Nintendo changed Mario for Super Mario Bros. Wonder in a Disney-like move

Since Nintendo announced Super Mario Bros. Wonder, I’ve wondered, Why not now? Why do you want to change Mario?

Nintendo tweaked its Princess Peach box art in secret earlier this month to make the Mushroom Kingdom’s monarch look more like her Hollywood-friendly face-lift. Super Mario Bros. Movie. Nintendo may be tempted to make a comparison between the two versions of their games. Super Mario Bros. WonderTo the recently super-successful animation film. And that’s fair, to a point. While you hop through the Flower Kingdom Wonder’s colors have so much contrast they practically glow, eerily similar to Illumination’s house style. The game may also recall Nintendo’s collaboration with Ubisoft on the Mario + Rabbids games. Both strategy games are a departure from the decades-long IP tradition of keeping Mario with his googly eyes and communicating via bloodcurdling sounds.

I’m hesitant to give too much credit to either in influencing Wonder. The creation of video games takes many years, while the success of Mario is a relatively recent phenomenon. But Mario + Rabbids Mario is armed with guns, and there’s Wallace and Gromit-style humor. This is not a classic Mario game.

What Nintendo can do with WonderYou should also consider Disney, its most recent competitor.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

Disney expanded its brand beyond Mickey in the 20th and 21st centuries. The mouse, and other Disney characters, became more than just a character. Minnie mouse is often seen on Swatches or other products. Mickey and the Roadster RacersDisney’s biggest films are reserved for the new princesses, and Pixar adorables.

Next came The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse, The mouse is a grotesque and manic riff that has more in Common with Adult Swim then Saturday morning cartoons. This series, which began as YouTube videos in 2013, concluded on Disney Plus this summer, after two seasons, several specials, an Emmy, and rides at Disney World and Disneyland.

Disney kept releasing its typical Mickey Mouse products. You could still buy classic Mickey merch, meet the classic Mickey mascot, and watch some truly mind-numbing Mickey children’s television. You could watch Mickeys of the Moment. Disney had tweaked the iconic mouse with each generation, but as the character approached public domain, it needed to offer something recognizably different — not a new Mickey Mouse, but another Mickey Mouse.

The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse has offered an alternative for older fans looking for something audacious, and younger fans craving a cartoon more in line with the humor of the present, like Mickey’s decapitated head sewn onto Frankenstein’s monster or any moment in this supercut. Super Mario Bros. WonderIt’s the same weird mix, but it is also playful and not concerned with intellectual property. I look forward to Mario fans wrecking TikTok with goofs on Elephant Toad and the piss planet — a golden world in which the rivers appear to be filled with the aftermath of a night of heavy drinking and a morning of dehydration.

Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon

Super Mario Bros. Wonder isn’t a remake, nor is it a tweak to the formula like its film or its spinoffs. WonderIt’s a fork. How about? Wonderful WorldAnother Mickey is created to join the original. Wonder — with its Flower Kingdom — creates an alternative world to live alongside the Mushroom Kingdom.

We will always have the crisp children’s book aesthetic of Normal Mario, the face of Nintendo. But if we’re lucky, henceforth we’ll also have Bizarro Mario, whose universe looks best under a black light and channels ’60s psychedelia, ’70s disco, the ’80s fixation on amassing wealth, and ’90s Lisa Frank!

WonderMario is a maximumist.