New Super Mario Bros. 2 Development Tidbits

Satoru Iwata, the man behind Nintendo, recently spoke to the chaps leading New Super Mario Bros 2.

Despite being the company the spawns the most popular video game franchises and top sellers, Nintendo of Japan is a rather tight knit group - with a limited number of folk working on the latest games.

One of these is the soon-to-be-released New Super Mario Bros 2. The only two staff members within the development team with solid Mario knowledge, specifically 2D side-scrolling were director Yusuke Amano and art head, Masaaki Ishikawa. The pair even had to form a quick "Mario Cram school" to bring others up to speed whilst the main 2D team focused on New Super Mario Bros U.

Level design came first, then the new coin mechanic.

There are a handful of new changes - including more evening/night looks with boos and all sorts of creepy enemies to vary the traditional blue skies. Mario's coin grabbing ability came through the Coin Block power-up in Super Mario 3D Land, however veteran Shigeru Miyamoto wasn't fond about the "mechanism behind it".

The shift in focus towards nabbing those coins even almost had Nintendo branding the game "Super Mario Bros. Gold", but stuck to a numerical release as the project justified a main-line entry.

The release - July 28 in Japan, August 17 in Europe and August 19 in North America is a significant one for Nintendo, the first 2D Mario outing on the 3DS handheld, plus the first Nintendo retail release to also become available as a download at the same time.