The director of the game Super Mario Bros Wonder notes that it is more challenging to surprise players today

In an interview with Eurogamer, Shiro Muri discussed the goals and concept of their latest game in the Mario series, aiming to recapture the sense of mystery and intrigue that was present in the original Super Mario Bros in 1985.

Muri, who had previously worked on programming for The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and contributed to New Super Mario Bros U, shared his thoughts: "In the development of the new Mario installment, we focused on the concept of mystery and secrets."

He also explained that elements like power-ups and warp pipes were genuine surprises for players in the original Super Mario Bros, but over time, they became standard in the series.

"With the evolution of Mario's side-scrolling games, it became more challenging to astonish players with such secrets and surprises," Muri said.

"Therefore, we came to the conclusion that it's important to create a Mario side game that corresponds to the modern era. Now, we need to put in more effort to amaze players."

Their solution was the Wonder Flower – an item that appears in every level and completely transforms it, allowing warp pipes to bend and move along the ground, changing the artistic style, or turning Mario into a Goomba, for example.

In an interview with Wired, Muri revealed that they initially had the idea of an item that would transport players to different areas every time, but producer Takashi Tezuka asked, "If you're just going to move to another area anyway, isn't it the same thing? Why don't you just change where you are now?"

Subsequently, the entire development team, regardless of their roles or experience at Nintendo, was involved in suggesting ideas for potential effects that the Wonder Flower could have.

As Muri noted, "The number of ideas we received probably exceeded a thousand, maybe two thousand ideas," which were then curated and incorporated into the game.