Super Mario Bros. Wonder: one Wonder Flower turns every level into a surprise (2023)

Almost 11 years after New Super Mario Bros. U, and after Mario Maker let players build their own levels, producer Takashi Tezuka wanted a 2D Mario full of hidden surprises. When the team proposed warping to new worlds, Tezuka pushed further: "Can't we make the course itself transform?" Development had no fixed schedule and started with a small team.

Grab a Wonder Flower and the course itself mutates into a one-off spectacle — pipes bend, rules break — then it ends; every level hides at least one such surprise.

Nintendo ran open idea-sharing sessions where programmers, designers and sound staff pitched gameplay on sticky notes — more than 2,000 in all — and prototyped on the spot instead of building a new engine first. The core became the Wonder Flower: touch it and the level becomes a brief, surreal scene (pipes come alive, Mario becomes a giant Spike-Ball) with bespoke music. Elephant Fruit was derived backwards from mechanics the team wanted: a bigger body, side hits and water spray.

Released October 20, 2023, Wonder sold 4.3 million copies in its first two weeks — Nintendo says it is the fastest-selling Super Mario game ever, with around half of players using its local or online multiplayer.

By 2023, 2D Mario had two problems: there had not been a brand-new side-scrolling Super Mario Bros. in almost 11 years, and Super Mario Maker had let millions of players build their own courses, which made some fans and journalists ask whether Nintendo needed to make one at all. Producer Takashi Tezuka disagreed, and gave his team a deceptively simple brief: create a Mario game full of hidden surprises and wonders, the way the 1985 original felt to players who had never seen a block yield a coin.

The breakthrough came from pushing the idea further than the team thought possible. Director Shiro Mouri first proposed warping players to another world with an item, but Tezuka rejected that as no different from the pipes of past games: "Can't we make the course itself transform?" A prototype that twisted and bent pipes proved it was possible. That became the Wonder effect: collect a Wonder Flower and a familiar course turns into a short, wild, one-time scene, from pipes coming alive to the player becoming a giant Spike-Ball.

To find enough wonders, Nintendo held studio-wide idea-sharing sessions in which programmers, designers and sound staff wrote ideas on sticky notes — over 2,000 in all — and prototypes were built immediately. The team built a new engine instead of reusing the New Super Mario Bros. one. Details were part of the idea: Mario's jump sound is an electric ukulele of Yezo spruce whose dynamics change with jump strength, and Elephant Mario was invented backwards from mechanics the designers wanted — a bigger body, side block hits and water spray.

The result was the fastest-selling Super Mario game ever: 4.3 million copies in its first two weeks after its October 20, 2023 launch. Nintendo later credited the local and online multiplayer — around half of players played with others — and the Super Mario movie for keeping demand high, but the design bet was the draw: a 2D Mario where a level could surprise even a veteran player, a promise Wonder made for every course.

It inverted a base assumption of the genre: levels in Mario are static arenas, and the team changed that to 'the level itself is the power-up's effect.'

The producer rejected the easier idea (warping to new worlds) and demanded the harder one (the course transforms in place), which forced the engine work that the whole game needed.

The 2,000-plus sticky notes made the creative process structural: everyone on the team could pitch, and any idea could be prototyped on the spot regardless of role.

Details were treated as design: jump sounds that change with jump strength and character faces tuned for readability show that the surprise is in the feel, not just the visuals.

When a long-running formula feels exhausted, do not add more content — change one base assumption (levels stay static) and give it a single flexible rule that can generate endless one-off surprises.

Wonder launched worldwide on October 20, 2023 to critical acclaim and sold 4.3 million units in two weeks, making it the fastest-selling Super Mario game at the time. Nintendo's president credited multiplayer — about half of players used it — and the Super Mario Bros. Movie for sustaining sales through the holiday season. The game marked Nintendo's first brand-new 2D Mario engine in over a decade, and its Wonder Flower mechanic became the defining hook of the title, positioning the game as the new baseline for the side-scrolling series rather than a one-off experiment.