Super Mario 3D World will be the first Nintendo title developed in HD, and according to game creator Kenta Motokura, developing the title in HD helped the team be more creative.
Speaking in a group interview this week attended by VentureBeat, Motokura said HD also allow for various ways to present hazards the player will face whilst playing.
“Now that we’re able to have graphics in HD, this is allowing us to express some different ideas that we really haven’t done before,” Motokura said. “For example, the clear pipe is something that’s just that much easier to see in this kind of presentation, and this allowed us to connect it to new ideas for gameplay.
“We had a lot of fun thinking about what happens exactly inside the pipe if you could see through it. What sort of things are able to go through? And so we worked on, ‘OK, maybe fireballs can go through. Maybe even Goombas could go through.’ We spent a lot of time coming up with different variations.”
Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto was part of the same group interview, and said that while the firm has started to embrace HD – what with remakes like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker – the team is more interested in creating new experiences than revamping old ones – although nothing is out of the question.
“[More HD remakes] are certainly possible, but most of our developers are working on new games,” said Miyamoto per Polygon. “We like to have them working on new stuff. HD remakes might be a good project for development partners, so that’s something I hope we can introduce in the future.
“If your interest is in finding elements from previous games you’ll find them scattered all about in [Super Mario World 3D]. There is a lot of content like that.”
Super Mario 3D Land arrives in North America on November 22 in Europe on November 29.
