game released and people started
crossing the finish line, everyone found out the reward was just... a different title screen. Some folks weren't too happy about it... But little did they know, there was another
unlockable title screen for 9,999,999 coins -- which changes the Mario statue into a Tanooki. New Super Mario Bros 2 is generally considered
the least-memorable entry in the series, but it actually left a pretty hefty legacy. It was the game that introduced Gold Mario,
who's pretty much everywhere now -- he's been in three Mario Kart games, Mario Golf, Mario
Tennis, Mario Party -- and he even got his own costume in Mario Odyssey. The game also got its own Smash Ultimate stage,
where collecting 100 coins gets you the Gold Flower power-up. And New Super Mario Bros 2 was even the first
Nintendo game to release simultaneously in digital and physical formats. Of course that's not to say the other games
don't have legacies as well. Mario U arguably gave us the series' most
pervasive addition -- Nabbit the thieving rabbit. Originally he was just a little mini-game
character you had to chase down after he stole Toad's stuff, but he became a playable character
in Luigi U, and ultimately became a series mainstay, appearing in over a dozen games. He's shrouded in mystery -- some even think
he's Bowser Jr in disguise due to their masks, but both characters have been seen in the
same place at the same time, so that theory doesn't hold up. In reality, there's only a couple solid facts
known about him. If you check out his flag in Mario & Sonic
at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, it says he lives on the Mushroom Kingdom's Secret Island
-- that's the purple house you unlock after Mario U's final boss. It's full of records, so we guess the implication’s
that Nabbit's been following Mario and spying on him throughout the entire game. That interpretation's backed up by an Easter
egg, where if you take too long to open a treasure chest, Nabbit'll jump in out of nowhere
and steal it. Nintendo also added a little something to
the Deluxe edition; on Wii U, Mario gets a kiss from the Princess after beating Bowser,
but on Switch you can see the same cutscene but with Nabbit being a peeping tom. Speaking of Easter eggs, the devs also added
one into Mario U's title screen. Normally it looks like this with all four
characters butt stomping, but if you don't push any buttons it'll auto-play cutscenes,
then eventually cycle back to the title screen. But this time Luigi'll trip and miss his butt
stomp, and stand around looking confused. This secret’s also in the Switch version. The Switch version has been out for over four
years now, and 10 years since the original Wii U version, which has led many to ask...
is there even gonna be another New Super Mario game? In a couple 2012 interviews, Tezuka emphasized
that they only want to release one game on each console. "I don't know if you’ve noticed, but with
each hardware iteration we release, we release a [New Super] Mario for each one [...] It
would be difficult to bring 2 or 3 side-scrolling Mario games because 'the one' we released
has already done what we wanted to accomplish on that hardware." Possibly in his mind, U Deluxe counts as 'the
one' for the Switch hardware. Also, they kinda burnt themselves out. In another interview, the devs say they exhausted
all their ideas when they released New Super Mario Bros 2 and U in the same year, not to
mention making both games' DLC. One theory we've seen in recent years is that
Mario Maker killed the mainline 2D series -- that Nintendo must think there's no need
for a new game when fans can make their own levels and play a near infinite number built
by millions of fans. But according to Tezuka, that couldn't be
farther from the truth. "Mario developers build up the whole world,
making sure the different courses all fit well together," he said in 2014. "I don't think the overall fun you can have
with an entire Mario game is the same as playing [courses] in Mario Maker, and of course future
Mario games will include lots of new features... so I don't think the two will ever be in competition." After Mario Maker 2 released, Tezuka said:
"I do think we've probably been influenced by the things we've seen people making in
Super Mario Maker up to this point, but I don't know exactly what sort of concrete form
that would take in the Mario games in years to come. With things like that, we'll put the game
out, see the reaction from the fans, then make decisions about what we'll decide to
include in games going forward." And shortly after, for Mario's 30th anniversary,
as the guy who's in charge of 2D Mario, he said his adventures are far from over. 30 years is just a checkpoint, and he fully
intends to keep on making them. As for clues on what the next New Super is
gonna be like -- it'll probably be a bit more like Luigi U. While that DLC was in development,
Tezuka went back and played the older games like Mario 3, and discovered that the courses
had gotten longer and longer with each new game without the devs even realizing it. That's one of the reasons the stages in Luigi
U ended up being so short -- and Tezuka says that's what he'd like to do in future entries
as well. Shorter stages with more packed into them. The fruits of that idea can already be seen
in Mario Maker 2's story mode, with levels even shorter than the ones in Luigi U. And frankly, we’d be surprised if Nintendo
passed on making another sequel when they sell tens of millions each. They didn't say that in all these interviews... but c'mon. This is Nintendo we're talking about. If there's one thing those fellas don't hate
it, it's money. Now that they've had a decade to come up with
new ideas, and gotten a boost from Mario Maker's fan-made levels, it seems like there's reasons
to be optimistic for a New Super Mario. Did you also know there's over 1200 Mario
fan games publicly available on the internet, but Nintendo's only DMCA'd 15 of them? Wow, that doesn’t seem like them -- but
if you wanna hear all about that 1% of fan games that got struck down, click the video
on-screen. Special thanks to Supper Mario Broth and Eurasia
for helping out with this video, and thank you for watching. See ya next time.
